The collaboration between HOP Festival and the Ballroom Encounters platform stems from a shared desire to provide space, visibility, and legitimacy to ballroom culture within the contemporary institutional and performing arts context, without disconnecting it from its community, political, and underground origins.
Ballroom culture is an artistic and social practice that emerged from BIPOC and LGTBIQ+ communities in the United States, particularly in New York, combining performative competition, dance, fashion, identity, and resistance. Balls are spaces for self-affirmation, the creation of chosen families (houses), and the celebration of bodies and identities historically excluded from hegemonic circuits.
Within this framework, Ballroom Encounters operates as an international platform dedicated to creating contexts for connection, transmission, and projection of ballroom culture, linking local scenes with key figures from the global scene and generating safe spaces where the community is at the center of the artistic practice.
The first major milestone of this collaboration between HOP Festival and Ballroom Encounters was The Royal Gucci Ball, held on December 7, 2025, at the Mercat de les Flors, under the leadership of Jaycee Gorgeous Gucci, an iconic figure and international reference in ballroom culture. This event marked a historic moment, becoming the first Major Ball of its kind held in Spain, recognized both for its scale and its institutional recognition and the presence of the international ballroom community.
Following this first collaboration, HOP Festival and Ballroom Encounters continue to work together to create spaces where ballroom culture is asserted as a living, political, and contemporary practice, respecting its codes, hierarchies, knowledge, and the voices that sustain it.
