The Truth About RPDR's Lady Camden's Ballet Career
Season 14 of "RuPaul's Drag Race" is in full swing and, in many ways, it feels like we've been watching forever. This season, more than any other, has seen fewer queens go home over the course of more episodes. Moreover, the frontrunners aren't necessarily who viewers at home are rooting for. Daya Betty isn't sitting right with some "Drag Race" fans, while Bosco's looks are raising eyebrows for all the wrong reasons. Moreover, Season 14's Snatch Game was considered among the worst in the show's history.
Suffice to say, it's been a complicated journey thus far. And yet, the closer we get to the finale, the more compelling the show becomes. Especially since, as a TV Line recap confirms, a recent episode featured a much-needed double elimination, cracking the competition wide open. The featured runway on this particular episode was also tutu-themed, which suited UK native Lady Camden perfectly since her background is in ballet. And, naturally, she killed it in one of the most stunning looks of the season thus far.
This isn't the first time a ballerina has featured on "Drag Race," since Brooke Lynn Hytes also showed off her skills during Season 11. But Camden might actually blow her out of the water, given her impressive career trajectory.
Lady Camden is a classically trained ballerina
As a cast interview with EW notes, Lady Camden studied at the Royal Ballet school and actually performed for none other than Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles before moving to Sacramento, and subsequently San Francisco, to hone her craft outside the UK. Her style is a fascinating concoction of funky pop culture references — consider her instantly iconic Freddie Mercury runway presentation (via YouTube) — and chic ballet aesthetics, marking her out as one to watch early on.
As Camden explained, she found it difficult fully expressing herself in the ballet world, where the lines between masculine and feminine are very clearly drawn. "I wasn't bulky and butch enough, so there was weird body shaming going on," she admitted. The "Drag Race" star discovered drag while recovering from various injuries when she began experimenting with makeup and clothes at home, but ballet notably still informs her looks.
Camden's impressive dance background immediately established her as a fierce competitor, with Angeria Paris VanMicheals telling Decider emphatically, "The fiercest thing about Lady Camden is her dancing. Her ballet background? Sickening."
Ballet is still a significant part of Lady Camden's life
Lady Camden didn't just dance extensively in Britain. The San Francisco Chronicle notes she performed with the area's Smuin Ballet and even worked as a choreographer for them too. Camden was concerned about making her drag character too reliant on ballet, "But then, when I started to randomly throw in ballet steps or ballet vocabulary, I got a kind of crazy reaction from it." She quickly realized acknowledging that side of herself would give her an edge over other Bay Area queens.
During the pandemic, the North London native wasn't dancing as much, so she worked with a personal trainer over Zoom to keep everything in check, per the San Francisco Gate. Thankfully, all that hard work paid off. As Camden admitted to Edge Media Network, "The competitiveness of the ballet world has definitely prepared me for 'Drag Race.'" Auditioning for the hit reality show was similar to going out for parts in ballet productions, where being uniquely yourself is imperative.
Ballet still means a lot to her of course, with Camden performing in filmmaker Luke Willis' short film collection, "I Don't Need a Reason." Willis was eager to show off what she could do, in and out of drag, in the same Katty Scott-designed tutu that stormed the runway in episode 12, per Nowness. She dances alongside Smuin's own Max van der Sterre. In fact, Camden credits the ballet world with helping her discover her drag persona.