[Callers] Another approach to Gender Free calling

[Andrea Nettleton via Callers]

I'm pretty sure contra is more popular than ECD everywhere, and most ECD groups call to gents and ladies as well as corners, partners, neighbors, so I doubt this is the issue.  That the music often sounds classical rather than modern is one issue, that you only flirt with eyes and fingertips is another.  It's more cerebral, less athletic.  It's a different high, which aligns less well with tastes of our age than contra.  You are the first person I have heard say that they dislike ECD because discreet roles are less necessary.  
I don't think every contra series is going to suddenly go gender free, far from it, but even if they did, the things people like about contra would still be there: the zestiness, the music, the swings, the predictable format, the flirting, the sweat, the patterns we love, the stomping, the gliding.  
Atlanta has a dance weekend every November, and each year there is a different theme.  On Saturday night there is a concert, a skit, then the dance.  For several years, I led the skit creation.  As it happens, yesterday my daughter handed me a binder which contained the lyrics for our West Side Contra skit of several years ago. I don't currently have a link to Dave Pokorney's video, or I'd include it.  You might be wondering why I bring it up.  In the skit, instead of Jets and Sharks, we had the Trads and the Mods.  Each hated the other's influence on the contra scene, the Trads decrying the twirls and dips, sleaze and bad timing, taste for pop tunes and jazz riffs, the claps on petronellas, while the Mods bristled at the use of old time, the straight dancing, the rigid adherence to old standards and ideals.  After some build up, they meet at a dance, and during the contra, fighting breaks out and many are left prostrate including Tony.  In the end they all recover and agree that all the things they love about dancing are more important than the differences, ultimately they all just want to dance.  I was poking fun, but also serious that we all tend to get really wound up, especially when things we love undergo change.  But the truth is, we can all adapt, and continue enjoy that which we love.  Some groups are going to embrace gender free, some may even go for positional calling.  I hope that dancers can continue enjoying everything they have always loved about dance, whatever their community chooses.  I'm asking us to look at positional calling in light of all the positive things it can do, and seeing how we might make it work so we lose as little as possible of what we care most about.  Every community and every caller will have to decide what they are up for.  Our job here is to sincerely attempt to determine if it can work, which can only be accomplished if we set aside our emotional reactions, our fear and distaste, and work at it like a crossword puzzle, with detached intelligent attention.  Raising questions is important; let's please continue that, as it gets us analyzing the possibility realistically.  Those not interested in the enterprise are free to ignore.
Cheers,
Andrea

Sent from my iOnlypretendtomultitask

>> On Jun 3, 2015, at 12:02 PM, Aahz Maruch via Callers <callers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, Jun 02, 2015, Andrea Nettleton via Callers wrote:
>> 
>> English callers and dancers clearly have no trouble saying or
>> understanding these terms.  If they were that awkward, they would long
>> since have been replaced.  I think we see positions as roles purely
>> from habit.  If I taught a roomful of kids who had never danced using
>> no roles, would they think of having danced a role?
> 
> Possibly you're seeing selection bias in English.  At least in the SF Bay
> Area, contra is more popular than English, and I wonder how much of that
> difference is due to this issue.  (This discussion is making clear that
> a significant chunk of my ECD dislike is due to this issue.)
> -- 
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