‘The catwalk is our riot’: How Paris’s booming ballroom scene found its home in the city of lights

The most fabulous catwalks in the French capital during Paris fashion week were not on the runways of Vuitton, Dior, or Valentino, but inside the Élysée Montmartre, a venue better known for packed, sweaty rock shows than for high-glamour events. At Sunday’s ELB ball, hundreds walked the Élysée’s floors at Paris’ largest LGBTQ+ ballroom to date, travelling from across the world to compete for 55 trophies and cash prizes.

Inspired by the GMHC Latex ​​Ball in New York, the oldest and largest international Ball founded to celebrate queer lives and honour those lost to Aids-related illnesses, the ELB was established to celebrate Paris’ vibrant LGBTQ+ ballroom community. “This is the first time we have a ball of this magnitude, in this venue, with this much cash prize,” says Parisian house DJ Kiddy Smile, who created and produced the event.

Ballroom is a haven for queer people of colour, first established by New York’s Black and Latin drag community in resistance to the discrimination felt at white-led drag balls. The subject of the tainted 1990 documentary Paris is Burning, and more recently in Ryan Murphy’s Pose, different houses compete in diverse categories that are loosely based on facial expression, wardrobe, strut and movement. Each house is headed by a mother, who leads a group referred to as her children.

A competition at the ELB ball. Photograph: André Atangana

Smile is a towering figure of the Parisian ballroom scene, quite literally: his 6’6 frame and stylish flair make him an impactful figure irrespective of circumstance. Balanced on a small chair outside a dance studio in central Paris, he recalls the first Parisian “mini-ball” he helped establish over a decade ago. “I wish I had that space when I was younger and I wanted to expand it to more people”, he says. “Either I’d be a proud Black man or I’d just be gay. I was never allowed to be both at the same time.”

A muffled house beat – essential for ballroom voguing – thuds through the wall from where we are seated. Inside the dance studio, members of his house, Gorgeous Gucci, busily prep. It’s a fantastically chaotic scene: some stretch and pirouette, one wheels large suitcases across the room, dodging the spins and dips of their peers, while others fit their wardrobe. It’s hard work and there’s much to-do: Ball preparations are not taken lightly.

While the US remains the nucleus of the scene, ballroom has blossomed in Paris relatively quickly: arriving in the late 2000s with French pioneers Lasseindra Ninja and Mother Nikki Gorgeous Gucci, who began to dance vogue in legendary Parisian queer club night, BBB. “The French were so racist for so long that gay spaces didn’t like having Black people, Arab and Asians in their spaces. So BBB was created for us,” says Kiddy Smile. “Voguing resonated; it was built by two Black trans women. We had the opportunity to have a scene that was Black and Queer.”

The ELB ball at the Elysée Montmartre. Photograph: Charis McGowan

Kiddy Smile was affected when he saw Lasseindra and Nikki dance. “They were finally breathing the air they needed.” The scene attracted an increasing amount of Paris’s LGBTQ+ community from marginalised ethnic backgrounds. Over a decade later, the city has dozens of houses that compete in balls twice a month – by far the largest, and most active ballroom community in Europe. “We built a scene up from zero. The ELB ball is about celebrating the people that paved the way.”

Harper Owens is a voguer and a champion in the vogue femme category – an evolution of the Old Way vogue dance famously captured in Madonna’s Vogue. Vogue Femme is far more bombastic and physically strenuous than its predecessor, based on five elements: hand/arm performance, catwalk, duckwalk, spins and dips, and floor performance. But Harper is unsure she’ll make the ELB – Paris fashion week is a particularly busy time for her, and she’s booked to walk the runway of French-independent label Asquin.

“There is a connection here in Paris between designers and the ballroom scene. We see European inspiration,” says Harper, who is a child of The Legendary Maison Rick Owens, which collaborates with Parisian-based designer Rick Owens for garments and looks. It proudly brands itself The First French House, rather than an offshoot of an American house, more typical of the Parisian scene.

