31 Dec
2012
31 Dec
'12
2:28 a.m.
Talent agent (who probably just had his coffee enema): TOM HINDS, ARE
YOU AVAILABLE TO CALL A SQUARE DANCE ON SUCH AND SUCH DATE?
Tom: Yes I'm free. What kind of........
Talent agent: GREAT! I'LL PUT YOU DOWN! click
So I get to the gig and discover that the band plays top 40 music.
The hundred or so dancers all wanted to dance and each square had
about a 5 foot by 5 foot space.
The band decided to play blues progressions. It was actually fun
because I had to really adapt.
T
31 Dec
31 Dec
3:47 a.m.
New subject: Alternate Role Terms
Hi everyone,
Tavi Merrill and I have started a very active discussion on the Facebook "Contra
Dancers" Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/2204574738 ) about finding a new
pair of neutral, logical, easily assimilated terms for the traditional Gents/Ladies terms
as well as their variants, men/women, lead/follow, bands bares, etc., all of which have
various issues for various people within the dance community. As Linda Leslie has already
noted in the thread,
"Larry Jennings once said that the person who came up with just the right terminology
was going to be responsible for the next evolutionary leap in contra dancing. A great
challenge that has been around for several decades! Wonderful to see the suggestions! And
debate the merits….."
There is another thread on the same group about the issue of gender or role balancing at
weekend events and some of the issues with the existing terms are addressed there, but the
main thread is about brainstorming new possibilities and I'd like to invite you all to
join in on FB or to develop an additional discussion here. There have been many
interesting as well as highly amusing suggestions but there is a consensus I think that
agrees on the need for something:
1. Matches the one/two syllable form of gents/ladies, men/women, etc.
2. Sounds distinctly different for easy recognition
3. References Left and Right (for left-hand person and right hand person)
4. Is gender and connotatively neutral without a lot of referential baggage
So far, I think the best one we've come up with so far is "Port/Starboard",
which seems to meet all those requirements.
Sincerely,
Will
Will Loving
Downtown Amherst Contra Dance
http://amherstcontra.org
1 Jan
1 Jan
7:36 p.m.
New subject: Alternate Role Terms
Why don't the terms "lead" and "follow" suffice? Is there just too
much
residual baggage there? Because to me, it seems like the most accurate pair
of terms...
Maia
On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 10:47 PM, William Loving
<williamloving(a)comcast.net>wrote;wrote:
Hi everyone,
Tavi Merrill and I have started a very active discussion on the Facebook
"Contra Dancers" Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/2204574738 )
about finding a new pair of neutral, logical, easily assimilated terms for
the traditional Gents/Ladies terms as well as their variants, men/women,
lead/follow, bands bares, etc., all of which have various issues for
various people within the dance community. As Linda Leslie has already
noted in the thread,
"Larry Jennings once said that the person who came up with just the right
terminology was going to be responsible for the next evolutionary leap in
contra dancing. A great challenge that has been around for several decades!
Wonderful to see the suggestions! And debate the merits….."
There is another thread on the same group about the issue of gender or
role balancing at weekend events and some of the issues with the existing
terms are addressed there, but the main thread is about brainstorming new
possibilities and I'd like to invite you all to join in on FB or to develop
an additional discussion here. There have been many interesting as well as
highly amusing suggestions but there is a consensus I think that agrees on
the need for something:
1. Matches the one/two syllable form of gents/ladies, men/women, etc.
2. Sounds distinctly different for easy recognition
3. References Left and Right (for left-hand person and right hand person)
4. Is gender and connotatively neutral without a lot of referential baggage
So far, I think the best one we've come up with so far is
"Port/Starboard", which seems to meet all those requirements.
Sincerely,
Will
Will Loving
Downtown Amherst Contra Dance
http://amherstcontra.org
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)sharedweight.net
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
7:52 p.m.
New subject: Alternate Role Terms
On 12/30/2012 7:47 PM, William Loving wrote:
There have been many interesting as well as highly
amusing suggestions
but there is a consensus I think that agrees on the need for
something:
1. Matches the one/two syllable form of gents/ladies, men/women, etc.
2. Sounds distinctly different for easy recognition
3. References Left and Right (for left-hand person and right hand person)
4. Is gender and connotatively neutral without a lot of referential baggage
So far, I think the best one we've come up with so far is "Port/Starboard",
which seems to meet all those requirements.
I disagree with the need to have the new terms reference the left and
right positions. The words "gents and ladies" make no reference to
where those characters are at any given moment, for example, yet they
seem to have served pretty well for the last few hundred years.
Directional terms are already working pretty hard in dance instruction,
so it seems unwise to me to make those terms carry any more luggage than
they already have to. I saw a Scottish dance group teaching a session
for festival-goers a few years ago and they divided their random crowd
of tourists into longways sets and then designated the lines "A and B".
It's a little dry, but it worked. I'm not recommending that as the
new paradigm. Simply putting it out there as a non-left/right example
that was effective.
Kalia
4 Jan
4 Jan
11:11 p.m.
New subject: Alternate Role Terms
When I first started calling, my least favorite part was having to use the terms
"ladies" and "gents", because they just felt culturally odd and
archaic to me. I was embarrassed to use them when calling for conferences, family
reunions, and other groups of folks who were not that familiar with the traditional
language of contra and square dance, and I find them confusing and weird to use for folks
dancing roles that are different from their biological gender. I tried "women"
and "men" for a while, but it just felt too stiff and not playful enough. Over
time I've gotten a bit more comfortable with ladies/gents but I have been SO HAPPY to
see this conversation going on.
I just searched out Will's original message because I remembered really liking the
reference to Larry Jennings' quote. Solving this problem and coming up with a new pair
of terms that gains general acceptance (like Ms. has) will be, in my view, a giant step
forward.
On Dec 30, 2012, at 10:47 PM, William Loving wrote:
Hi everyone,
Tavi Merrill and I have started a very active discussion on the Facebook "Contra
Dancers" Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/2204574738 ) about finding a new
pair of neutral, logical, easily assimilated terms for the traditional Gents/Ladies terms
as well as their variants, men/women, lead/follow, bands bares, etc., all of which have
various issues for various people within the dance community. As Linda Leslie has already
noted in the thread,
"Larry Jennings once said that the person who came up with just the right
terminology was going to be responsible for the next evolutionary leap in contra dancing.
A great challenge that has been around for several decades! Wonderful to see the
suggestions! And debate the merits….."
There is another thread on the same group about the issue of gender or role balancing at
weekend events and some of the issues with the existing terms are addressed there, but the
main thread is about brainstorming new possibilities and I'd like to invite you all to
join in on FB or to develop an additional discussion here. There have been many
interesting as well as highly amusing suggestions but there is a consensus I think that
agrees on the need for something:
1. Matches the one/two syllable form of gents/ladies, men/women, etc.
2. Sounds distinctly different for easy recognition
3. References Left and Right (for left-hand person and right hand person)
4. Is gender and connotatively neutral without a lot of referential baggage
So far, I think the best one we've come up with so far is "Port/Starboard",
which seems to meet all those requirements.
Sincerely,
Will
Will Loving
Downtown Amherst Contra Dance
http://amherstcontra.org
_______________________________________________
Callers mailing list
Callers(a)sharedweight.net
http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers
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Delia Clark
PO Box 45
Taftsville, VT 05073
802-457-2075
deliaclark8(a)gmail.com
4351
days inactive
4355
days old
contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net
4 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Delia Clark -
Kalia Kliban -
Maia McCormick -
Tom Hinds -
William Loving