“People who are not from New Orleans are trying to learn about bounce music,” says Katey Red, a 15-year-veteran of her homegrown music scene and self-confessed ‘queen of bounce.’ “People want to learn how to do the booty dances. And I give them the information. I say, look up Katey Red!” New Orleans bounce collides with New York vogue for the very first time, with Red co-hosting the dance clash as part of the two-day One Million Square Feet of Culture [1MSQFT] event. “People are realizing that voguing is not just a gay dance, everybody can do it,” says New York’s voice of the ballroom Jack Mizrahi. “We’re enjoying the synergy right now, to finally have a battle against bounce—a couple of weeks ago it was breakdancing vs. vogue. It’s become it’s own dance spectacle.” The event was curated by New Orleans Airlift, a crew founded by curator and DJ Jay Pennington aka Rusty Lazer and visual artist Delaney Martin to support the city’s artists in response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. “As a metaphor, gumbo works really well,” says Pennington, who also organized a rally to close the weekend and celebrate NOLA’s creative underground, set on the dusty grounds under the Ninth Ward Bridge. “You can’t deny that New Orleans is the kind of place that stews and grows really organically. This is just the beginning of bounce.” Captured by Court13, the filmmaking collective behind director Benh Zeitlin’s Louisiana-set fantasy Beasts of the Southern Wild, today’s film goes behind the scenes of the rehearsals for the ball at the city’s Wax Museum. Red, one of the city’s first openly gay MCs, hosted the ‘meeting of courts’ alongside fellow bounce poster queens, Big Freedia and Sissy Nobby, and vogue legend Mizrahi. “The first time I got on the mic was October 21, 1998. I would get on stage looking like Beyonce,” she says, “but then start acting like Nicki Minaj.”

Find out more about One Million Square Feet of Culture’s series of curated events here.