Movie About Drag Balls Is Light On Its Feet

XXX 1/2 "Paris Is Burning," with Willie Ninja, Dorian Corey, Venus Xtravaganza. Directed by Jennie Livingstone. Broadway Market. No rating. Includes nudity, strong language. --------------------------------------------------------------- Two parts fashion extravaganza and one part sociological study, "Paris Is Burning" is a lively, big-hearted documentary with a perturbing underside.

Jennie Livingstone's subject is New York's Harlem-based subculture of drag balls, attended mostly by gay Hispanics and blacks. Using a talking-heads format, Livingstone lets her interviewees speak for and disagree among themselves. Clearly, she won their trust. There's a candid, sympathetic humor between filmmaker and interviewees as they guide her by the hand, explaining the elaborate structure and arcane lingo of the balls.

You won't find their definitions of "house" (an organization of ball-attendees that often serves as a surrogate family) or "mopping" (stealing, especially of dress items for a ball) in Random House II. And you won't find this wrong-end-of-the-telescope view of American pop culture anywhere.

For the balls aren't just about gender-bending. They're about duplicating, in the flesh, images derived from a media-saturated, corporate America. "Realness" is the goal, and "Executive Realness," "Town and Country" and "High Fashion Evening Wear" are just a few of the categories.

With some ball-walkers, there's a wicked sense of irony at

work. With others, their fashion efforts feel more like plaintive homage.

Venus Xtravaganza, a tiny transvestite/hustler who hit the streets when he was 15, ardently longs to be "a spoiled rich white girl" and models his look on a character from "Dynasty." His wish-list is modest, but dispiritingly difficult to attain: "I want a car, a man I love, a nice home away from New York. . . ."

Model Octavia St. Laurent, a pre-op transsexual (I think), is more ambitious. She longs for her name to be a "household product . . . I want to be somebody. I mean, I am somebody. But I want to be a rich somebody." International model Paulina Porizkova is her idol.

Octavia and other ball participants, dressed in designer labels, military uniforms and three-piece corporate drag, offer an odd spectacle - meticulous re-creations of mainstream looks without a hint of parody.

That makes Willi Ninja all the more refreshing. Now a rising dancer/choreographer, he's his own creature, inventing something rather than mimicking it, and he and his competitors are a treat to watch. Livingstone caught them in the early stages of the "voguing" craze, at events like the "Paris Is Burning" ball which gives the film its title. The dance combines fashion-model poses, gymnastics and pantomime, and the film - shot in 1987 with follow-up footage from 1989 - traces voguing's progression from street phenomenon to international pastime. (Madonna clearly came in late on the game with her 1990 hit, "Vogue.")

Putting it all in perspective are two worldly-wise drag queens, Pepper Labeija and Dorian Corey.

Pepper has headed the House of Labeija for 20 years. He obviously cares for his "children," as he calls them, and is amusingly puzzled why any of them would want a sex change.

Dorian Corey almost steals the show as he blames designer labels for ruining the drag scene, grumbling: "It's not about what you can create, it's about what you can acquire." He acknowledges that many of the ball-walkers relish their "small fame," but sees no harm in that: "It's like a physical high. But it's a good high. . . . If everybody went to balls and did less drugs, it'd be a fun world, wouldn't it?"

The somber side of the film takes into account the street violence and the threat of AIDS faced by many of its participants. The closing reel indicates who the victims are, and you feel for them.

"Paris Is Burning" may seem merely exotic to some outsiders, but this disturbing funhouse mirror-reflection of the American mainstream offers more than cult entertainment.

(Note: The 16mm print that showed at the Seattle International Film Festival looked good but had shrill, headache-inducing sound. The Broadway Market is showing a new 35mm print that should sound better.)