The U.S. Supreme Court okayed limits on transgender girls playing sports Tuesday morning. While the decision’s impacts are still being understood, for some Virginians, it’s not a court who defines them, it’s their chosen family and the chance to dance.
Amia Baltazar moved to Roanoke in 2021 after a hurricane took her Myrtle Beach home. It was in the Star City that she met Garland Gravely, known as "Father G," and the Roanoke-based House of Expression.
“A House, in my opinion, is your chosen family. You have a mother figure who takes you in, a father figure, who shows you the fundamentals of life. They give you the love," Baltazar said. "And you get to walk Balls.”
Balls are massive events. Baltazar was in Richmond for the Captivating House of West’s WTV Ball Saturday. Held inside Richmond’s historic Main St. train station, the bass bounced off the glass walls as people of every race, gender, body type and sexuality spun, walked, twirled, gave looks, dead dropped and more.
Father G explains some of the more than 50 events in Sunday’s competition: “There’s runway that you saw, there’s vogue fem. There’s vogue dramatics, new way and old way”
For Father G, the vogue community and balls offer an escape.
“We deal with so much outside in the real world, here you can just come and be who you want to be without someone policing your body, telling you you’re not this or you’re not that," Father G said. "You know what I mean? You hear that constantly.”
Last weekend’s event came and went. Now, back in Roanoke, Father G said, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting the ability of trans girls to play sports, ballroom has a place for everyone, especially those who want to compete.
“What the world tells you that you can’t be, Ballroom says 'In this space you can be,'” he said.
