The last time I watched quest?onmarc perform was in January 2020. Heaving techno was the course of action throughout the night, as Brooklyn locals, flashy and sufficiently sloshed, crawled in to make peak-time. quest?onmarc isn't keen on subtlety, and luckily for me, this event was no exception. The set took place on an intimate weeknight at their club of choice, Bushwick's Bossa Nova, where, fast-forwarding to the present day, we had incidentally planned to meet for a socially distanced interview. Alas, the club shuttered again for winter.

When I video called quest?onmarc last month from their home outside of the city, they introduced themselves as Mars, which is actually the first I'd heard their real name (the artist name on their Resident Advisor page is curiously listed as Mys Terry). For someone whose music is overwhelmingly caustic, Mars is anything but. They're thoughtfully loquacious, and our conversation advanced with ease, equally peppered with their critical intellect and warm humor. As they answered my questions in gentle rasps, every thought arrived measured and well-considered. I jumped into the interview by asking them about their time in quarantine, to which they responded looking up, as if pondering the right words, "I think silence has been one of the constants that I've gotten most comfortable with this year."

The past two years have been pivotal for quest?onmarc. Within this period, the producer and DJ originally from Long Island, New York, embarked on their first European tour, released their first solo EP on a label and secured a monthly residency with The Lot Radio and Rinse France. Their discography spans five EPs and a slew of singles, all stretching out over ballroom, techno, Jersey club, UK funky and grime.

But before quest?onmarc experimented with music, they were a dancer and precocious club kid deeply involved in New York's underground club scene. Their commitment to Brooklyn's bubbling mid-'10s nightlife can be gleaned just from their hours-long commute to the city every weekend from their home in Long Island. "It's easily like two hours each way just to go find parties in Brooklyn in the middle of the night," they laughed. "I'm thinking back like, I really did that? Every weekend?"

On Monday nights in Midtown Manhattan, one of the city's longest-running balls, Vogue Knights, took place. An eager Mars was often the first guest at the event's sparsely lit and unassuming first home, Escuelita, showing up early with the hopes of having the venue's entire dance floor to themselves. Their eccentric appearance joined with their zest for dance found them at the top of numerous house mood boards. "Nobody else was showing up to Vogue Knights with kandi and glowsticks, hungry for faster beats to catapult themselves on the floor to," they explained over email.

Houses are queer families that compete against each other, or "walk" in various categories, and are the backbone of ballroom culture. But Mars, willing to remain "007" (unaffiliated) over maintaining superficial house connections, shrugged off most of the houses's recruitment efforts. That was until they were approached not once, but twice, by Amazon Mother Leiomy. Finally, Mars welcomed an invitation, and as their interest in music progressed, so did the overwhelming encouragement they received from the House Of Amazon, whom they now fondly call family. Flashing a sad smile, they recount the last time their house supported them at a newly Covid-regulated Bossa Nova. "It was just so awkward that everybody had to be sitting. It wasn't like the typical Bossa experience," they said.

Zooming out, it's clear that Mars's relationship with dance and music has always been close-knit. Their first proper introduction to ballroom came with Azealia Bank's Mermaid Ball in 2012, a costume contest where they arrived in a vintage jumper adorned with iridescent payette sequins—and brought home a winning prize of $1,000. From there, the ball got rolling for the rest of quest?onmarc's music career. The prize money went toward Mars's first studio, and also thanks to this event, they met ballroom luminary MikeQ for the first time. This meeting would lead to years of collaboration, with Mars releasing some of their earliest tracks as a member of Mike's seminal ballroom label, Qween Beat.

The Qween Beat era saw some of Mars's most conventional ballroom productions. In keeping with that of their peers, their early works captured a moment when ballroom was sloughing off its house and disco origins and growing faster and more militant. Titled after Sigmund Freud's theory of the id, their 2017 EP, ? : ID, was produced with the five elements of vogue in mind. Tinges of Jersey club can be heard in the record's opener, "WORK THIS," which plays with Sweet Pussy Pauline's classic "Work This Pussy." This track was all about floor performance, or as they describe it, "sexy, seductive, floor-based writhing." House-influenced with a laidback groove, the closing "WALK 4 ME" is a quintessential runway track. The following ? : II EP also bursts with full-throttle ballroom, but what had been originally planned as a ballroom-influenced trilogy was rear-ended by their quickly evolving sound.

Though many know quest?onmarc as an artist with roots in ballroom, throughout our conversation, they expressed a readiness to untether themselves from the genre. "I've never [solely] been a ballroom artist. I've been ballroom familiar," they said. "I'm familiar with the ballroom scene."

As a member of Qween Beat, Mars felt limited by ballroom production. With their expansive knowledge of electronic music, spanning from metal to hardcore to the Japanese pop of Utada Hikaru, they held no interest in committing to ballroom purism. So in 2018, they parted ways with the collective, a decision that brought their music into a harder, less ballroom-oriented landscape. ? : III was released within that year, incorporating gabber, metal and hardcore techno. Tracks like "THE '?' HA III" still pay homage to earlier releases with that familiar "ha" crash, but the arrangement feels mechanical, wintry even. Idiosyncratic enough to give someone at a ball pause. At this time their sets also expanded outside of their comfort zone, leading listeners to express confusion at their diverging sound. In our emails, Mars refers to this formative EP as "the outcast."

Since then, Mars has focused on forging a new path within their production. Their first label release, Phoenix, landed on Club Chai in January 2020, turning over a new leaf with a mellowed sound infused with grime, Jersey club, dembow and a smattering of "ha" crashes. The EP sounds gentler than anything they've released before. Like the mythical phoenix emerging from the ashes, the record presented Mars with the opportunity to showcase the variation they were capable of, and further distanced themselves from the industry's compartmentalization of them as a ballroom artist. "Stepping out of that sonic identity and into my own was very important with that project," they said.

In recent years, they have stepped away from the New York ballroom scene, crossing the pond to immerse themselves in the extravagant kiki balls of Berlin. More than New York's current ballroom scene, where events are historically intimate and smaller-scale in production, Berlin balls are coated in opulence, often centering fashion categories.

"The differences are quite stark," they said. "[In New York,] you see lived experiences in people's vote. If your performance speaks to some hard shit that you're going through, it's going to look different than pulling up in Berlin to a kiki ball."

In Berlin, they worked with one of the city's most visible mothers, Zueira Gucci Angels, who looks over the Kiki House Of Angels. Organized in partnership with Adidas, the event took the form of an open air kiki located in a car park. In tow was an international judge panel of scene elders, which, for Mars, provided a level of authenticity. While they express awe for the ways ballroom has transferred internationally, our discussion of the European circuit is just a pinpoint in our winding conversation about the white cannibalization of this culture and the vitality of safeguarding ballroom's cultural integrity.

"I just think, you know, a white cisgender male is just not going to make a ballroom track in the same way," they said. "It's going to be felt from somebody that actually vogues for a reason." Recognizing the difficult position they assume as an artist persistently writing their own rules within ballroom themselves, they added, "of course I'm going to do things the way I want to do them, but it's done with respect."

When I ask Mars about the future, they joke that given the option, they'd still likely gab about the past. But they do tease a second label release and a bevy of collaborative projects, as well as expressing a dedication to further hone their sound outside of ballroom. The curiosity they harbor for their artistic practice runs deep. I mention the digital scratching they increasingly dabble in throughout their sets, and they discuss their desire to eventually translate those skills to vinyl.

"I just want to be the most complete version of an artist that I can be," they said. "I develop this ethos every day, and every time I open the door to figure out what I'm going to try to say this time. I'm being led to say, 'Let's speak to people all over.'"

I believe they already have.