Like many members of the ballroom scene, Kendra Westwood had a difficult relationship with her biological parents, who she felt didn’t understand her identity as a transgender woman. When she was 12, her “grandfather” — a scene member who supports children in lieu of biological family — took her to a ball in Washington to show her “how fierce the scene could be,” she told me, even if you just watch. The ballroom scene originated in the 1920s and grew to prominence in New York’s black and Latino L.G.B.T. communities as a direct response to the homophobia, transphobia and racism its participants suffered in their daily lives. At 18, Westwood decided to cut ties with her biological parents and move from Washington to New York.

Video by Sasha Arutyunova

Around the time she moved to the city, Westwood went to a ball at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, an H.I.V./AIDS prevention, care and advocacy organization. In ballroom, members belong to familial cliques, or “houses,” and compete, or “walk,” at evening-length balls before peer judges. Westwood barely knew anyone, but she decided to get up and vogue anyway. Vogueing is a style of dance that emerged from ballroom. It involves fierce arm and hand poses reminiscent of runway models or fashion photography, combined with breakdance-esque moves like “dipping,” in which the performer falls theatrically backward with one foot pointed to the sky. While walking a ball, voguers move in an improvised duet with the ball’s commentator, a master of ceremonies who delivers a propulsive, singsongy freestyle along with the D.J.’s beat. Westwood “cooked” her opponent in a battle that night, and her performance caused a stir. “Everyone was asking me after the ball,” she says: “ ‘Where you from? Who are you?’ ”

That night, Westwood also met a beautiful transgender woman named Sharae Kavoskii, the founder of House of Mattel, a newish house in the “kiki” scene. Kiki is a vibrant, youth-oriented subculture that began in 2002, when Aisha Diori, who was then the mother of the House of Latex, teamed up with H.I.V.-prevention organizations to fund low-stakes miniballs for kids; it has since evolved into an independent community, with its own balls and houses.

The New York Issue What It Takes To Light Up the Stage

Soon after, Westwood joined House of Mattel. She also met a voguer named Boogie, who became her “father.” “Something about him was just — ever since then, I was his baby girl,” Westwood told me. In Boogie’s living room in the Bronx, he and Westwood would “pump the beat, and we’d be vogueing for hours.” In order to compete successfully in New York’s kiki scene, voguers rehearse at formalized practices once or twice a week, but Westwood put in extra time with Boogie so she could advance more quickly. Boogie taught Westwood to focus on the finer points of vogue performance, which include using her hands to echo a commentator’s freestyle with matching gestures. He also taught her to do vogue femme — an upright, elongated style of vogue that is the mainstay of vogueing by transgender women — instead of the more compact, boyish vogue she’d been doing until then. “He’s like: ‘Put your hands up here — dainty. Pick your back up!’ ”

In ballroom, womanhood is at once a lived reality and a quality of performance, channeled through attitude and specific choreography. Vogue femme can be performed in the “soft” style, which is flowy and sensuous, or in-your-face “dramatics.” The former is languid and catlike — in the charged environment of a ball, it can look almost casual. Voguers dip to the ground as if melting, stroking their skin to emphasize feminine softness. In dramatics, performers stalk the stage, whipping their hair and kicking their feet up to give each dip velocity.

Westwood, top right, standing behind her mentor, Boogie, with other ball attendees.

Even though kiki-scene balls are often sponsored by community-based organizations, participants still must scrape together funds for costumes or travel fees for out-of-state balls. For many low-income members of the ballroom scene, these are serious expenses. Westwood works at a social-services organization; in order to save money, she sometimes shops at Halloween stores for her costumes, or “effects,” rather than commission new looks from scratch. She regularly travels over an hour to get to her house practices or, every couple of weeks, to walk in balls, which take place at music venues and community centers in the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Hundreds of young people gather, some commuting from New Jersey or Philadelphia, to compete in balls that start in the early evening and last for hours. While outreach workers sit at tables on the perimeter, offering S.T.I. testing and other services, young people take turns on a central runway lined with spectators, eyes fixed on the judges’ panel in the front. Each participant wears an outfit to fit the evening’s theme, some in jeans, others in elaborate, clingy costumes. A D.J. spins while the commentator riles up the crowd, announcing each new performer with: “Let’s. Go.”

When she first started vogueing, Westwood lived and competed as a boy. But about a year ago, she began a gender transition, unveiling herself at a ball in hazel contacts and ultrafeminine clothes. She now walks in categories reserved for transgender women. She eventually toned down her look, but the newfound comfort in her body was immediate, and her experience of herself as a performer transformed. As a boy walking a ball, Westwood says, she often worried spectators would think she was “too much.” As a girl, those thoughts disappeared. “I could do whatever I want now.”

Several months ago, Westwood, now 21, and one of her best friends, Christopher Jones, whose ballroom name is Charming, decided to “swerve off” from the House of Mattel and start their own kiki house called House of Playboy. Starting a house is like “starting your own brand,” Westwood told me, but with responsibilities akin to those of a family. Although not all members are her official “children,” she mentors everyone in her house, treating them all like her “babies,” she said. For a coming kiki ball in Philadelphia with a “The Purge” movie theme, the whole house planned to come costumed in neon ski masks — Westwood wanted to bedazzle hers — and they’d take a Friday train all together from Penn Station.

A few days before the Philly ball, members of the House of Playboy took turns vogueing in the middle of a tiled floor in a community center in East Harlem where they practice for a few hours twice each week. A house member complaining of knee pain sat at a table and played commentator. “Surf like that,” he commanded; mid-sashay, Westwood snapped her eyes forward toward where he was sitting and improvised a smooth wave motion with one arm. Her house children seemed so focused on watching her that they forgot to cheer.

“You know how late it is when you’re on the floor vogueing and nobody’s chanting,” Charming chastised. Later, two girls watched Westwood closely as she demonstrated a runway walk, her gaze at once flirtatious and steely, black puffy coat draping off her arms. “Make it fun, make it entertaining,” she told them. She clapped as the girls demonstrated for her, singling out the shyest for praise. “Girl!” she said, pleased. “Your legs are long!”