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Contribution long abstract:

In the context of the Ballroom Culture community of Lima, the concept of dance falls short. This community gathers LGBTQIA+ population and other marginalized groups, such as immigrants from Venezuela, Afro-Peruvian people, people living with HIV, and sex workers, to celebrate diversity through dancing and battling in competitions called balls. As they often highlight, their artistic practices go beyond the concept of dance, given that they embody their life struggles and histories. Following this line of thought and taking as inspiration the concept of social choreography (Andrew Hewitt, 2005) as reworked by dance scholar Imani Kay Johnson (2018), I look at this community’s performances as a prolongation of their daily movements and circulation. Taking as example a battle between two femme queens from the community, Leiia Kameleon and Yari 007, I intend to build connections between these performers’ strategies and enactments during a battle in a ball and their everyday survival techniques as trans women living in a homo/transphobic context. Thus, in this attempt, I aim to posit dance in this community as intertwined with their everyday choreographies and as a kind of movement that stretches its definition to incorporate issues of survival, visibility, and labor.