Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. Drag usually involves cross-dressing. A drag queen is someone who performs femininely and a drag king is someone who performs masculinely. Performances often involve comedy, social satire, and at times political commentary. The term may be used as a noun as in the expression in drag or as an adjective as in drag show.
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 American documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it.
William Roscoe Leake, better known as Willi Ninja, was an American dancer and choreographer known for his appearance in the documentary film Paris Is Burning.
The Ballroom scene is an African-American and Latino underground LGBTQ+ subculture. Its origins can be found in drag balls of the mid-19th century United States, such as those hosted by William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved Black man in Washington D.C.. By the early 20th century, integrated drag balls were popular in cities such as New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. In the mid-20th century, as a response to racism in integrated drag spaces, the balls evolved into house ballroom, where Black and Latino attendees could "walk" in a variety of categories for trophies and cash prizes. Most participants in ballroom belong to groups known as "houses", where chosen families of friends form relationships and communities separate from their families of origin, from which they may be estranged. The influence of ballroom culture can be seen in dance, language, music, and popular culture, and the community still exists today.
Pepper LaBeija was an American drag queen and fashion designer. She was known as "the last remaining queen of the Harlem drag balls".
World of Wonder Productions is an American production company founded in 1991 by filmmakers Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey. Based in Los Angeles, California, the company specializes in documentary television and film productions with a key focus on LGBTQ topics. Together, Barbato and Bailey have produced programming through World of Wonder for HBO, Bravo, HGTV, Showtime, BBC, Netflix, MTV and VH1, with credits including the Million Dollar Listing docuseries, RuPaul's Drag Race, and the documentary films The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000) and Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016).
Drag pageantry is a developed form of pageantry for female impersonators, drag queens, and trans women, styled after traditional beauty pageants or contests for cisgender women. It has also evolved into a pageantry for male impersonators, drag kings and trans men.
RuPaul's Drag Race is an American reality competition television series, the first in the Drag Race franchise, produced by World of Wonder for Logo TV, WOW Presents Plus, VH1 and, beginning with the fifteenth season, MTV. The show documents RuPaul in the search for "America's next drag superstar". RuPaul plays the role of host, mentor, and head judge for this series, as contestants are given different challenges each week. Contestants are judged by a panel that includes RuPaul, Michelle Visage, one of three rotating judges, as well as one or more guest judges, who critique their progress throughout the competition. The title of the show is a play on drag queen and drag racing, and the title sequence and song "Drag Race" both have a drag-racing theme.
Nea Marshall Kudi Ngwa, better known by his stage name BeBe Zahara Benet, is a Cameroonian-American drag performer, television personality, and musician best known for winning the first season of the reality-television drag competition RuPaul's Drag Race in 2009. In 2018, he returned as a surprise contestant for the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars, placing in the top four.
Michelle Handelman is an American contemporary artist, filmmaker, and writer who works with live performance, multiscreen installation, photography and sound. Coming up through the years of the AIDS crisis and Culture Wars, Handelman has built a body of work that explores the dark and uncomfortable spaces of queer desire. She confronts the things that provoke collective fear and denial – sexuality, death, chaos. She directed the ground-breaking feature documentary on the 1990s San Francisco lesbian S/M scene BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes & Sadomasochism(1995), described by IndieWire as “a queer classic ahead of its time, a vital archive of queer history.” Her early work included 16mm black and white experimental films combined with performance. She is also known for her video installations Hustlers & Empires (2018), Irma Vep, The Last Breath (2013-2015), and Dorian, A Cinematic Perfume(2009-2011). In 2011, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for her film and video work.
"Kiki", a term which started in ballroom culture, and was also for decades used in lesbian lingo to refer to a woman who was neither butch nor femme. The use of kiki as a gathering was later made more famous in the 2012 song "Let's Have a Kiki" by the Scissor Sisters, and has recently been brought back to slang by the LGBT community, is loosely defined as a gathering of friends for the purpose of gossiping and chit-chat.
Flawless Sabrina, also known as Mother Flawless Sabrina, was an American LGBT activist, drag queen, performer, and actress, based in New York City. Flawless Sabrina was a pioneer for transgender people and drag queens not only in the mainstream, heterosexual society, but within the gay society as well, where transgender people remained heavily stigmatized. Sabrina lived in New York near Central Park from the 1960s until her death.
Venus Nadya Oshun, known professionally as Aja Miyake-Mugler or better mononymously as Aja, is an American rapper, reality television personality and drag queen best known for competing on the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race and on the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars.
Crystal LaBeija was an American drag queen and trans woman who co-founded the House of LaBeija in 1968. The House is often credited as starting the house system in ball culture. She became a mother figure for homeless LGBTQ youth.
The Royal House of LaBeija is the first house of Ballroom founded by Crystal LaBeija and Lottie LaBeija in 1968. It was the first ballroom house to host benefits to raise awareness during the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic. Crystal and Lottie established the House of LaBeija in response to the racially oppressive drag pageant system of 1960s America. In 1972, Crystal & Lottie LaBeija presented the 1st Annual "House of LaBeija Ball” at Up the Downstairs Case in Harlem, NY. This is thought to be the birth of house culture within the ballroom scene—as it is known today. Houses serve as alternative families, primarily for gay, gender nonconforming and transgender youth and others who feel ostracized from conventional support systems.
Brooke Lynn Hytes is the stage name of Brock Edward Hayhoe, a Canadian-American drag queen, ballet dancer, and television personality. After working as a dancer with Cape Town City Ballet and Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Brooke Lynn Hytes achieved international recognition for competing on the eleventh season of RuPaul's Drag Race; Brooke Lynn Hytes placed second, only to winner Yvie Oddly. Brooke Lynn Hytes is the first Canadian to compete in the series. Since 2020, Brooke Lynn Hytes has been a main judge on the spin-off series Canada's Drag Race, and is the first Drag Race contestant to become a full-time judge in the franchise.
Queens at Heart is an American short film described as both a documentary and an exploitation film in which four trans women are interviewed about their lives. It was produced in the mid-1960s. The film was digitally preserved in 2009 by the UCLA Film and Television Archive as part of the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation. Andrea James and Jenni Olson were among those who worked on its restoration.
Rachel Anne Sennott is an American comedian, actress and screenwriter. After training at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, she began her career on the New York City open mic scene with a regular gig on It's A Guy Thing. She later co-developed two web series for Comedy Central.
The first season of Canada's Drag Race premiered on July 2, 2020. The cast was announced on May 14, 2020. The winner of the first season of Canada’s Drag Race was Priyanka, with Rita Baga and Scarlett BoBo as runners-up.
