The drag ballroom legacy of the Houses of LaBeija and Xtravaganza live on in new track ‘The Two Houses’
The house music project from the NYC Downlow co-creator GIDEÖN and LA producer Rush Davis pays homage to the resilience of queer ballroom culture
By Nick Levine
You can definitely dance to ‘The Two Houses’, the latest project from DJ-producers GIDEÖN and Rush Davis, but this isn’t just music for the club floor. The three-track EP of “conscious house” – as GIDEÖN describes his sound – is designed to unite and galvanise the LGBTQ+ community by paying homage to the pioneers of ball culture. The project is dedicated to ten legends from New York’s ballroom community who are no longer with us; they were all members of the scene’s two most illustrious collectives, the House of LaBeija and House of Xtravaganza.
Bonded by righteous queer solidarity as well as the pomp and pageantry of the peacocking drag balls, these vibrant chosen families continue to nurture some of America’s most marginalised queer and trans folks. “We’re keeping the spirits of our loved ones alive through the sound that they would dance do,” says Rush, who joined the House of Xtravaganza when he was 17. “The girls wouldn’t be crying to some sappy ballad. They’d be on the dance floor, high as hell, moving through it.”
Londoner GIDEÖN, who founded HOMO-CENTRIC Records in 2022 to spotlight the queer origins of house music, originally conceived ‘The Two Houses’ as an homage to the late, great Pepper LaBeija. Best known for her contributions to Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston’s seminal 1990 documentary about New York ball culture, Pepper considered herself “the last remaining queen of the Harlem drag balls”. Before she passed away in 2003, she was acutely aware of her place in the pantheon. “I am Pepper LaBeija, legendary mother of the House of LaBeija,” she says in Paris Is Burning. “Not the founder! That was Crystal, I just rule it now.”
A few years ago, GIDEÖN became close friends with Simone LaBeija, a prominent member of the house that Pepper once presided over. The pair planned to collaborate on GIDEÖN’s tribute track, but sadly Simone passed away in August 2023, just one day before they were due to plan a release strategy. Around a year later, GIDEÖN played his “Simone track” to Rush, his collaborator on the 2024 club anthems ‘Fall of Rome’ and ‘Wire God’. “Inspired, he began to improvise an elegy, a tribute listing members of his house who had passed away since its founding in 1982, as well as namechecking contemporary house members,” GIDEÖN recalls.
Rush says the tribute became more expansive as soon as he infused it with his soulful vocals and songwriting. “The first thing that came up was, ‘OK, these are the LaBeijas, but I’m an Xtravaganza, so there’s no way I’m gonna get on a record for another house without acknowledging my house’,” he says. Rush poured the collective trauma of his community, but also its tremendous resilience, into the project’s melody and lyrics. “We’ve lost a lot of members – to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, to self-medication, to mental illness, to full-on violence,” he says. “I knew this was an opportunity not just to honour both houses, but to unify them, too. I want people to see that we’re stronger together.”
Though the two houses are ostensibly rivals who compete against each other at drag balls, Davis says there’s “a deep mutual respect” between them. “Back in the day, it was the LaBeijas that validated the House of Xtravaganza. [The latter] started as a predominantly Latino house and because ballroom culture was created by Black queer folks who were ostracised by their families, there was a sense of ‘we created this thing, so you guys are gonna have to work harder [to join us],'” he explains. “For a long time, the House of Xtravaganza wasn’t really accepted, but it was Pepper who said: ‘We’re gonna score these girls the right way [at the balls] because they’re coming out and turning it.'”
At drag balls, house members “walk” in highly competitive presentation categories like “butch queen” and “executive realness”. They’re a longtime font of creativity that gave the world voguing – the inspiration behind Madonna’s 1990 hit ‘Vogue’ – and queer-coded terminology we now hear in RuPaul’s Drag Race. For Rush, the line between spotlighting and exploiting the scene is relatively easy to draw. “The moment you try to translate ballroom culture for the heterosexual gaze, that’s when it loses its strength,” he says. He praises Legendary, HBO Max’s voguing reality show that ran from 2020 to 2022, for “uplifting” some members of the community, but says it failed to capture the “ferocious” atmosphere of bona fide balls. “It was like the American Idol of ballroom,” he says.
House members learn all about rejection when they walk in a ball, because each category can only have one winner. Rush says this fosters a collective sense of resilience that he channelled into ‘The Two Houses’. “I hope it shows younger members of our community that even though we’re being victimised, we’re not victims,” he says. “We have a choice to fight back. This record is saying ‘find chosen family, find people who nurture you, find people who speak your language’. And don’t look to heterosexual folks to validate you or stay in their humanity.”
‘The Two Houses’ (out now on Homo-Centric Records) is released in loving memory of: Simone Labeija (1980 – 2023), Crystal Labeija (1930-1982), Angie Xtravaganza (1964 – 1993), Carmen Xtravaganza (1961 – 2023), Hector Xtravaganza (1965 – 2018), Lorena Xtravaganza (1986 – 2012), Pepper Labeija (1948 – 2003), Venus Xtravaganza (1965 – 1988), Layleen Xtravaganza (1992 – 2019), Devine Gorgeous Gucci (1977 – 2025).
You can watch the official music video here.