It’s understandable that ballroom has taken on a life of its own in the French capital. A culture partly modelled on haute couture and French glam now informs the very world it used to imitate. Fashion brands have taken full advantage of the city’s wealth of ballroom talent: Harper Owens has modelled for Jerome Dreyfuss and Vivienne Westwood. A Black trans model who has grafted for years in the fashion industry, she’s enjoying her success, but remains wary of tokenism.

Preparing for the ball. Photograph: André Atangana

“We will never know if the brand really changed or if they are just filling quotas,” she says, explaining that she assesses whether a brand usually only works with “white, skinny models” before taking on a job. “Ballroom defends totally different things, made for people who don’t fit the fashion world. If someone does not support the values of the ballroom scene, it’s not OK.”

Kiddy Smile, who recently fronted a Lancôme lipstick campaign, summed up the industry’s demand for ballroom culture: “It’s a trend. Fashion is about trends. The only thing we can do is be there, get your money and bounce. Enjoy it while it lasts.” Despite this, he stresses that ballroom is positively disrupting a hegemonic, discriminatory industry. “They used to book straight white people, and now they are booking people from the community, who are so incredibly talented.”

Yet, more significant to the professional opportunities ballroom has opened – the heart of the culture remains grounded in community. “The ball is cool as people can show how fabulous they are, but that’s not the essence of ballroom,” says Kiddy Smile. “The essence of ballroom is being there for one of the kids when they get kicked out of their house after they come out and don’t know where to sleep.”

A dancer vogues during the Stars of Paris are Shining Ball at la Gaite Lyrique in Paris in June. Photograph: Julie Sebadelha/AFP/Getty Images

Harper, who was raised in Marseille by Madagascan parents, has said her house helped her when she experienced loneliness. “The scene comes from LGBT people who were rejected by their family – and we need community.” She doesn’t want to elaborate on her personal struggle, but says her house helped her “create a family and feel supported”.

To be a mentor and provider is a role that house mothers assume with responsibility and care. Across town, in an arts centre in eastern Paris, Ritchy Cobral de la Vega blows kisses at each of his children as they arrive to training, pausing our interview to make sure he greets each child personally. Mother of the Paris chapter of the House of Nina Oricci, Cobral de la Vega has helped children in his house find apartments and secure jobs. His house is proudly diverse and inclusive of trans men, trans women and cis queer walkers.

He said racism in Paris “is a fact” which is constantly harmful to the LBGTQ+ community of colour. From Guadeloupe, Cobral de la Vega said as a light-skinned Black man, he has not experienced the same prejudice as members of his house with darker skin. “I’ve seen it in my house – people who are in a bad situation just because of their skin colour.”

France continues to grapple with racial tensions, exemplified by the police shooting of Nahel, a 17-year-old boy of Algerian descent, which ignited weeks of riots across the country. Last week, a rights groups took the French state to court over widespread racial profiling, although French officials have refused to admit systemic racism.

The House of Orrici’s weekly training in a cultural centre in Paris. Photograph: Maca Norambuena

Kiddy Smile is a renown queer activist. In 2018 he attended an event hosted by Emmanuel Macron donning a plain black T-shirt with words that said “Fils d’immigrés, noir et pédé,” which he translates as “Immigrants’ son, Black and faggot.” The move infuriated the right and shocked the French political establishment: it is now considered a landmark moment of civil rights in modern Europe.

Despite Kiddy Smile’s own emblazoned approach to activism, he said it is “unfair” to expect the ballroom culture to assume an outspoken political stance. “Sometimes people are political just by existing and saying who they are”, he says. He makes sure that his house welcomes conversations about “racism, transphobia, colourism, consent” and “all the things that affect us outside this bubble we call ballroom”.

For him, having balls like the ELB is the ultimate form of fight: “Every time we step foot on the catwalk, this is our riot, this is our statement.”