Cross-dressing ball

On the contrary, historian Rictor Norton considers unlikely that such a subculture would appear fully formed, and thinks that it was actually the increase in surveillance and police procedures that brought to the surface an underground culture that had not been visible up to that moment.

In a few minutes, long tables are installed and layed, with several hundred people sitting at them; some humorous songs and dances of the attendant "lady imitators" season the conversation, then the cheerful activity continues until the early morning.

Kameradschaft tried to offer some support and activities for gays from lower extraction; so their balls were celebrated on weekends, Saturdays or Sundays, and gathered about 70 men, many without a job, who could pay the low entry price.

The program at the Eldorado included loud and racy shows by drag queens, addressed mostly to a heterosexual audience, that, now as then, wanted to "satisfy their curiosity, and dared to visit the mysterious and infamous Berlin".

[17] Among them, divas like Marlene Dietrich,[18] often with her husband Rudolf Sieber, and Anita Berber,[18] singers like Claire Waldoff,[19] and writers, like Wolfgang Cordan,[20] Egon Erwin Kisch, or Josef Hora.

The ballroom cum cabaret has been mentioned, directly or indirectly, serving as inspiration, in many literary works, as in Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939) by Christopher Isherwood, or the memories of Erika, and Klaus Mann.

[28] After World War I, Paris became one of the nightlife centers in Europe, with focal points in Montmartre, Pigalle, and Montparnasse, and numerous short-lived bars catering to gays and lesbians, surviving between police raids, ruinous scandals, and the public's insatiable thirst for new thrills.

They ondulate more than dance, and thrust their pelvises obscenely, shimmying their bosoms and delicately grasping the legs of their trousers, which they raise above their shiny boots with each step forward, all the while winking at the customers.

In those relaxed and natural days, before the cops took over France, a chevalier could go out in public with a mate of the same sex, without being considered crazy.» On the other hand, Willy presents a completely different aspect of the milieu, "What you see are little delinquents, not too carefully washed but heavily made up, with caps on their heads and sporting brightly colored foulards; these are the guys who, when they fail to make a buck here, will certainly be found hauling coal or other cargo.

The Bal Wagram offered the opportunity to cross-dress twice a year; at 1 am, the drag queens did the pont aux travestis, a costume competition, doing the catwalk in front of the most selected people of Paris, that came to walk on the wild side for a night.

[28] The drag queens participating came from all walks of life, and ages, and presented a savage satire of the society, its values, and its traditional hierarchies, with images of exaggerated femininity, and masculinity: countesses dressed in crinoline, crazy virgins, oriental dancers, sailors, ruffians, or soldiers; theirs names were correspondingly colorful: Duchess of the Bubble, the Infante Eudoxie, the Mauve Mouse; the Dark One, Sweetie Pie, Fréda, the Englishwoman, Mad Maria, the Muse, the Teapot, the She-wolf, Sappho, Wet Cat, Little Piano, Princess of the Marshes, Marguerite if Burgundy, etc.

[29] Charles Étienne, in his novel Notre-Dame-de-Lesbos, describes "Didine" in following fashion: Stuffed into a yellow brocade dress, wearing a red wig topped by a trembling tiara of paste, the dress low-cut and in the back naked to the waist, revealing the physique of a prize fighter, a man climbed the staircase, twisting adroitly and with meticulous gestures lifting the long train of her skirts.Many of the onlookers just went to insult and harass the gay people participating, as Charles Étienne describes in his novel Le Bal des folles:[29] After the bruising attack outside, here the reception was more restrained, but quite as bitter, inside.

All along the balustrade, clusters of people perched, climbed, and packed together to the point of smothering, raised a mocking jeer: two hundred heads with eyes flaming and mouths hurling insults [...] a Greek chorus of poisonous epithets, ridicule, and slurs [...]There are at least two instances of cross-dressing balls that have been documented in England.

LGBT History Month in the UK commissioned Stephen M Hornby and Ric Brady to write a three-part play about the ball as part of the first OUTing The Past festival in 2015 in Manchester.

[34][35] The affair began when 60 men were detained in a private ball room, in Holland Park Avenue, in London, after cross-dressing police officers had been watching them dancing, made up, dressed as women, and having sex.

The most important ball society for the "Uranian flock" met at the El Ramillete, in the calle Alvareda, in Madrid, where you could count "over a hundred sodomites with elegant suits, and rich jewelry".

[36][37] The dancing public was of all types, but mainly transvestites and young men of the working class – workers of trade and commerce, workshop apprentices, and servants – for whom the balls were the highest point of their lives: exploited by their employers, and frightened of being discovered by the society.

And in spite of there being racial tensions, gender restrictions —two men could only dance together if one of them was dressed as a woman—, and class barriers, these balls became some of the few places where black and white people could socialize, and homosexuals might even find some romance.

[note 9]Even though the raid did not have any legal grounds, and was completely arbitrary, the 41 detained men ended up forcefully conscripted into the military: The derelicts, petty thieves, and effeminates sent to Yucatán are not in the battalions of the Army fighting against the Maya Indians, but have been assigned to public works in the towns retaken from the common enemy of civilization.

[46] The incident and the numbers were spread through press reports, but also through engravings, satires, plays, literature, and paintings; in recent years, they have even appeared on television, in the historical telenovela El vuelo del águila, first broadcast by Televisa in 1994.

José Guadalupe Posada's engravings alluding to the affair are famous, and were frequently published alongside satirical verses:[44] Aqui están los maricones muy chulos y coquetones.

Even though none of the participants were condemned, the owner of the apartment was accused of running a brothel, according to article 171 of the Soviet penal code, a felony that could be punished with up to three years of prison, and confiscation of all, or some of the property.

No discordant note tarnishes the general happiness, until the last participants leave the place in the dull crepuscular lights of a cold February morning, where for a few hours they could dream themselves as that what they are inside, among those that share their feelings.

[58] Another example is the origin of the Balletti Verdi affair ("green ballet"[note 13]): a series of private parties in Castel Mella, organized by two homosexuals for their friends, became a political scandal of enormous proportions in the Province of Brescia in 1960 when it was discovered that minors —between 18 and 21 years old— had participated.

Word spread around Harlem that a retinue of drag queens was putting together outfits bigger and grander than Rose Parade floats, and the balls began to attract spectators, first by the dozens and then by the hundreds, gay and straight alike.

There are a few notable exceptions, as the Life Ball in Vienna, celebrated yearly since 1992,[69] or the annual Night of a Thousand Gowns in New York City, organized by the Imperial Court System,[70] but in general they have been substituted by the dance club.

Fast stets sind mehrere Geheimpolizisten zugegen, die achtgeben, daß nichts Ungeziemendes vorkommt; soweit ich unterrichtet bin, lag aber noch nie ein Anlaß vor, einzuschreiten.

Ich sah einen Südamerikaner in einer Pariser Robe, deren Preis über 2000 Francs betragen sollte.Nicht wenige wirken in ihrem Aussehen und ihren Bewegungen so weiblich, daß es selbst Kennern schwer fällt, den Mann zu erkennen.

Die schönsten Kostüme werden auf ein Zeichen des Einberufers mit donnerndem Tusch empfangen und von diesem selbst durch den Saal geleitet.

Hier sieht man einen flotten Couleurstudenten mit mächtigen Renommierschmissen ankommen, dort hilft ein schlanker Rokokoherr seiner Dame galant aus der Equipage.