From 25 to 27 June, Ballroom Marseille is organising a series of events celebrating Pride, including a kiki ball at the Ballet national de Marseille. While last year’s edition was dedicated to street art, this year pays tribute to the city of Marseille itself.

The ballroom community has been developing across the south of France in recent years through new forms of organisation and structuring. Although voguing practices already existed locally in various provincial contexts, the establishment of a formal ballroom scene is relatively recent. The Marseille scene has become increasingly identifiable and dynamic since 2022, through gatherings organised by different associations, alongside regular trainings, kiki balls, and community events.

“It used to be unthinkable to imagine ballroom culture outside Paris, one of the most important scenes in Europe and internationally recognised. Today, the local community is growing more and more,” the collective explains.

Initially initiated by The Baobab Project, Ballroom Marseille later emerged as an association organised through a collective governance structure. The Ballet national de Marseille supports its development while ensuring its autonomy is preserved.

“It is important that within our partnerships we are still able to self-govern. With the growing mainstreaming of our culture, it remains a challenge not to be appropriated, and to ensure that it continues to be led by minorities,” they explain.

Born in the 1970s within the African-American and Latina LGBTQ+ communities of Harlem, ballroom culture remains a political space where dance, fashion, and performance intersect. It continues to offer marginalised communities within a racist and heteronormative system the possibility of forming chosen families within different houses. By appropriating and reworking the codes of beauty pageants, it challenges white hegemony and its norms, while celebrating plural identities.

“Our scene continues to highlight inverted codes.”

For the last weekend of June, Ballroom Marseille is organising three workshops focused on emblematic ballroom categories: sex siren, old way, and vogue fem.

On 27 June, a kiki ball titled “Welcome to Marseille” will also take place in the large studio of the Ballet national de Marseille.

“We imagined around twenty categories for this kiki ball, each one a nod to Marseille: the colours of the metro, the David statue on the Prado (for the body category), voguing over JUL beats.”

Kiki Ball Welcome to Marseille, Ballroom Marseille
At the Ballet national de Marseille
27 June 2026