Have you ever thought of strutting down a runway and showing off your best looks? Garland Gravely, aka Father G Expression, thinks you have what it takes. “Somebody may be encouraged,” he says, “to say, ‘hey, I have a nice body. Let me get out there and do it.”
Even if you aren’t too sure about “walking a category,” there will still be much to see and learn at the House of Expression’s Star City OTA (Open to All) Ball on Friday, May 30th at Cirqulation Studios.
The OTA Ball will be the culminating program of the Creative’s Social Hour, a monthly pop-up event that for several years has provided a platform for local performing artists. The Creative’s Social Hour is co-organized by Cirqulation, an aerial and circus arts studio downtown, and Mental Health in Motion, a local non-profit that uses contemporary dance to promote mental health advocacy, education and awareness.
Gravely, who founded the House of Expression in 2019, explains that the house brought a show-and-tell presentation on ballroom culture to the Creative’s Social Hour last year, but this year the goal is to go a step further, to “actually having a ball, for the community, for people here to actually experience it.”
Ballroom culture emerged from the social worlds of Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ people in New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. Ballroom communities are organized around a “house” system in which Black and Brown queer and transgender people build chosen families together, while also performing in competition in balls as a house.
The House of Expression, Gravely notes, is committed to “bringing Black LGBTQ+ people together and being active and engaged and involved in the [Roanoke area] community,” including through their annual community give-back dinners and through partnership with statewide LGBTQ+ organizations fighting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
You can learn more about the House of Expression, and a see a live ball — or even maybe walk in one — at the Star City OTA Ball on May 30.
Event Details:
- Date: Friday, May 30, 2025
- Location: Cirqulation Studios, 110 Campbell Avenue
- Doors Open: 7:30pm
- OTA Ball Begins: 8:30pm
For more information, visit their Facebook page.
