Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit (Triangulations: Lesbian/Gay/Queer Theater/Drama/Performance)

Butch Queens Up in Pumpsexamines Ballroom culture, in which inner-city LGBT individuals dress, dance, and vogue to compete for prizes and trophies. Participants are affiliated with a house, an alternative family structure typically named after haute couture designers and providing support to this diverse community. Marlon M. Bailey’s rich first-person performance ethnography of the Ballroom scene in Detroit examines Ballroom as a queer cultural formation that upsets dominant notions of gender, sexuality, kinship, and community.