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@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/1FAIpQLSfpgbzYSntTZlAgkNvfI8uhISstHGqhPpVPWRUWnx32V1GIcw/viewform — 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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