To the right of Yasha LaBeija was her first-ever official ballroom competitor, a seasoned House of West leader dressed in a striped blue and purple athletic jersey with a black soccer ball tucked underneath her left arm. Yasha stood surrounded by almost two hundred ballroom spectators, scattered with other members of the Royal House of LaBeija eager to witness Yasha’s debut in her first-ever competitive category: open to all (OTA) realness. Directly in front of Yasha were her biggest critics yet – the panel of seven ballroom judges who would evaluate her on a scale of 1-10 and could even give her the “chop,” cutting her from competing in the next round of that category.
For her debut, this category called all female figures to “bring it as varsity athletes.” Yasha was dressed in a bright white Aritzia leotard with gymnastics chalk covering the palm of her hands. She took one step forward, and all she could hear was the crowd ferociously chanting, “LaBeija! LaBeija! LaBeija!” After she completed her walk, Yasha elegantly turned around and looked ahead of her once again, sign after sign jolted into the air: 10s, 10s across the board.
While the inception of ball culture dates back to the 1960s, a new younger generation of ballroom, including Yasha, remains alive and well. Despite several elements of the prolific culture permeating mainstream media, the younger generation of ballroom continues to be drawn to it in the same way their predecessors were: a love and pursuit of queer community.
In March 2023, at the Ballroom Throwbacks TV Awards Ball, thrown by the Haus of Alpha Omega at Knockdown Center in Queens, 22-year-old Yasha debuted in her first-ever ballroom category and took home the grand prize for “female figure realness.” She had joined the House of LaBeija almost a year before that after one of the House leaders, Jeffrey, “but we all refer to him lovingly as Kitty LaBeija,” recruited her from a chance encounter at a LaBeija Fourth of…
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