Some "bird" thoughts, ahead. If it will upset you, please feel free to skip. Nothing on this list is required reading.

The simple question that the staunch "anti-bird" dancers can't answer:

"If Gents/Ladies is 'just role terms', then why suddenly do they say 'I'm not a bird'?"

Alternatively, some people find bird names silly, but are totally unfazed by "dosido", "box the gnat", "swat the flea", "hey", "allemande", "pousette", "dig for the oyster, dive for the clam", and so many more silly terms. Quirky terms have always been at the core of contra dancing.

There's nothing _wrong_ with wanting to use gents/ladies, in and of itself. But the dance groups need to do more than add a perfunctory "they're just role terms" disclaimer. They can demonstrate that lgbtq people are welcomed by doing things like choosing same gender dance partners, or dancing both roles, or having conversations with experienced dancers to stop the kind of "old guy splits up two women because their are men who wanna dance" stories I keep hearing.

And this isn't browbeating - I _do_ hear about and see dances using Gents/Ladies, but putting in this work.

That said, the beauty with Larks/Robins is that it's obvious. There's not dodging the larger question of "are lgbtq people really truly welcome in my dance community?" It sets a different framing of what roles every time they're prompted. It doesn't tiptoe around it.

And that is why I think we see such staunch anti-bird dancers out there. It's not about the terms. It's actually instead about the underlying, uncomfortable question that the birds force to be front and center in people's minds.

And yeah, this can be incredibly difficult for folks, especially in areas of the country that are less progressive and are behind on the major social shift we've been living through the last couple decades. I have a lot of compassion for folks struggling with processing how society's thoughts on gender and sexuality are evolving and conflicting. Especially because it may change again. So I'm still booking gents/ladies dances, and I'm trying to keep positive.

In dance,
Julian Blechner





On Wed, Feb 8, 2023, 8:18 PM Jacob or Nancy Bloom via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
At the Ralph Page Legacy day last month, Chrissy Fowler did a session in which she called dances as she called them at different times in her career.  In it, she talked about how, at one point, she and other female callers were insisting on the term "women" because they weren't ladies, and then several years later they were insisting on the term "ladies" because that was understood to be the name of a role.

I can't give a year when it happened, but I do believe I remember a time when at least some callers were making it explicitly clear that the terms Gents and Ladies referred to roles, and anybody could dance either role.

Jacob


On Wed, Feb 8, 2023, 2:29 PM Tony Parkes via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

I believe it’s in Myrtle Wilhite’s Lullaby of the Swing and other contra dances, tunes, waltzes, and essays (Madison, WI, 1993). I can’t lay my hand on my copy at the moment, but perhaps someone else has one.

 

Tony Parkes

Billerica, Mass.

www.hands4.com

New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century

(available now)

 

 

From: Mary Collins <nativedae@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 8, 2023 2:11 PM
To: Jeff Kaufman <jeff@alum.swarthmore.edu>
Cc: Tony Parkes <tony@hands4.com>; Joe Harrington <contradancerjoe@gmail.com>; contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net
Subject: Re: [Callers] Re: Gentlespoons/Ladles (from Rompin' Stompin')

 

Jeff, me too...if you find it, share please.

 

mary

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn't hear the music." - Nietzsche

 

“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass ... it's about learning to dance in the rain!” ~ unknown

 

 

On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 9:58 AM Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

Aside: does anyone have a copy of the "I am not a lady" essay?  I'd be interested to read it.

 

Jeff

 

On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 9:54 AM Tony Parkes via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

Joe Harrington wrote:

 

> When I started dancing in the late 1980s… Callers were taking the revolutionary step of not calling "men" and "women" but rather using "ladies" and "gents", to signal that switching roles was ok, since nobody referred to themselves as a "lady" or a "gent" in casual conversation.

 

Where was this, Joe? And are you talking about contra callers (rather than ECD)? I can only speak about the NYC area in the 1960s and early ’70s, and New England starting in the late ’60s and continuing to the present. In both regions, square/contra callers (contras were a subcategory of square dance until around 1975) universally used “gents/ladies.” (I believe ECD teachers have always used “men/women,” presumably emulating Playford and Cecil Sharp.) AFAIK, northeastern callers pretty consistently used “gents/ladies” until some of them started to move away from gender-related terms. Tolman and Page’s Country Dance Book (1937) uses “gents/ladies,” as do most of the other standard American dance books from the 1900s to the 1950s (a few, aimed at schoolteachers, use “boys/girls”).

 

I know of no region where callers changed from “men/women” to “gents/ladies.” I know that some callers, beginning I think in the ’80s, changed from “gents/ladies” to “men/women,” feeling that “gentlemen” and “ladies” smacked of classism. (One female caller, in an essay titled “I am not a lady,” requested that other callers not use her contra compositions if they adhered to “gents/ladies.”) As an amateur (= lover) of dance history, I would like to know about past changes of which I was unaware.

 

Tony Parkes

Billerica, Mass.

www.hands4.com

New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century

(available now)

 

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