In 2018, I launched the Peabody Ballroom Experience, an arts & humanities collaboration between Johns Hopkins University and ballroom, a nearly century-old performance-based culture composed primarily of gay, lesbian, transgender, and gender non-conforming people of color. The project cultivates an exchange of knowledge between the university and ballroom by creating opportunities for faculty, students, and performers to come together as partners in education and creative expression.
National Council on Public History Outstanding Project Award, 2023.
I worked with students and faculty in the Johns Hopkins Film & Media Studies MA program to document the Peabody Ballroom Experience, profile members of the ballroom community, film the April 2019 ball competition, and produce the following short film about the project.
Project Components:
Documenting Ballroom History
We record and archive oral history interviews about Baltimore’s ballroom scene, archive ephemera, and work with ballroom leaders to co-teach undergraduate courses on ballroom history.
Ball Competitions
Our ball competitions take place at the extravagant George Peabody Library. Known as Baltimore’s “Cathedral of Books,” it is ranked amongst the most beautiful libraries in the world.
Dance Partnerships
I launched a collaboration between the Peabody BFA Dance Program and Icon Marquis Revlon Clanton, a Baltimore-based vogue dancer who is an Icon in the ballroom scene.
Scenes from the April 15, 2023 Peabody ball. Photos by Saskia Kahn.
Media and Essays
Bret McCabe, “Ballroom Glitz,” Johns Hopkins HUB, Oct. 15, 2019
Cara Ober, “No Glitter Allowed: Ballroom 101,” Bmore Art, Apr. 18, 2019
Joseph Plaster, “Black Queer Performance in Baltimore’s ‘Cathedral of Books,’” The Abusable Past, digital venue for the Radical History Review, Oct 2019
Joseph Plaster, “The Category Is: Opulence! Performing Black Queer History in Baltimore’s ‘Cathedral of Books,’” Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies, Nov 2020
Rose Wagner, “Baltimore Was One of the First Cities to Celebrate Drag Culture,” Baltimore Sun, June 2021
John-John Williams IV, “Posing at the Library: Baltimore’s Ballroom Scene Werks the Peabody Again,” Baltimore Banner, Apr 14, 2023
Cara Ober, “The Library is Open: Baltimore Ballroom at Peabody,” BMore Art Magazine, Apr 21, 2023