House

In ballroom culture, a chosen family led by a mother and a father, whose members compete together at balls and take the house name as their surname.

In ballroom, a house is a chosen family: a group of queer people, led by a mother and often a father, who compete together at balls under the same name and look after each other the rest of the time. Its members are the house's children, and they take the house name as their own surname: you are not just Pepper, you are Pepper LaBeija.

A house is part team, part family, part school. The mother teaches you to walk, to vogue, to read and to survive; the children bring home trophies and fame for the house. For many members, especially those thrown out by their own families, the house was the only family they had.

Where it comes from

The first house was the House of LaBeija, founded with the first annual House of LaBeija Ball in 1972 after Crystal and Lottie LaBeija decided to run their own events, and it still exists. Through the 1970s and 1980s houses spread across Harlem and Brooklyn: the House of Xtravaganza became the first Latin house, and the dancer Willi Ninja founded the House of Ninja. Te Papa's history of ballroom also points to the gangs of the South Bronx in the early 1970s as one model for the way Black and Latino gay people organized themselves into houses.

How it is used today

Houses are still the backbone of the ballroom scene, now in cities around the world. People speak of walking for a house, being "in the house of" someone, or being a "007", a free agent who belongs to no house. The ballroom community's legends are often remembered as much for the houses they built as for the trophies they won.

Outside ballroom, gay people borrow the idea when they talk about chosen family: the friends who became our real relatives, who turn up at Christmas and in hospital. Not every circle of gay friends is a house, but the best ones work a bit like one.

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