Twiggy Pucci Boy, choreographer "Pose": NPR

The FX show pose is back for a second season. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the culture of bullets was in the spotlight. Balls are spaces where trans women and gay men walk on the podium, dance and, yes, pose, compete for trophies and the right to boast.

The series seems authentic because designer Ryan Murphy has filled his cast and his team of people growing up in this world. Twiggy Pucci Boy is one of those people. She grew up in Virginia and participated in her first prom in the early 2000s. She began as a consultant for the ball of the series and is now the runway choreographer.

Boy says that ball culture started in Harlem in the twenties. "Blacks and maroons, homosexuals and transsexuals ended up in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, and in the resistance to homophobia and transphobia of the black church, they needed to create a safe space, no – a space where they could be, exist, celebrate themselves It's like being in groups of people who unite to create their own houses Balls are the competitions in which the houses compete. It is therefore a matter of events where houses meet in one space and compete in various categories, such as executive reality or flax versus silk.

"When you are in the margins and under oppression, and you still face difficulties, you will learn how to get out of the stalemate, and you will be really creative."

Highlights of the interview

Give national attention to the dance scene without making it a tourist attraction

I think the richness of character development and storyplay speak for themselves. I think the fact that most people, when you watch an episode of poseyou're probably going to cry because of the richness of his emotion, his reality and his fidelity to the experiences of these people. And so I think we do not lose that authenticity because the writers' room is full of people who live this life – brown and black people, weird people, trans people, who write the story.

If elements of history have been taken from his own life

Unintentional. But there are some pieces of people experiences that come to mind. In the series, he is described as a house mother, but in the ballroom scene, you can have gay parents, quotation marks, which do not necessarily have to be in the same house. And so, the way Blanca pushes her kids is exactly the one that my first gay father pushed me – you know, that's the person who pushed me to go to school in New York and, you know, it's fragments of a lot of stories.

About what it is that to enter a ballroom with all the feature of a TV show around her

It's surreal. I grew up as the wider community said, wider than the ballroom scene – in fact, the ballroom scene was very dark on my arrival. People despise blacks and blacks, number one, because racism is real in America. And the people who despise those who have low incomes and struggle – it is the country in which we live, it is the state of the world in which we live. those girls. Ballrooms are people who do not have education. Just all those stereotypes that were not really right at the beginning. And I remember this one, I was always told, you can not put the ballroom on your resume. That's what people said. Well! Lookie Lookie.

On what late legends of the ballroom scene would say if they saw pose

About time.

Mallory Yu and Emily Kopp have produced this story for the radio and Petra Mayer has adapted it for the Web.