Legendary

 I finished watching the second season of the show Legendary on HBOMax. A reality competition show that pits ballroom houses against each other for a trophy and $100,000, it draws on the legacy of the documentary Paris Is Burning and the series Pose as mass media productions that draw on a culture that started as an underground phenomenon.  The show will end with its third season, and has been noteworthy for casting transgender actors in several roles. I love the voguing and runway performances in Legendary, and the opportunity to get a glimpse of the passions of the house members. The costumes, which are created around the themes for each episodes balls, can be really creative, and the design and make-up crews don't always get the credit they deserve. Each house is represented by five members, with a house mother or father, and four children. The houses themselves are much larger.  I'm less enthusiastic about the judging which can be erratic.The MC is Dashaun Wesley who is himself a voguer, and judge Leiomy Maldonado is someone I had watched perform on YouTube videos of her battles. Both of them were part of a voguing crew called "Vogue Evolution" that participated in America's Best Dance Crew.  While many are happy to see voguing and ballroom culture reach a wider audience, some have been critical of the way a reality competition reframes what happens in the balls, with more emphasis on dance and less on some of the other elements like runway or posing. And the participation of judges from outside the ballroom world has been criticized. Some feel that they aren't qualified to judge if they aren't themselves from the ballroom community. Others see them as participants who bring an outsider's perspective to the competition which has its own value. Each week there is a guest judge as well, and some have been better than others. Like any dance competition show on TV, including So You Think You Can Dance, or America's Best Dance Crew, what you see on TV isn't a faithful recreation of dance practices in their social or even competitive spaces, and show producers lean on tropes of personal stories to try to create fan interest in participants. But there is something about dance that can often transcend the limitations of such a format, so I end up watching the shows anyway (but I truly can't abide Dancing With the Stars because of the way it has become a rehabilitation vehicle for reprehensible characters).

Like many, I thought that season two's Haus of Tisci should not have gone home as soon as they did. When asked in an interview what she had learned during her season, Mama Jia of the House of Tisci said, "This is not ballroom. This is television."