The real history behind 'Cats: The Jellicle Ball' on Broadway

The award-winning revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical combines the show's history as a dance extravaganza with movement styles from the queer ballroom scene.

Summary

• Cats: The Jellicle Ball reimagines Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats in the world of LGBTQ+ vogue balls
• Balls involve contestants competing in dance and fashion categories and originated in the 1960s as a means of self-expression for LGBTQ+ people of color
• Cats: The Jellicle Ball features both theatre performers and icons from the real and still-thriving ballroom scene
• This history combines with the existing legacy of Cats as a groundbreaking dance show and forerunner of the British megamusical movement in the late 20th century

Cats has always been stuffed with history. Upon its London premiere in 1981, Gillian Lynne's original choreography made Cats a groundbreaking dance musical, and the original NYC production became the fifth-longest-running Broadway show of all time. Now, after more than four decades, the reimagined revival Cats: The Jellicle Ball has given Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical a fresh coat of fur.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball brilliantly expands and recontextualizes the show's history, particularly through the choreography by Arturo Lyons and Omari Wiles. Directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, this production is set in the world of vogue balls, which originated among LGBTQ+ people of color as safe spaces for competition, community, and self-expression through dance and fashion.

The original Cats set its action at a “Jellicle Ball,” in which one cat is chosen to ascend to a new life. Cats: The Jellicle Ball explicitly frames this event as a community gathering and shows how dance is a form of both self-expression and survival. The cats in this revival aren't literal cats, but a small society of people there to both compete for a fresh start and protect each other's lives as they are.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball premiered off Broadway at the Pereleman Performing Arts Center in 2024, extended twice, and scratched open Cats in a way the show yowled for. As the production gets ready to transfer to Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre in March 2026, learn about the history of the original Cats and of the ballroom scene, which come together in Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

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T. S. Eliot and Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats

The history of Cats begins with poet T. S. Eliot, who had a longtime fascination with the animals. In a letter about his godson’s cat Jellylorum, he came up with the first lines of what would become the 1939 book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

The collection features poems about cats with unique names like like Rum Tum Tugger, Mr. Mistoffelees, and Old Deuteronomy. Practical Cats was dismissed upon publication, but these characters and more are now widely recognizable thanks to the Cats musical.

The “Old Possum” of the title refers to Eliot himself, who got the nickname from his peer and editor Ezra Pound. Eliot and Pound derived a lot of the wordplay in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats from Black vernacular, so it is meaningful that Cats: The Jellicle Ball largely showcases queer and transgender artists of color. As creatives and performers, they are reclaiming the show’s language on their own terms.

The British Invasion and the megamusical

Cats landed in the United States until 1982, a year after its premiere in London's West End. As Margaret Thatcher steered the U.K. towards conservatism, its musical theatre exports, in contrast, championed spectacle and bombast.

Elaborate stagecraft and melodramatic plots and songs characterized this era of theatre history. While previous Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita had traces of these elements, Cats truly launched the megamusical movement.

Staged on a giant trash heap and containing wildly dramatic music, Cats paved the way for other British hits like Les Misérables and Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard. All went on to Broadway success, and they influenced large-scale American shows like The Lion King and Wicked.

The history of the NYC ballroom scene

A crucial scene in Frank Simon’s 1968 documentary The Queen sees pageant queen Rachel Harlow (sleek and blond) winning the Miss All-America Camp Beauty Contest over entrants like Crystal LaBeija, a Black trans woman, who got fourth place and memorably exited the competition. It’s from this controversial moment that modern ballroom and vogueing would spring.

Born out of Harlem, vogue balls let queer and trans people of color find a home free of the restraints — and discrimination — found at more traditional drag balls. Attendees compete for prizes and notoriety in fashion, performance, and dance battles, often on behalf of their house: a group of chosen family members who adopt a common name.

