On 1/2/2013 10:07 AM, Louise Siddons wrote:
I agree with Maia that there's a difference in "feel" between dancing the lead role and
the follow role; that's why women (in my experience) ask each other if they have a preference when
they dance together. Also the two roles do different things in certain figures: any dance form that
has a fundamental figure called a "courtesy turn" is lead-follow imbalanced: a courtesy
turn is by definition a led figure.
And when you pile up a bunch of figures that involve a certain amount of leading that tends to fall
to one role more than the other, then you have a dance where there's a lead role and a following
role. (I would include promenades and butterfly whirls in this category of led figures.) Yes, there
are dances where the "unexpected" dancer leads these figures, but the very fact that it
is unexpected (and that a gents' chain, for example, prompts murmuring and often a "hoho, you
didn't expect that, did you?" tone from the caller) supports my point.
Didn't you just make an argument that the roles are different, rather
than that they are inherently lead/follow figures? (For example, the
Scots (and Fried Herman, following them) call the twiddle at the end of
rights and
lefts a "polite turn". Is that a led figure by definition? (It's
usually done with same-sex neighbor.)
Similarly, "hoho, you didn't expect that, did you!" accompanies dances
with same-sex swings, men gypsying, etc.
And on a similar front, English dancing has ladies chains, both open and
with courtesy turns. Would you argue that English dance is inherently
lead/follow?
My phenomenological experience is that dancers of both genders perceive themselves to be
leading when in the role I am arguing is a lead role -- even going so far as to yank
their partner into figures (there's a good way and a bad way to lead a dancer into a
left-hand star). Maia is right that being in the lead role changes people's dance
"attitude" (not always for the worse, of course; but dancing is performance and
people tend to embrace that).
Maybe I'm just bossy, but I want to take responsbility for the whole
dance working even if I'm dancing the woman's role. (And I know I can't
trust all the neighbor men to leave me pointing the right way if I don't
take responsibility for myself.)
I don't think you need this for the argument; there were flourishes when
I started contra dancing in 1985 (but we called the people who did them
"hot-doggers" and complained about them). The flourishers are
conspicous and
they got copied. Your argument can pick up from there.
The already-present lead-follow format has encouraged dancers coming from other
forms to exploit the existing relationship to add in flourishes that then
increase the feeling of lead/follow. Partly because of the structure of the
contra dance figures, there are moments (coming out of a swing, for example)
where dancers with a little bit of couple-dancing knowledge will find it a lot
more natural to flourish by twirling the equivalent of the ballroom follow,
rather than the lead. This connects to gender because, as several others have
pointed out, the vast majority of the world genders leading and following along
male/female lines.
I suspect that the best way to challenge people's gender-based assumptions is
to teach them new behaviors rather than -- or along with -- new words. But
what, exactly, is the goal of gender free dancing? Do we want both genders to
feel comfortable in both roles because those roles are fundamentally different?
Because in that case, we're stuck with a binary that is going to cling,
epistemologically, to the history of the gender binary (because I hate to say
it but many people seem to quite like that gender binary and the behavioral
stereotypes that it entails -- especially the young dancers that we often say
we would like to attract, and the older dancers who are the core of many
communities).
But if the goal is to encourage people -- and contra dance forms -- to redistribute the
lead-follow load so that it is more even, then we should be encouraging choreography that
disrupts the mostly-led-by-one-half-of-the-room style that currently exists, and leading
flourish workshops that, instead of saying "boys can dance with boys and the boy
playing the boy part can twirl the boy playing the girl part," or similar, just
teach people to twirl each other. And then, I don't know, use purple and green for the
role names?
Louise.
(Stillwater, OK)
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