What Is Cats: The Jellicle Ball? Inside Broadway’s Bold Ballroom Revival

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats was born of inspiration from a book of poetry. That book of poetry was inspired by a mentor and a love for making children smile. The cycle of inspiration spins in an endless loop, landing us in today’s world, where Cats: The Jellicle Ball is set to make its Broadway debut this spring. Heavily inspired by Webber’s original production, Cats: The Jellicle Ball is a ballroom culture-influenced take on the larger-than-life musical.

Encompassing fashion, dance and music, the origins of ball culture trace back to the mid-19th century, beginning with drag balls and evolving into house ballroom competitions. The ballroom scene as depicted in this production originated in New York City's Harlem in the 1970s within the LGBTQ+ community, especially among Black and Latinx individuals who were excluded from earlier drag balls and other queer spaces. Attendees "walk" in a variety of categories for prizes, with most participants belonging to groups known as houses—often chosen families formed as a result of being estranged from blood relations. House music (defined by a tempo of 115–130 beats per minute) serves as a soundtrack that sets the rhythm for many balls.

Cats: The Jellicle Ball was first performed in 2024 at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch and produced by Michael Harrison and Mike Bosner. Now, with the same creative team and the original cast, The Jellicle Ball begins Broadway performances on March 18 at the Broadhurst Theatre. Ahead of this exciting development for one of Broadway’s longest-running and most revered shows, here’s a run down on how it all came about.

From Bedtime to Broadway
It all started with a child’s love for reading. In 1939, famed poet T.S. Eliot published a book of light, whimsical poetry and verse titled "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.” The book consisted of short, silly poems the author used to pen in notes sent to his godchildren. In one such poem, Eliot wrote of “poor little dogs and dear little cats,” but in reciting it, his goddaughter mispronounced this line as “pollicle dogs and jellicle cats,” thus spawning the title of an unpublished poem where the term “Jellicle Cats” was coined. But the story doesn’t stop there. Another child who loved having Eliot’s book of poems recited to them at bedtime was Andrew Lloyd Webber, the playwright of Cats (among many other Broadway classics). As an adult, he was inspired to write a concert piece based on his love for Eliot’s cat-themed poems, which he debuted at the Sydmonton Festival in 1980. Eliot’s widow, Esmé Valerie Eliot, attended the concert and was so moved by it that she offered some of her late husband’s unpublished poetry to Webber to adapt into a musical. Some of these poems were placed into the musical word-for-word, like “The Naming of the Cats,” while others inspired new pieces, as with the poem “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” which served as the basis for the melody of the iconic “Memory.”

A New Kind of Jellicle Choice
Just a year later, Cats opened on the West End at the New London Theatre on May 11, 1981. The musical made its Broadway debut at the Winter Garden Theatre on October 7, 1982. It ran until September 10, 2000, making it the fifth longest-running Broadway show in history. A revival came to Broadway in the summer of 2016, but closed in December 2017, making room for a reimagining of the classic musical. Thus, Cats: The Jellicle Ball was born, premiering off-Broadway in 2024. Andrew Lloyd Webber himself is a fan of Cats: The Jellicle Ball. Not only has he said as much in interviews, but his company LW Entertainment is producing the show on Broadway.

Cattitude Meets Couture
In the original Cats as well as in subsequent productions including the feature film, the costuming and makeup of the cast, turning them into—well, cats!—is a major factor of the show. Cats: The Jellicle Ball’s costume designer Qween Jean takes the performance of feline ferocity into consideration as an attitude, not a physical appearance. The original story reaches its climax at the annual Jellicle Ball, so the ballroom adaptation is a cultural shift that makes sense. Rather than taking place in a junkyard where cats aim to prove their way into the Heaviside Layer, breaking the fourth wall to acknowledge their human audience, Cats: The Jellicle Ball goes even more meta with a cast of notably human performers who want to show their skills to be crowned in a ballroom runway competition, complete with judges and categories. The production retains Webber and Eliot's songs from the original Cats, but adds a ballroom beat.

Ballroom Is the Baseline
Mainstream audiences were introduced to the ballroom community in director Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris is Burning. One of the subjects of the documentary, Junior Labeija, participated in the film’s namesake ball and made a name for himself as a charismatic emcee. Paris Is Burning wasn’t just the general population’s introduction to Labejia—it was also Tony Award-winning actor André De Shields’. Labejia was a fan of De Shields’, and had tried to see him starring in the original Broadway production of The Wiz alongside Stephanie Mills in the 1970s. As a reimagining of a popular story, altered to reflect Black culture with Black creators at the helm and the forefront, Cats: The Jellicle Ball is a spiritual successor of The Wiz in many ways, making the role of Old Deuteronomy feel even more fated for De Shields. Both stars in their own right, the two men who’d admired one another from a distance finally had the chance to collaborate when they starred together in the off-Broadway production of Cats: The Jellicle Ball. Labejia played Gus the Theatre Cat; both actors will reprise their respective roles on Broadway.

Strike a Pose
In 2018, FX’s Pose brought the history and spectacle of ballroom culture into the mainstream once again. The three-season television show shone a spotlight on LGBTQ+ actors, using real-life inspiration to tell fictional stories about New York City's ball culture in a moving and personal way. The show starred Broadway veterans including Grammy and Tony winner Billy Porter (Kinky Boots, Cabaret) as mainstay emcee Prayerful “Pray” Tell. Three-time Tony winner Patti LuPone joined for a five-episode arc in season two as Federica Norman, a real estate magnate who rents a nail salon to main character Blanca (Michaela Jaé Rodriguez) but shortly changes her tune. The cast of Cats: The Jellicle Ball includes a number of actors who appeared in Pose: Kya Azeen as Etcetera, "Tempress" Chasity Moore as Grizabella and Leiomy—who both appeared in and choreographed for Pose—as Macavity.

Catwalking to the Crown
The runway is not just for models in high fashion shows. It’s also the place to strut your stuff and vogue—the style of dance that stems from ballroom culture, popularized by Madonna in her 1990 smash hit inspired by seeing dancers vogue at The Sound Factory, a nightclub in New York City. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that choreography is what brings Cats: The Jellicle Ball to life. The show is choreographed by Omari Wiles and Arturo Lyons. Wiles, also known as Omari NiNa Oricci, is the founder of The House of Nina Oricci and creative director of Les Ballet Afrik. He has choreographed for Janet Jackson, Beyoncé and John Legend, not to mention Madonna, the pop icon who brought vogue to the mainstream. Lyons, also known as Father Icon Artruo Miyake-Mugler, served as a choreographer on season one of HBO’s competition series Legendary before going on to win with his house, Miyake-Mugler, in season two. Wiles also competed with his House of Nina Oricci team on season two, but the dynamic duo have known each other for decades, with Wiles saying Lyons is like “an uncle to him,” adding that he couldn’t have imagined working on the show with anyone else in a 2024 interview for Them.

The Art of the Ball
While voguing is a major component of ballroom culture, it’s not the only dance style. With Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Wiles and Lyons set out to prove that “ballroom is an art form.” Another key goal for the choreographers was to create a multi-generational show that embraces the original ethos of the production’s source material. “The show is very generational,” Wiles told Them. “Just like the original Cats; it was for the young, the mid, the old.” And just as important was modernizing the show in a way that felt representative of the diversity of individuals engaged in the ballroom scene—and the queer community at large. “It was so important that every community that we’re representing is being serviced: the musical theater heads, the singers, the dancers, the voguers,” Wiles said. “Every category in the show is being seen as being represented to the fullest.”

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