The "Old Way" of movement at balls (sharp lines and angles, reminiscent of Vogue cover shoots) took form in the 1960s, and the late 1980s ushered in the “New Way,” which combined more elaborate and athletic movements (like the duckwalk and spinning) with the Old Way’s precision. The mid-1990s then gave way to Vogue Fem, which blends both Ways with feminine performance, foregrounding existing voguing moves like the catwalk, dips, and floor work.

In these emerging ballroom and voguing scenes, which migrated from Harlem down to the West Village, these moves communicated resilience, aspiration, and power. They played with expectations of gender, glamour, race, and class — each person could inhabit a character truer to themselves than society's perception of them. The vogue world cultivated its own language (you may be familiar with “shade” and “tea”), both spoken and embodied.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball explicitly places these eras, styles, and traditions of vogueing and dancing in conversation with one another. Many of Webber's songs are framed as performances in popular ballroom-competition categories, like “realness,” “body,” and “labels.”

The ballroom scene today

Ballroom continues to thrive, becoming a distinct dance language that has spread around the world. As it continues to evolve, vogue is blending with other styles, including traditional national dances like Ukraine’s hopak and Japan’s odori.

Since the release of Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, about the Black and Latino ball scene, voguing has also found its way into mainstream culture thanks to shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, Pose, and Legendary. Continuing this lineage, Cats: The Jellicle Ball combines Eliot’s poetic melancholy, Webber’s pulsating score, and voguing’s masterful defiance into a show that feels like it should have existed in this form the whole time.

Ballroom performers in Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Cats: The Jellicle Ball showcases not only Broadway veterans, but performers from NYC's ball scene. Here are a few of the modern ballroom stars behind the whiskers.

Junior LaBeija

Living legend Junior LaBeija, of the House of LaBeija, gives Jellicle Ball the electric feeling of queer history past, present, and future converging. LaBeija is one of the most prominent subjects of Paris is Burning, coining memorable phrases like “it do take nerve,” “we’re not gonna be shady, just fierce,” and, legendarily, “O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E.”

Born in 1957 as James Goode Jr., the Harlem native joined the House of LaBeija as a teenager and soon climbed the ranks to become the ballroom world’s best emcee.

His direct line to ball culture's origins makes his Jellicle Ball appearance as Gus the Theatre Cat feel extraordinary. During his self-titled song looking back on his career, Gus memorably purrs: “But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell, that moment of mystery when I made history.”

"Tempress" Chasity Moore

The Femme Queen Face legend herself reprises her Obie Award-winning Off-Broadway performance as Grizabella in Cats: The Jellicle Ball. "Tempress" Chasity Moore has served as house mother of ballroom's House of Chanley and House of Allure, and been part of the House of Miyake-Muglar.

Moore founded the House of Maison Margiela in 2018, helping pave a new path for ballroom. In pop culture, she's known for her cameo appearance on Pose, her appearance in Tyler Perry’s I Know I’ve Been Changed, and for competing on Star Search.

More ballroom performers in Cats: The Jellicle Ball

• Baby Byrne: The Queens native makes her Broadway debut with Cats: The Jellicle Ball as Victoria. She has been a member of the House of Donyale Luna, House of Juicy Couture, and House of NiNa Oricci.
• Sydney Harcourt: Harcourt is known for his Broadway performances in The Lion King, American Idiot, and the original Broadway cast of Hamilton, but he is also a member of the House of NiNa Oricci.
• Arturo Lyons: Both choreographers of Cats: The Jellicle Ball were legendary long before Broadway came calling. Lyons, aka Father Icon of the House of Miyake-Mugler, choreographed the first season of HBO’s Legendary and took home the prize for his house in season 2.
• Omari Wiles: Raised in the West African dance tradition, Senegal-born Wiles has choreographed for megastars like Beyonce and Madonna, and he is also the founder of the House of NiNa Oricci.

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Photo credit: Cats: The Jellicle Ball off Broadway. (Photos by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)