As family and friends gathered Wednesday night for the premiere of "The Prancing Elites Project," the new reality show prompted the laughter one might have expected - but also a hope that spanned generations.
The new show on the Oxygen channel is making headlines across the country because its subjects stand out even in the colorful world of reality TV: The Prancing Elites are a team of five gay black men in the Deep South who practice a style of dance called J-Setting, featuring feminine looks and moves. They tend to generate polarized responses, to put it mildly.
Because the cast is from the Mobile area, and because the show promises to focus on the spectrum of rejection and support they experience, it's a given that the show will be watched with special interest locally. But on Wednesday, the focus of one local viewing party was more specific.
More than a dozen people packed into a central Mobile apartment whose tenants include Jaesean Pritchett. The boyfriend of Kareem Davis, one of the Elites, he also is the captain of Blazing Elegance, another dance team. Like others present, he spent a lot of time laughing during the premiere - not just at the show's humor, but at the sight of people he knew being themselves on a very big stage.
When Prancing Elites leader Kentrell Collins told his team to "keep damn going" during a practice session, that was one such moment. When the Elites squealed like schoolgirls upon meeting reality star and actress NeNe Leakes, that was another.
"It was nice," Pritchett said after the half-hour premiere. "I loved it."
"It was funny and it was original," added Bobby Luckett, a Blazing Elegance teammate.
A quieter, stronger response came from Jimese Pritchett, Jaesean's mother. "I loved it," she said. "I wish it was longer."
What stood out about it the most for her? "Just their lives," she said.
"My son being gay, I deal with a lot of it - the staring, the pointing, the talking," she said. For her, seeing the Prancing Elites pursue their passion in the show wasn't anything frivolous. The lesson was, "Never let anyone kill your dream."
"We have a lot of family watching right now," she said.
Also present were Jaesean's aunt, India Smith, and his grandmother, Hattye Wilson.
"It's been interesting," Smith said of life with her nephew. "It's definitely made you embrace family and the spirit of love and making a difference," she said. "It's all about love with us, so we support Jaesean and Kareem."
"We're very proud of all of them," said Wilson. She said she found the show "very entertaining. Extremely entertaining. They are such good, positive young men. They believe wholeheartedly in what they do."
And for her, she said, the show summoned up memories of struggle. For her grandson, his boyfriend and the Prancing Elites, it is the fight for acceptance. For her it was being among a wave of black students who entered Murphy High School after Mobile's Central High School was closed during an integration push in 1970. She graduated in 1971, and it wasn't easy.
"We fought every day," she said. "That's why I don't understand why young people today don't want to fight to get an education."
Wilson said it wasn't really until her 20-year class reunion that she felt "a lot of us came together" in the realization that they had all gone through a shared experience as "guinea pigs."
With that in mind, she said, seeing something like "The Prancing Elites Project" come out of Mobile and go nationwide was one tangent of a long, long arc. "We move forward," she said. "It's all about movement."
"I love these guys," she said. "They're making a difference."