Queer liberation of Hong Kong's burgeoning underground drag and performance scene
Wings are unfurled. Horns glint under purple lights. Figures strut and spin down a narrow runway as music throbs and cheers echo off the walls in a studio tucked away in Kennedy Town. It is a balmy Saturday night in April, and this is no ordinary costume party. Forbidden Forest Ball is a performance and queer self-expression in Hong Kong's growing underground ballroom scene, a subculture grown from the marginalised queer and transgender communities of 1970s Harlem in New York, offering sanctuary for those who feel pushed to the fringes.
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'Ballroom gave me space to be me, fully and unapologetically,' says 28-year-old Prince Kiki Sassy Savage, of the Kiki House of Sassy Savage and the Haus of Basquiat, Hong Kong's first locally founded and one of its most active ballroom collectives. (In keeping with ballroom tradition, members adopt their house name as their stage surname when performing.) Raised in a traditional Hong Kong household,
where queerness was met with silence if not derision , Kiki never imagined such self-expression could be met with celebration. 'I didn't grow up with this kind of support, and now I want to pass it on.'
Since launching in 2020, the house has grown into a family of 11 members, united not just by craft but by kinship.
In Hong Kong, where
LGBTQ rights have progressed but prejudice persists , the ballroom scene offers an alternative reality where everyone gets a chance to shine.
Dino Mulan Oricci, of the Legendary Haus of Hua Mulan. Photo: Liang Yinzhen
'On that runway, you get your moment,' says Kiki. 'Even if it's just 45 seconds, that's your spotlight. You're powerful. You're free.'
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For the uninitiated, the idea of balls may conjure Viennese waltzes or society galas. But in the queer scene, the term is loaded with subversion, deliberately borrowing the language of the elite to reframe acts of resistance and reimagination. Ballroom, here, is a creative battleground, as well as a safe haven, where walkers compete in categories such as Runway, Realness, Face and Performance (Vogue): where beauty, gender and identity can be reimagined on their own terms.
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