Have you seen "Paris is Burning"? Well-known and excellent doc on ball competitions. At least in their origins, they were not equivalent to drag performances in the vein of Darcelle's. As entertainment they were something by non-gender-normative people and for non-gender-normative people, rather private to that (primarily Black, incidentally) community at the very start (when they became more open, Madonna appropriated the vogue style invented there in, well, you can guess the music video, and the color of the people in it). As survival they were critical, as success in the ball was both based on artistic qualities of performance and how well you were performing the gender you were aiming for: it was instant honest community feedback on how well you were going to survive the streets as a poor black transperson. Fragments of this idea are of course found in other areas of gender performance, but in general the whole question is worded kinda weirdly, so...yeah. Anyway. Check out the documentary, it's awesome.