HBO Max’s ‘Legendary’ Trailer Shows Off An Epic Ballroom Showdown

The underground ballroom community is ready to showcase the drama, glamour and talent their hard-working crews bring to the stage in a new HBO Max series. Today’s trailer for Legendary brings the world of Pose to life, introducing a reality competition series where house teams compete to see who can win the big prize of $100,000 and secure legendary status.

Legendary features eight houses and nine balls for the competitors to show off their skills. “Pulling directly from the underground ballroom community, voguing teams (aka ‘houses’) must compete in unbelievable balls and showcase sickening fashion in order to achieve ‘legendary’ status,” the show’s official description reads. To help decide who’s worthy of that status, the show brings in celebrity judges. Law Roach, Jameela Jamil, Leiomy Maldonado, and Megan Thee Stallion sit on the Legendary judges panel. Dashaun Wesley is the show’s MC and and DJ MikeQ serves as DJ.

Each of the houses competing in Legendary has five members and one leader, who is described as the house “parent,” according to HBO. The show uses a round-robin setup to rotate the teams and features a new theme for each different ball. Today’s trailer gives a sneak peek at the glamorous costumes and impressive dance moves from each of the houses, but it also touches on the importance of ballroom in the lives of competitors. “Ballroom taught me how to be me,” one performer explains.

Voguing, the style of dance featured in Legendary, originated in Harlem and was created by black and Latino LGBT communities, according to The National Museum of African American History & Culture. Between the ’60s and the ’80s, drag competitions in New York eventually evolved from balls into vogue battles like the ones in Legendary, where houses compete for prizes and reputation. Because of the history of the voguing community, the announcement of Jamil — who had not then publicly identified as a member of the LGBT community — as a judge was met with backlash. She came out as queer shortly after the reaction to her casting announcement, but was criticized for her timing.

Legendary comes to HBO Max when the streaming service launches on May 27. Watch the full trailer in the video above.