8 Oct
2019
8 Oct
'19
10:27 p.m.
There's a dance called Black Nag (Playford 1670).
Should we avoid this
in case people think it refers to a nagging black woman?
I don't see why. Doesn't that obviously refer to a horse? Is anyone
actually expressing concern about that name? (Besides the fact that any
one dance name is heard much less often than the name of a dance figure.)
While the dance term "gip" or "whole-gip" of old seems quite possibly
not to have had anything to do with the term "Gypsy" in those days, I
think that its change to "Gypsy" was a confluence with the racial term,
and I think that it's perceived as a racial term in modern times.
regards,
Alan Rosenthal, dancing in and around Toronto, Canada.