Watch a Ballroom Takeover at KQED’s Headquarters

With style, dips and duckwalks, Oakland to All took over KQED’s San Francisco headquarters on Nov. 21 for a panel discussion on the state of the ballroom scene in the Bay Area. The night also featured the first-ever ballroom competition held at Northern California’s largest public media station.

Founded in 2020 by Shireen Rahimi, Ashlee Banks, Guerrilla Davis and Tremaine Wheaton, Oakland to All promotes ballroom, an artistic and cultural movement first formed in 1970s New York City by queer and trans people of color seeking spaces for creative expression safe from homophobia and transphobia. Ballroom has since expanded around the globe with the mainstream success of documentaries like Paris is Burning and FX’s Emmy Award-winning show Pose.

Within ballroom, queer people from different generations come together to form houses — chosen families that provide emotional and material support and celebrate each other’s growth as dancers, musicians and artists. Houses face off in competitions known as balls, where members compete across different categories like vogue performance, runway, face and realness, while an MC keeps the energy high with fast-paced rhymes and quick-witted commentary.

“Oakland has a ballroom scene again. It did not just die down,” said Rahimi, on stage at the start of the event, with Banks and Davis standing next to her. “We are here, and what you’re going to see today is a whole new generation.”

Before the competition, Rahimi clarified that its common description as a “Vogue Ball” is a misnomer, and that voguing is just one part of ballroom. Then Davis — along with NPR’s Corey Antonio Rose, who has recently become part of the ballroom scene — moderated a panel discussion with four key figures in the development of ballroom in Northern California: Envy Tisci, father of the Bay Area House of Tisci, ballroom icon Dhalimu Moschino, and OTA’s Banks and Wheaton.

One of the topics in the hour-long conversation was the pivotal role of SMAAC (Sexual Minority Alliance of Alameda County) played in the early ballroom scene in the Bay Area during the 1990s and early 2000s. SMAAC was an Oakland-based nonprofit that offered mentorship and public health services to thousands of young queer people, as well as a physical space for folks to practice and teach each other about ballroom.

In 2012, a fire destroyed the building that housed SMAAC. The group was unable to recover, and the Bay Area’s ballroom scene had a hard time bouncing back, Banks said. “That time when SMAAC was gone, there was no way for the community to congregate,” she explained. “That safe space wasn’t there.”

When she and other OTA founders began organizing outdoor practice sessions at Lake Merritt in 2020, Banks says the group wanted to recreate that same sense of safety and trust SMAAC had provided.

“We have to engage with the youth, and they have to want to trust us,” she said. “They have to trust that where they’re going is a safe place: ‘When I come to vogue class, I’ll be able to vogue and feel comfortable and feel safe and be able to go home after.’”

In the past four years, OTA has grown from practice sessions once a month to organizing dozens of events, including the annual Hella Hyphy Ball, the region’s first and only annual ball — now a major event with competitors from all over the West Coast.

Many young people who didn’t have prior ballroom experience but got involved through OTA have become so skilled that they’re now part of nationally recognized houses. OTA’s goal is to eventually register as a nonprofit that can connect queer youth to housing and other social services, in line with OTA’s mission to connect ballroom to the issues that impact its participants.

Even ballroom veterans such as Dhalimu Moschino, who came up in the New York scene, have once again found a safe space in ballroom through OTA. “There is such a love of the art form  … [it] is not taken advantage of, it is not appropriated, it’s just really, really beautiful to see,” he said, adding jokingly that, “The Bay Area has made New York jealous.”

But the Bay is not just talk — the future of the region’s ballroom scene showed up after the panel to compete in four categories, each inspired by a different facet of journalism and mass media (we’re at KQED, after all). With Karma Versace as the MC, the categories were face, realness, runway and vogue performance.

KQED spoke with the winners from each category, all hailing from a different part of the Bay Area — a reflection of the impact Oakland to All has had beyond the East Bay.

OTA FACE — News Break

Category description: Politicians are utilizing beauty influencers to increase their reach across different demographics and persuade younger U.S. citizens to vote. Bring us your beautiful face and incorporate a political message, and no beauty influencer is set without product placement.

Winner: Tyler-Avery Lewis, alias Butterfly Garçon
From New Iberia, Louisiana; now living in Santa Rosa

Lewis participated in the face category to bring attention to mass incarceration, an issue she says is prevalent in her home state of Louisiana. “My category called for a political statement with product placement,” she said. “I wore a green dress to represent money. I wore chains to represent mass incarceration and my product was some setting spray because if you don’t have it, your face will melt.”

OTA REALNESS — Inside Scoop

Category description: Queer icons Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper brought us the hottest topics at CNN. This powerful commentary served its right-wingers left & right. But behind the scenes, though they both fought for what’s right (or left if you will), they had a strained relationship at CNN. Tonight, bring it as a broadcast journalist.

Winner: Kyla Kitagawa, alias Kyla Celine Saint Laurent
From San José and Oakland

Kitagawa says it’s rare to see categories that require business formal presentation in the Bay Area, but adds that because she has recently started a “more corporate job,” this was her chance to bring together her professional and ballroom universes. She says that she’s been involved with OTA for a few years now, thanks to her sister who got her involved. “She knew that this was a space that was meant for me as well,” she added. “It’s addictive. The community feels right.”

OTA RUNWAY — Fake News

Category description: The FIDM museum has decided to curate a Musical Legends Retrospective that will include stage costumes of the most inspirational artists from each decade. Some of the most outrageous costumes from the likes of David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Little Richard, and more will be a part of the exhibit. Recreate a look worn by a departed music legend and bring it to the runway.

Winner: Scarlet Tisci and Soho Tisci
From San José and Richmond, respectively

Scarlet says that she actually didn’t expect to participate in this ball as she had just flown in from New York, but after looking at the category description, thought of Tina Turner as someone she could quickly embody. Soho, who competed in the category as their version of David Bowie, says that they first got involved in ballroom 15 years ago in New York. “Ballroom has always been about the community at the end of the day,” they say, “providing a safe space for them to come and be themselves while also helping with daily life.”

OTA PERFORMANCE — Climate Change

Category description: Deforestation and climate change have tree huggers on edge! Activists are seeking more executive orders to protect forests across the country that would aid their mission of environmental activism. For this category we want to see you STORM the runway inspired by one of the 5 components of nature: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, or Space.

Winner: Aurris Garçon
From San Francisco and Oakland

For the final event of the night, Garçon brought the heat — literally. In response the category, Garçon wanted to embody the “ever-increasing heat” California is experiencing due to climate change. “Global warming is probably one of the biggest issues in our world today, but yet we’re focused on who’s fighting who for political office,” Garçon said. “And in reality, we only got about 15 years left on this bitch before we burn up.”