11 Sep
2024
11 Sep
'24
4:44 p.m.
I’ll interpret the question to extend to dresses. When I was first learning
in 1987-1995 I danced in Cambridge, MA. There was one guy who mostly danced
the left role but was flexible about it, and wore a gauzy white dress to
every dance. There were others but none as consistent. At festivals and
special events in the northeast (NEFFA, Flurry, Dawn Dance, etc.), there
were always a few more dresses and skirts on guys than at the weekly
dances. They didn’t seem to dance the right side more or less than the rest
of us, which is to say, some. There was not a suggestion of transgender, to
my recollection. It was presented just as a fashion choice, due to the fun
of twirling. However, at that time, being transgender was understood to
exist, but few people knew anyone who openly was, so I’m not making a
statement about who people really were, just what they wore, appeared, and
requested, and how they interacted. It was maybe 1-3 people out of maybe
70-100 in the hall. Others may have the latter stat more accurately.
—jh—
On Wed, Sep 11, 2024 at 1:55 PM Louise Siddons via Contra Callers <
contracallers(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Dear callers,
There isn’t a contra fashion email list, so I’m turning to this one since
we all spend a lot of time looking at dancers :)
Some of you may have seen the recent survey about dancing in skirts/skirts
for dancing that I helped a dancer friend create/disseminate:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfpgbzYSntTZlAgkNvfI8uhISstHGqhPpV…
— feel free to fill it out!
As we were writing up an article about the initial results that includes
advice on choosing skirts for dancing, aimed broadly to include all
dancers, I made the following unsubstantiated claim:
"These results suggest that for contra dancers, the primary benefit of a
skirt is the extent to which it extends, amplifies, and enhances the
sensation of the dance – particularly twirls and other flourishes. History
bears this out: a more universal adoption of flowing and flaring skirts
among contra dancers, regardless of gender or prior style preferences,
coincided with the explosion of interest in flourishes and improvisational
elaboration of the basic dance form among contra dancers at the turn of the
21st century.”
Robert challenged me on the second sentence, asking what evidence I had —
and I freely admitted I was extrapolating from my own lived experience, and
had no proof that this was broadly true. And before you all jump in, I will
acknowledge that the phenomenon of universal skirt-wearing, regardless of
gender, also depended quite a lot on the changing cultural discourse around
masculinity — especially in socially progressive communities. But I’m still
interested in the hypothesis that there’s a choreographic/phenomenological
connection.
After all, progressive men have existed in the contra community for a long
time and haven’t (if video/photographic evidence is accurate) always worn
skirts for dancing — so we want to know, when did skirts become familiar
enough on every gender that a (person likely to be interpellated as a) man
wearing a skirt was unsurprising?
Thanks for all respectful input,
Louise Siddons
Winchester, UK
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