Legendary on HBO Max: Drag balls meet Drag Race in high-octane showdown

in the Legendary, HBO Max’s dazzling new competition show on modern drag ball culture, eight “houses” walked the catwalk to spin and pave their way to $ 100,000, and the honor of being the worst in the ballroom will.

In the ballroom community, which emerged as an LGBTQ subculture in New York in the 1920s, houses are your family and creative employees. As shown in the film Paris is on fire and the TV drama poseHouses compete for trophies, money and fame in the areas of dance, performance, lip synchronization and fashion.

“You know how you have rival street gangs? We have rival houses,” explains mother Eyricka, the “house parents” of House of Lanvin, one of the collectives vying for the legendary crown. “But instead of fighting it, we bring it down and the best house wins.”

The big budget show is a lively blowout of sequins, feathers, latex and top-level fashion, the highly stylized dance form that mimics poses hit by models on the catwalk. But like the long-standing reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, with which it can undoubtedly be compared, Legendary is essentially a celebration of the redeeming power of community and self-acceptance. (“If you can’t love yourself,” RuPaul says on his hit show, “how the hell are you going to love someone else?”)

Each legendary episode documents a ball with a theme and related challenges. For example, as part of the “Mirror Mirror” challenge in the fairytale ball, the participants try to concentrate on their fabulously invented faces.

Prominent judges are hip-hop stars Megan Thee stallion, worldwide fashion star Leiomy Maldonado, stylist Law Roach and actor and model Jameela Jamil. A Controversy surrounded the show Earlier this year, when an HBO press release named Jamil MC of the show and critics accused her of not playing the part because she is unrelated to the ballroom scene.

Dashaun Wesley, dance teacher and mainstay of the ball world for years, now has MC duties, but Jamil is a likeable judge who is clearly impressed and full of energy when the participants strut across the stage.

With eight five-person houses (that’s 40 participants!) Starting the competition, the first two episodes that HBO Max provided for review present so many players that it’s difficult to keep track of them. And individual background stories that come from an empty industrial room before the camera cuts to actors on the dimly lit dance floor are superficial and lack the depth that leads you to find someone you meet on TV.

Hopefully, as the show progresses and houses are eliminated, viewers will have a greater chance of investing in the remaining participants. This is always the case when RuPaul wins his cast.

The variety of the performers is immediately apparent.

Like many others, Mother Eyricka is a colored transgender woman. She came out at 15 and knew that she wanted to be a woman from the moment a friend took her to New York’s Greenwich Village and told her that all of these tall, beautiful girls she saw were born men .

“From there I was just me. I was Eyricka,” she says.

Not all Legendary performers have gone so smoothly to assume their true identity.

Xa’Pariss, the self-proclaimed “baddest bitch” of House Ebony, remembers sleeping in parks after being kicked out of the house because she was gay.

“But the ballroom really only gave me one family,” says Xa’Pariss. “It really taught me how to feel good about who I am.”

Another member of Lanvin’s house, Carlos grew up alongside the Bronx projects and had suicidal thoughts after experiencing endless bullying as a child. “It was extremely hard,” Carlos recalls, “but the only thing that has always kept me out of this situation? My gift of dancing and expressing these feelings through movement made me forget everything I went through.”

Aside from the painful memories, Legendary joyfully highlights the real and supportive relationships between house members and indulges in the shady houses tossing the houses to their challengers.

With some serious charisma, uniqueness, nerves and talent shown here, there will definitely be some breakout stars. Even legendary.