[Organizers] Transition to ungendered dances

[Read Weaver]

On whether gender-free terminology is simply code for gender—I started doing country dance in the early ‘80s with the Gay and Lesbian Folk Dance in Boston, which always included a fair amount of English country dance and often some contra, both using global terminology. At my first conventional ECD, I remember thinking “Oh, this is about men and women!” Yes, of course, if you’ve danced for years hearing “gents and ladies,” when you first hear “larks and ravens” you’re going to do the translation, but for folks new to it, there’s no translation to be made.

Reactions to a one-off GF evening will always be negative. When the Boston Gender-Free Contra Dance first tried “larks and ravens” after 25 years of “bands and bare-arms,” the reaction was mostly negative. Inference from that about whether GF calling will work at a dance over time won’t be accurate.

Read Weaver
Jamaica Plain, MA
http://lcfd.org

> On Aug 10, 2019, at 1:29 AM, David Kirchner via Organizers <organizers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> 
> I used to call this way (role-less) at the gender-free contra that used to be held once a month in the Twin Cities. I was of the opinion that simply replacing the terms "gents" and "ladies" with other terms did not make a dance "gender-free," it just meant that we were using code words that everyone simply translated in their heads as "gent's role" and "lady's role." Most of the other callers who did this dance used "leads" and "follows."
> ...
> FWIW, larks and ravens have not made it to the Twin Cities, though dancers that travel far afield for special events are beginning to bring back news of it from other parts of the country (and of course social media brings news in many other ways). One caller experimented with using the terms for one evening this past spring. The feedback they got was mostly negative.
> 
> David