“When I saw all the people attending and performing, it hit me: it was not a dance – it was a place where people could be themselves,” recalls Kiddy Smile. “When I joined House of Mizrahi, it made me think, it allowed me to question things about myself. It helped me become more ‘woke’ about my situation as a gay black man of African origin in France.”

At House of Mizrahi, Kiddy Smile proved he could walk the walk – training intensively to compete in his debut ball, under the Runway category. “If ballroom is a place where you get to live your fantasy, this was what I was going to do,” he says. “I do not look like a model; I’m a plus-size man. It’s all about representation; people saw me do it, and I was winning.” As an independent artist, he’s earned praise as “l’enfant terrible du voguing”, and he draws from personal experience across his excellent debut album One Trick Pony, out on 31 August, setting spiky statements to sinewy electronic rhythms. The video for Teardrops In The Box (from 2016) represents cross-cultural conflicts (with a tender conclusion), while Let A B!tch Know takes flamboyant voguing ceremony to the working-class Paris estate where he grew up.

“This was about starting a conversation,” explains Kiddy Smile. “I’m not saying that the projects are homophobic, I’m saying that they’re reflective of society. In the projects, you cannot be ‘weak’.” He adds: “In London, there’s a growing ballroom culture, and in Amsterdam, Berlin, Madrid… Paris is definitely one of the most vibrant areas – mostly because it started at the heart of the community, as a place where LGBT people of colour could unite. There is one advantage that Europe has: we have our backgrounds, and we have our roots. Places that have had colonies are going to have a ballroom scene.”