At the Second Smirnoff: A Celebration of Ballroom, the Category Is Next Generation

Dashaun Wesley is doing his best to gentle-parent an excited crowd. “I don’t need to see all y’all’s phones,” he says while sauntering down a rainbow-streaked runway. “I need to hear you clap, bitches, clap!”

The audience made sure to keep his instructions in mind on Tuesday (June 16), as Smirnoff celebrated the LGBTQIA+ community for the second Smirnoff: A Celebration of Ballroom event. Tucked away in a colorfully decorated warehouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn, the event featured Smirnoff cocktails, a photo booth, a glam station and moments to connect — but the highlight of the evening was the ball itself.

It’s an important event to Wesley, who’s served as a cultural icon for the ballroom community thanks to his decades of performance in the scene and his work as the host of the HBO competition series Legendary. “I'm always looking forward to making sure that my ballroom family and friends have an opportunity to be celebrated in any way, shape or form,” he tells Paper. “I'm just really happy that we're able to have this space that we're being celebrated in, and that Smirnoff was able to come together with me for year number two.”

In bringing back this event for a second year, Wesley was more than happy to help work with Smirnoff again, thanks in no small part to the company’s longstanding history of support for the LGBTQIA+ community. Helping curate the event — including everything from selecting the music that was played to the names of the cocktails, like “No Sadé” and “Pretty Girl Snack” — Wesley also wanted to make sure that he was keeping things fresh. Where the inaugural evening in 2025 saw a series of performers go head-to-head in a vogue competition, this year Wesley decided to focus the competition on the category: runway. Contestants from houses like Gorgeous Gucci, Basquiat and Balenciaga strutted and mugged down the runway in extravagant outfits, all while a panel of legendary judges — including JoeJo St. Laurent, Gillette Oricci, Diva Davanna and Jack Mizrahi — offered their critiques. Starting with an LSS category - Legends, Stars and Statements - Dashaun emceed an open-to-all category, inviting members of the audience to partake, before diving into the runway category to crown Smirnoff’s winner of the ball, all representative of the next generation of the scene.

But one notable guest judge on the panel was Grammy-winning R&B star Durand Bernarr. Along with helping determine who won each runway battle throughout the evening, the singer also delivered a high-energy set of songs to cap off the night, slipping in and out of new tracks, fan favorites, and a few covers.

“[Ballroom] inspired my language, it's inspired how I show up every day, it's been a huge part of my artistic development,” Bernarr says. “You get to create this world of community, and it really is just inspiring to just kind of see the legacy of it, and how everything kind of started, and where it's gone and where it's going."

While one performer — Drake Garçon of the legendary House of Comme de Garçon — walked away with the evening’s grand prize, Wesley is quick to point out that everyone in attendance won by getting to be a part of the culture on Tuesday night. With ballroom’s continued cultural relevance, especially thanks to recent projects like Broadway’s Cats: The Jellice Ball, Wesley says that the community he’s been working in for decades is finally getting their flowers.

“Folks weren't able to really see ballroom before because we were underground. We don't say 'underground' anymore,” he says. “I mean, I just went to a ball in Denver, Colorado — 10 years ago, that wouldn't have happened. There’s so much more access now, and ballroom just continues to grow in so many different spaces.”

Bernarr agrees, pointing out that the elevation of ballroom to more mainstream audiences does nothing to erase the vital legacy the community of performers has built. “The fact that Smirnoff has something each year where it can just be a huge celebration of the culture is really amazing, because I want people to know about the history. It is amazing, it is pure Black culture, and it’s another example of how we're always going to be at the epicenter of something that's really dope,” he says. “All of this has brought so many of the mannerisms and the color and the characteristics of ballroom to the forefront. Now, I'm just hoping that we keep the integrity of it, and we teach people properly of where we're going.”

It’s a theme that carried through the night; as they closed out the event together, Wesley and Bernarr invited Omari Wiles Oricci onstage to congratulate them on winning best choreography at the 2026 Tony Awards. As the three of them shared a hug, and toasted with a ‘Pretty Girl Snack’ cocktail, Wesley let the crowd know exactly what they were looking at. “I love it when we get the things we’ve worked so hard to get,” he proclaimed. “We’re here celebrating excellence, because you never know what kind of shape and form we come in.”

From the ballroom floor to beyond, Smirnoff is proud to celebrate the creativity, individuality and cultural impact of the LGBTQIA+ community.

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This article is a partnership between PAPER and Smirnoff

Photography by Luis Nieto Dickens