2 Dec
2010
2 Dec
'10
5:07 p.m.
Interesting discussion, thank you for starting it and the resources
that have already come out.
I haven't had the experience of calling for an explicitly gender free
contra, so I can't attest to practice. I am a little wary of "bands
and bares" though. The words start the same and sound similar; I'd
worry (especially at a new dance where sound is still being figured
out?) about the words not being clear on the floor.
As a dancer, I actively dislike ties or markers. I feel it gets in the
way of partners swapping back and forth and playing with both roles.
I'd prefer dancers to be where they need to be and dance with whoever
is coming at them. I've seen "helpful" people hang ties on a female
dancer without asking, just because they saw two women dancing
together. It annoyed both of the dancers, and didn't really help mark
them as lead for the other dancers on the floor. When there's a gender
imbalanced night, I still want as many people dancing as possible, and
I want them to be as comfortable in any role as possible. That's
tangential to the original thread, but an issue I have seen cause
consternation.
Looking forward to other people's comments.
On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 1:25 PM, Robert Golder <robertgolder(a)comcast.net> wrote:
For more than two decades, Chris Ricciotti has been
the leading exponent of the armbands/barearms method of role free calling. Chris has made
available a web-based Gender-Free Dancing Callers Manual and History as a callers'
resource. This is the best available published source of information. Go to:
http://lcfd.org/Articles/GFManual/
--
Luke Donev
http://www.lukedonev.com
Luke.Donev(a)gmail.com
From this page you can download the Manual in PDF
format. Subjects include a FAQ about calling and dancing role free (including
"agenda" issues), sample dances with comparative instructions in both
traditional and role-free notation, an essay on "Programming an Evening of
Gender-Free Dancing," discussion of methods other than Armband/Barearm (from which
you could further develop "lead" and "follow"), a history of role-free
dancing, etc. ... Bob
Robert Golder
New Bedford, MA, USA
On Dec 2, 2010, at 1:02 PM, susie rudder wrote:
I have been asked to call for a new dance group
forming in a small town
near our regular dance. Experienced dancers were asked to come help
these absolute newbies, and some local musicians have volunteered their
services. It became obvious that about half the dancers were lesbians
who asked me to use non gender specific terms when calling. I tried
'lead' and 'follow' because the syllable numbers worked, but I'm
not
happy with that. I also had some regular dancers comment on not wanting
to deal with 'some' peoples' political agendas as related to contra
calling. I have never dealt with gender free calling and would
appreciate ANY help from those of you who may have been doing it for
years. What terms seem to work best? Any other hints to make things go
more smoothly? These people are very enthusiastic and I want to see
the dance succeed.
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