A kind of fugitive, semi-public space that makes up for the failures of the public sphere, the club or ballroom has traditionally fostered alternate kinship and support. “The club saved lives” – Michael Roberson Garçon.

One of the originators of the “new sound” in ballroom music, Vjuan Allure revitalized ballroom by crafting and remixing bass-heavy house tracks specifically for it, giving dancers new beats that emphasised the dramatic: something to drop to beyond the likes of Masters At Work’s The Ha Dance.

DJ Sprinkles is Terre Theamlitz’s deep house persona, forever influenced by Manhattan’s 1980s club scene. He insists that club music grew out of struggle, which makes it inherently political: “the house nation likes to pretend clubs are an oasis from suffering…but suffering is in here, with us.” Dealing with sadness, pain, the threat of sudden violence and the fleeting promise of escape in a club, house, at once euphoric and subdued, proves that it can be deep; not just in terms of its sound, but politically and intellectually so. Their set was not documented.

boychild – # untitled lipsync 1 boychild’s lip-sync drag performances re-appropriate fashion, Butoh or mainstream hetero-pop, not to sing it but to change its meaning completely. As a startling re-imagining of performance and pop-culture, they locate the body as a site for the negotiation of sexuality and blackness, in all its messiness, mobility and excess. This was the first of three performances at the Episode.

The Legendary Pony Zion Garçon A member of the House of Garçon, Pony is a legend in the Ballroom Scene in the category Butch Queen Vogue Femme. He is also the founder of Vogue Evolution, a vogue dance group focused on social justice concerns. Pony “walks” his category with a style that fuses flamboyance and athleticism, rapidly shifting between fluid sashaying, catwalking and duck-walking and dramatic lunges, dives and other “suicide” dips. His emphasis is on investigating the tones and vocabulary of vogue by transforming gestures and improvising combinations in both a conscious self-analysis and manipulation of tradition through erotic rupture, collision and augmentation.