AND THE CATEGORY IS...: INSIDE NEW YORK'S VOGUE, HOUSE, AND BALLROOM COMMUNITY
RICKY TUCKER
� 2021 Beacon Press
$25.95
248 pages

The culture known as "ballroom" is a little hard to define. It's not about a song, although you can't have ballroom without music. It's not one specific place; you can attend ballroom classes in many places and dance wherever there's a ball.

Ballroom is instead "a thriving arts-based culture founded over a century ago by LGBTQ African American and Latinx people of Harlem." And it's "a freedom, a fearlessness... in deconstructing and reinventing oneself in front of a crowd."

"In so many ways, house-Ballroom culture is... the invisible creating visibility for themselves," says author Rickey Tucker in And the Category Is....

In his eyes, ballroom is "smart, innovative, loving, and funny..." At its very base, it's pageantry, masquerade, and glitz. Hand movements are graded, as are spins, dips, and the way one walks; what you wear is as important as how you dance. Awards are given in various categories that exhibit "realness."

And yes, taking a ballroom class is better than making a fool of yourself and bringing shame to your house. (That, by the way, could be a literal home with a created family for anyone who might need one, led by a house mother or father.)

Ballroom gives Trans and Gay people a safe place to be themselves and maybe win a trophy for it. It also offers Black dancers a chance to unite "under one cause: freedom" and to display "a powerful performative act of defiance" toward rich, straight, white cis people (though there are many cis people who are Ballroom fans).

There are two ways of approaching And the Category Is...: one if you're a Ballroom follower or participant; another if you're not.

Aficionados of ballroom will devour every page of this personal memoir mixed with cultural history. They'll love Tucker's breathlessly told tale of finding ballroom, and himself in it; his experiences of learning how to dance properly; and the insider sense that he lends overall.

Readers will also enjoy Tucker's extensive interviews with LGBTQ BIPOC: organizers, activists, house parents, his own "fathers," and other ballroom participants and "legends." There, and in his analysis of the interviews, we see how defying racism is a large part of the essence of ballroom, how HIV activism fits in, and how ballroom has been appropriated for wider audiences.

On the other side of the dance floor, if you're not into ballroom, this book will take some getting used to. Tucker jumps in with both feet; there is very little preamble to prepare readers unfamiliar with ballroom culture. But stick around; you'll get it eventually, if you have patience.