[Organizers] Transition to ungendered dances

[David Kirchner]

I used to call this way (role-less) at the gender-free contra that used to
be held once a month in the Twin Cities. I was of the opinion that simply
replacing the terms "gents" and "ladies" with other terms did not make a
dance "gender-free," it just meant that we were using code words that
everyone simply translated in their heads as "gent's role" and "lady's
role." Most of the other callers who did this dance used "leads" and
"follows."

Most attendees were experienced already; the inability of that series to
draw people that weren't already coming to the regular contra was one of
the reasons it did not last. So I have no idea if the way I taught would
have been successful in a setting with many beginners. However, in the
teaching at the beginning, I focused on the importance of ending certain
moves (swings, courtesy turns, california twirls, etc.) consistently on the
left or on the right, depending on where one started the dance -- with the
warning that if one did not consistently end figures on the same side each
time, one would lose one's partner. As much as possible during
walkthroughs, I would described the ending orientation in relation to the
starting orientation (end the swing having traded places, etc.)

I could not come up with any way that I found satisfactory to call ladies'
chains without simply replacing "lady" with some code word that meant the
same thing, so I did not program any dances that contained that figure, and
as much as possible I avoided dances with figures where I could not easily
describe who did what purely positionally (e.g. allemande right neighbor
once and a half, then those facing in allemande left once and a half,
etc.). These were pretty significant constraints -- probably cutting out
75-80% of my regular repertoire -- but fortunately the world of contra
dance choreography is a rich one. With careful planning, I was able to
program entire evenings with dances like Donna Calhoun's The Awesome Double
Progression Dance, Steve Schnur's The 24th of June, Gene Hubert's
Centrifugal Hey, and even Chorus Jig and Petronella. As I recall, I did not
try squares, though some traditional figures like Uptown, Downtown and
Grapevine Twist would lend themselves to this approach (also Grand Square,
come to think of it).

FWIW, larks and ravens have not made it to the Twin Cities, though dancers
that travel far afield for special events are beginning to bring back news
of it from other parts of the country (and of course social media brings
news in many other ways). One caller experimented with using the terms for
one evening this past spring. The feedback they got was mostly negative.

David

On Fri, Aug 9, 2019, 9:16 PM jim saxe via Organizers <
organizers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

> On Aug 9, 2019, at 9:56 AM, Heitzso via Organizers <
> organizers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
>
> > I know that this evening, in Atlanta, Seth Tepfer will intentionally
> call role-less dances (no reference to gents/ladies/larks/whatever).
>
> I'd be interested in learning more details about what Seth does and about
> how it works in practice.
>
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