How do you say Ballroom in German? (Part 2)
How an American subculture took Germany by storm, and what went wrong while it happened
German-American writer, performance artist and cultural curator Sophie Yukiko looks back on a decade of creating and experiencing Ballroom Culture in Germany. With a critical look on the reproduction of powerdynamics, she tries to find out what happened between 1980’s Harlem and today while diving into the conflicts and potentials of the German scene. (This is part 2)
For the longest time, White, cis-gender and heteronormative perspectives were more dominant in the German Ballroom scene, rather than the perspectives of those, who Ballroom culture claimed to cater to first and foremost. In this country, the scene was not established by Black trans people. Queer BIPoC people were only a few in Germany’s first generation of Ballroom participants, organizers and cultural creators. Trans* people were not part of Germany’s first steps into this culture. After about a decade of Ballroom being around, this has created a situation in which currently only five people exist, who receive international recognition through holding the titles or status of Legend or Leader in Germany’s main scene. Of these five, two are White, four are straight, and none is trans or darkskinned. And looking at the performers and participants in this country who have managed to build up the biggest base of support, notoriety, respect and adoration in comparison to others who maybe had to work way harder to receive only a fraction of the same attention and love, shows how some of the countries that appropriated the American subculture and tried to translate it into the context of European cities, have reproduced exactly those power dynamics, that Ballroom culture once tried to emancipate itself from. Paris and London may be the exception, given the fact that both cities have large Black and PoC communities, which in comparison to Germany, have already created more of a collective diasporic identity. But in Germany the face of Ballroom appears to be entirely different.
Here, Black people often have to seek validation from White bodies, queer people are being judged by straight people and cis people decide about the looks, talent and performance of trans people. After a while, and depending on whether this is the exception or the norm, this impacts the competition. The lens through which someone watches and makes their decision, does make a difference. Who creates and holds a space, does make a difference. At least as long as we live in a society that is still in the process of unpacking transphobia, racism, colorism and more. The Ballroom community is not above and beyond the need of deconstructing the things, we all have been taught to believe collectively. It took years, until Non-White, queer people were able to participate in German Ballroom and be judged by people who understand their lived reality. For the most part, they weren’t even able to compete against people they were able to identify with.
However, there is a shift in the German scene. A new generation of trans people have successfully claimed the spaces that Ballroom provides and changed how the scene feels, acts, reacts and what it looks like. Categories, that have been predominantly represented by White participants in the past are now dominated by trans people of Color. And next to the actual competition, there is a bigger network now and a willingness to connect and discuss what happens before and after the competition. Community work and the aim to collectively provide care, knowledge, help and resources to queer youth of Color, plays a much bigger role in this scene today than it did ten years ago. It is interesting though that even in this regard, dynamics known from everyday life in society, are being reproduced, as the care-work in this community mainly falls on the shoulders of non-White Fem bodies. A form of acknowledgement for this kind of work has barely been given in the past.
Just this year, the important work of two non-White trans people – Mandhla Gorgeous Gucci Laveaux ( Mandhla Ndubiwa ) und Magia Marciano 007 ( Yagé Quinn Parra Harrington ) has been recognized by the Community Legacy Award. Political initiatives and verbalizations of solidarity for topics and matters that affect communities that exist within the Ballroom context, are rarely offered by White and non-queer people. In the case of the war in Gaza for example, this means that queer people who stand in relation to the S.W.A.N.A region, are often those who have to hold the very complicated and difficult conversations that surround the issue – while at the same time – their resources and capacities are oftentimes scarce already and the pressure of being observed closely around this topic runs high. As soon as the conversations that are important to have in the context of Ballroom, because members of the community are politically affected by these issues, become too difficult or too political – White people tend to yield, withdraw, and leave the responsibility to engage to others.
And still, or maybe exactly for this reason, the German Ballroom Scene holds huge potential to become a sustainable space for queer culture and matters. If she wanted to, she could transform the culture not only to its initial principles and tradition, but to a place where it could mature even further. Maybe specifically because Ballroom in Germany has initially not been the space that it claimed to be, it has from its earliest days always been a space for discussion, criticism, adjustment and conversation. It constantly had to take a critical look at the power dynamics that have been a part of Ballroom forever – long before this culture found its way to Europe and Germany.
As Ballroom culture might have given the room to queer the ideals of American capitalism by allowing Non-White and queer people to embody a success that American culture did not see for them – it never deconstructed the capitalistic idea of what success means. While Ballroom allows a different version of beauty, desirability, wealth and notoriety, it still believes that these things have to be achieved in order to be relevant.
Competition culture, as we know it, propels individualism, which is a product of the north-western narrative. Colonization exported it throughout the world, suffocating those cultures who centered the collective. It is interesting that the Ballroom scene uses the word community when it describes itself, when the individualist aspects of Ballroom take up most of the space in the culture. The longing for collectivity and community might be this pronounced in Ballroom, because people think that due to its history, it might be a place where these things can actually be found. But if somebody wants to be a winner, they eventually have to decenter the collective and focus on themselves, put themselves first and learn to take up a lot of space in order to be seen and to make it to the top. Ballroom trains your elbows.
Trying to imagine a version of Ballroom culture, that centers the exchange of talent instead of attaching a hierarchy to it, is almost impossible for me. I am not even sure if this is necessary or even wanted. Because what participation in Ballroom culture certainly does – in the US or in Germany, then and now alike, regardless of the fairness of the competition – it trains resilience of all kinds, inside and outside of the space. And resilience is exactly what is needed for those, who suffer most from the reproduction of power dynamics in Ballroom.