It’s been 25 years since Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston’s award-winning 1991 documentary about New York’s drag ball culture, made stars of talents like Willie Ninja and legends of personalities like Dorian Corey and Venus Xtravaganza.
The city’s ball scene is still going strong, thanks to a whole new generation of club kids and performers inspired by the cult classic — and in some instances in spite of it — so we’re long overdue for an update.
Now Thump — Vice Media’s channel devoted to electronic music and club culture — has teamed up with Axe for Night Visions, a look at the contemporary ball scene and its stars.
While Paris Is Burning spotlighted events in Harlem ballrooms, the first episode of this three-part mini doc brings the action downtown. We get a peek at promoter Jack Mizrahi’s Vogue Knights at XL Nightclub — inside Manhattan’s infamous Out Hotel — a kind of weekly workshop for vogue performances that attracted stars like Rihanna and Janelle Monae in its original location at the now-shuttered 39th Street club Esquelita. Meanwhile, the children on the runway at Symba McQueen’s Red Ball basically redefine the word “fierce.”
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Watch below:
joeyty
Dorian Corey was a creepy person : kept a preserved body in the apartment for years which wasn’t discovered until afterwards.
crowebobby
Dorian may well have been a creep, but that preserved body was supposedly that of a burglar she walked in on and killed in a struggle. Being a drag queen, which was against the law back then, and probably having had other run-ins with law enforcement she simply wrapped the body in plastic and stuck in the closet, where it mummified and was found only after she died. I think it was an understandable reaction for one who lived on the very edge of society and assumed, probably rightly so, that the consequences of contacting the police would have been worse than having a body in her closet . . . they say you can get used to anything.
joeyty
@crowebobby: You could have been her defense attorney.
Kangol
So happy to see the scene continues, and hasn’t been destroyed or appropriated. Also great to see some of the old house names like LaBeija, and newer ones like Mizrahi, are still going strong.
House of Extravaganza forever!
Scribe38
I never realized the social implementations of this movement. In Detroit I use to watch the vogue boys/ladies do their thing. Everyone need/deserves to have a place they belong.