Television shows like Netflix’s Pose and HBO’s Legendary might’ve brought the art of ballroom to an international audience, but they were hardly the creators of it.
The scene originated in New York City in the 1920s underground by drag queens and trans women, then it expanded to include gay men in the 1970s.
This community was desperate to make themselves seen – at least to find visibility in each other – liberating their inhibitions from a society determined to ignore or erase them.
Enter Jack Mizrahi, whose involvement in ballroom reaches far back enough that he plays himself on Pose (as well as a co-writer), a series based during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.