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
