[Callers] Chains: the other side of the coin

[tavi merrill via Callers]

Sigh. Why is "join right with right in front, left hands behind the gent's
back, gents walk forward and ladies back up" way more difficult than "join
left with left in front, right hands behind the lady's back, ladies walk
forward and gents back up"? It's not, but....

A numerical argument:
Say in a typical evening of 13 dances, 6 dances include a ladies' chain,
R&L through, or promenade across (wherein turning to face back in counts as
a courtesy turn) and 2 more dances contain either two of one or one each of
two. (I consider that a conservative estimate given the ubiquity of ladies'
chains!) That makes 10 iterations of standard courtesy turn; if each
sequence is run for an average of 8 minutes (16 iterations of the dance)
that's 160 iterations of standard courtesy turn in a typical evening of
dance.

Now, since a small minority of callers ever get off their butt and use a
gents LH chain (because it's soooooooooo difficult), let's say one gents
chain shows up in every 10 evenings of dance we go to (this time, a very
liberal estimate). Same assumptions of average dance run time, so that's 16
iterations to practice the reverse courtesy turn.

But since we danced ten evenings to get that one gents LH chain in, we had
a whopping *1,600 iterations of practice for the standard courtesy turn to
our 16 iterations of practice for the reverse*.

The only real reason* the standard turn *seems* "easier" is because we get
s---loads more practice at it! That will never change unless the reverse
turn gets more use. It's hard because we so rarely do it, and we don't do
it because it's hard. Great work everybody. Look at us exceeding our
programming.

Aahz, I would say the same for myself - a regular role-swapper, heavy-duty
twirler in both roles, and "usually good about paying attention" - but I
don't really care how often other callers dance both roles. The fact
remains that many dancers don't, and of the dancers that don't, many lack
the enhanced sensitivity to whether others want to be twirled that comes
with being ambidancetrous. How aware we are is not an argument against the
necessity of raising dancers' awareness. Let's elevate the level of dance
in our communities.

*The other possible reason: resistance to any actual built-in choreographic
challenge to gender-normativity. When we're voluntarily swapping roles, we
are queering the dance, and the dance's built-in gender inequity is
secondary to our experience - but when the choreography itself challenges
the form's built-in gender assumptions, it feels somehow wrong. I use
traditional, gendered calling language in posts about choreography and
gender inequality in the dance for a reason. How many dances involve the
ladies doing a move - do-si-do, gypsy, et cetera - while the gents stand
around and watch? How many dances involve ladies' chains? How few
iterations of the reverse are there? No matter how much the ambidancetrous
among us queer it on the floor, no matter how much we gloss over it by
using alternative term sets, the prominence of gender in the roles is
pretty hard to miss. Alternative term sets and role swapping have their
place. I'm interested in the fact that neither of these things makes a
perfectly good figure easier to use.

Meh.  I think you've got part of a point, but as someone who gender-swaps
> regularly (often within a single set), I find doing the reverse courtesy
> turn way more difficult than doing a regular courtesy turn dancing raven.
> And I'm also a heavy-duty twirler, both lark and raven.  And I'm usually
> good about paying attention to whether someone wants to be twirled.
>
> Probably I could learn the reverse courtesy turn, but I think you're
> underestimating the difficulty.
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