Voguing in Tunis: Fragile Freedom and Queer Joy

Bochra Triki

While voguing was exploding onto the mainstream scene in the West, the ballroom scene emerged only a few years ago in Tunis, flying under the radar. In this small pocket of freedom threatened by the Tunisian regime’s crackdown on gay and transgender people, dancers in this culture are forging their own identities.

A small rehearsal studio in the heart of Tunis, with nothing but a large mirror and pale lighting as a backdrop. Several afternoons a month, this space – lent by an ally cultural venue – transforms into a blazing ballroom. The stage design? The bodies and shouts of an ecstatic audience, becoming one with the performers. Most are students in their twenties, and find in this fragile space the freedom to express what the outside world denies them. For a few hours, the threat of a three-year prison sentence and the mandatory anal exam imposed on gay people fades away, giving way to queer joy and self-expression. It is in these fragile spaces and moments that the Tunisian ballroom scene can emerge.

Born in the 1970s in New York City, in the African-American and Latinx LGBTQIA+ communities that were marginalized both by the white majority and non-inclusive gay spaces, ballroom was first an answer to this exclusion and a form of survival. Now this codified culture, where performers compete during festive balls in various categories – among which vogue fem, where voguing dance originated from – has entered mainstream culture. 

Ramla, Kennie, and Yanni are among the pioneers of the Tunisian ballroom scene, and they proudly call themselves “house of Alaïa” as an homage to Tunisian fashion designer Azzedine Alaïa, whose creations had international appeal. Each of them discovered voguing culture in their own way: Ramla was introduced to it by a high school theater teacher, while Kennie and Yanni saw their first ball in the American TV series Pose (2021), which chronicles the rise of the community in New York in the 1980s. “I was drawn to the power of the movements and the trans euphoria,” says Kennie. “At the time, I was living with my parents in a very conservative small town, and I had no queer role models.” 

The three students met in Tunis in 2021, and discovered they shared a passion for ballroom. They reached out to Mawjoudin, one of the few LGBTQIA+ rights organizations in Tunisia, which provided them with a tiny room at their headquarters. “There were about ten of us who had to practice one after another, in small groups,” recalls Yanni. “Thanks to word of mouth, more and more people – mostly trans women and gay men – have wanted to join us. The organization was able to secure a more suitable rehearsal space for us, which attracted even more people.”

Rehearsals are open to friends, and friends of friends. This impromptu audience can witness the early days of a scene that’s growing at lightning speed. In just two years, four more houses have been created, and large parties – which can draw up to four hundred people – are now organized, always with the utmost discretion. Establishing a safety protocol became essential: “The Instagram accounts of the houses [editor’s note: a house refers to a chosen artistic family] are private, and we make sure we are very discreet. We ask the audience to fill out a form to prevent unwanted people from getting in, and we make sure no photos circulate,” explains Ramla.

This Tunisian scene was built with a complex relationship to the global history of ballrooms: it is neither a mere copy, nor is it completely different. The appropriation of a Western, racialized movement echoes a more profound erasure here: that of Tunisia’s queer artistic culture. The official history has completely erased all queer presence, and any attempt toward visibility by independent collectives or scholars remains very timid. 

Yet this legacy does exist, as evidenced by icons such as dancer Ghzela (1946–2025), known for performing traditional dances in women’s clothing, or certain cross-dressing customs associated with wedding ceremonies. Contemporary ball culture finds its place within this gap in collective memory, a way of giving a name to what was already there. Ramla, Kennie, and Yanni, however, lament a blind spot: the very low representation of Black people in the scene, which they attribute to the discrimination faced by these individuals in Tunisia.

Despite this lack of mainstream support, the Tunisian ballroom scene has established itself as a space for dialogue, prevention, and resource-sharing. “It’s not just about dancing; it’s about creating a system of solidarity among us,” says Yanni. Kennie describes an experience similar to that of the New York scene in the 1970s. “When I arrived in Tunis, I lived with my community, and that brought me closer to the very essence of ballroom. Running from the police was part of our daily lives, and HIV was on the rise within the queer community.” Ramla adds, “There’s this family bond that’s formed between us, which changes lives. Especially for those who have cut ties with their biological families.”

But this pocket of freedom and mutual aid is increasingly threatened. Since July 25, 2021 – the date of President Kais Saied’s coup – political repression of social and human rights movements has intensified in Tunisia. Several organizations have lost their right to operate, arrests of activists have become commonplace, while sub-Saharan migrants and queer people face a wave of arrests, imprisonments, and hate speech.

According to Yanni, since 2024, organizers have had to cancel seven balls for safety reasons, because of the political climate. Though dancers can still practice every week, the number of participants is decreasing. “We’re kind of losing hope,” he says. “Some come to practice with the hope of leaving the country and going somewhere where they can join another scene, rather than hoping things could change here.”

House of Alaïa opened a brief chapter in Europe in 2025, hoping to create a space for the North African diaspora, but then they decided to shut it down. “I didn’t find the same motivation I had in Tunisia,” Kennie explains. “In Europe, the scene has been there for over twenty years, and it’s changed a lot – as it is now, it’s like a hobby or just a competition. In Tunisia, it’s an act of resistance. We have sacrificed our lives, our future, and our freedom just so we could dance.”

House of Alaïa has since decided to open a chapter in Morocco, where the ballroom scene is yet to be built. “It makes so much more sense to invest in this nascent community than to join in a European context whose realities are very different from ours,” explains Yanni. “It also allows some of our Tunis team members to go there to meet the Moroccan community.”

Yanni gets emotional when he talks about this border-crossing community bonding. When he travels to Kenya or Indonesia, he’s proud to meet many performers who keep “a solid artistic and political movement” alive. He concludes that such “movements always survive repression.” 

Bochra Triki is a Tunisian multidisciplinary artist, a queer and feminist activist, as well as a documentary director. Her work creates spaces for marginalized voices through various artistic media. She co-organized and co-founded artistic festivals and podcasts, and she also has a project for a graphic novel. As an artist, she has produced The Walls have Your Ears, an immersive sound installation on intimacy and desire, the short film We Are All Mad Here, as well as audio documentaries in connection to revolutionary and feminist archives.

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