Open Spectrum: Ballroom Has Something to Say: Lecture/Performance/Competition

Presented as part of Open Spectrum: Ballroom Has Something to Say
5 PM Ballroom: Trans Sounds of Black Freedom
A Lecture / Performance / Discussion exploring the history of the House | Ballroom community as a Black Trans-Womanist theological discourse, a freedom movement, and its spiritual formation responses to race, class, sexuality, and gender oppression. This event examines how a community reimagines itself through Performance, Fashion, and Intentional Kinship. Featuring a lecture from Michael Roberson, Maison-Margiela, and performance from The Reverend Ken Alston, Jr.

Two category competition: Vogue Fem ($1,000 prize) and Arms Control ($500 prize)

Curated by Michael Roberson (theologian, public health practitioner, activist, leader within the LGBTQ and House | Ballroom community, and advisor for the TV show Pose) and presented in partnership with House Lives Matter and the Arbert Santana Ballroom Freedom and Free School Project. Sponsored by The Musagetes Foundation, Health & Education Alternatives for Teens (HEAT), and Callen-Lorde.

COMMENTATOR: precious

DJ: Byrell The Great

JUDGES:

1. FOUNDER TERRA MULAN BALENCIAGA
2. JASON SLIM RODRIQUEZ XXXTRAVAGANZA
3. LEGENDARY NY MOTHER JLIN LANVIN
4. ICON OVERSEER ROSE MAISON-MARGIELA
5. ICON FOUNDER PONY ZION
6. LEGENDARY VOGUER, FATHER RENALDO TISCI
7. ICONIC MOTHER JAZMIN PEREZ REVLON

Curatorial statement from Michael Roberson

Here We Are Again…at the opportunity to create greatness…To remember who We Really Are…To Remember Our Own Greatness…Our Own Divine Greatness…Yet the question remains…How have We evolved??…As individuals…as a community…as a collective…as a people whose creative gifts are shown…and replicated across the globe…all over this world…whose gifts have blessed this Universe in countless ways…Magnificent and Brilliant…whose relentless efforts…and tireless desires have “Made A Way Out of No Way”…And so…How do We evolve…in This Moment and Time when The Universe is begging Us to Be and Remember Our Own Audacity…How do We raise the bar…create new standards…in Our loving…in Our mobilizing…in Our own individual and collective process of self-definition…self-determination…through Our coalition building…Our community service work…on the runway…on the catwalk…on the Piers of New York against a landscape of a city where it all began and now finds itself across the globe…BALLROOM…Be Clear…Be Real Clear…Who We Are is Ballroom

We are such a Wonderful…Beautiful…UnBelievably Brilliant People…Ballroom Rockstars…Freedom Fighters…Radical Scholars…Revolutionary Artists…The Black Church…God in motion…The Universe enacting it’s Magnificence…Fusion Politics…The Radical Theology…Leaders in Our Own Right… And so This is that Moment moving towards the beginning of a new dawn, a new era, a new decade.