Beautiful!
Thank you, Andrea.
-- Alan
On 1/5/2013 1:51 AM, Andrea Nettleton wrote:
Sometimes a dance weekend comes along just in time. So I am at Chattaboogie in
TN, and thought very hard about what was going on between me and all the people
I danced with, and I think I finally understand why, in my mind, lead/follow
are actively bad terms to use in contra, and why when we teach the idea of
flourishes, I really don't want anyone thinking of one role as lead, and the
other as follow.
The evening rolled along, and I danced both positions with both genders of
partners. Late in the evening, I reflected about which dances I had enjoyed
the most. It came down to one dance with a woman, who is a very accomplished
younger than me dancer. We fluidly played off one another, making no
distinction about who was in charge, a different one landing in the 'you go'
position at the last second at every possible opportunity. It was like contact
improv in a contra line. We could not have said who was leading, and neither
could anyone watching. It was transcendent. The other wonderful dance was
with a man. He dances in the usual position, is a wonderful dancer, but
doesn't often offer a flourish. Instead he absolutely loves for me to create
sequences of flourishes for both of us to do, but I end on the right. Why were
these experiences so notable, I had to ask myself. It is because most men have
come to think they must be in charge of flourishes, to the point tha
t they don't seem open to my flourishes, or at best are in a state of
surprise which makes reacting to the suggestions awkward. Most women I dance
with are entirely passive, can receive a flourish from me if I am in the lefty
role, but don't have anything to give back, sometimes not even good weight.
There are a few who can swap positions, and offer flourishes from the lefty
position, but in my transcendent dance, we were completely interchangeable, and
the game was who would wind up where. Even we didn't know!
I think the root of the problem is that, without meaning to, we have begun to foster a culture of expectations of bifurcated roles. Using the terms lead/follow only codifies and ultimately ossifies something I would like to do away with. I know some people are only going to dance one role, and some may only be able to participate in one way lefty to righty flourishes. But I want more people to be able to open their minds to the kind of experience I had tonight. Using the terms lead/follow to indicate the expectations of dancing one side or the other will tend to shut that down, and I think it would be a crying shame. We have subtly given up something I treasure. It is not the right to dance in a staid old fashioned way, it is a formerly pervasive concept of the dance as a an equal opportunity chance to play being replaced with a male dominated one way I am in charge of you thing. I can't listen to defenses of that, to me, perversion of my beloved play space. I don't w
ant the experiences I had to be rare, outside the box, ones. I want them to
be as obvious a choice as any.
The discussion began with the idea that maybe we need a better set of terms for
the two positions we dance. This was to acknowledge that some in our community
don't want their dance position defined, even by archaic implication, as
something to do with gender. I am not personally bothered by gent/lady, but if
I'm going to call to people who are, let the alternate terms not imply
something about the dance which I do not wish to convey. Let them not limit,
by seeming to prescribe and proscribe who can and should do what, what we in
fact choose to do. Let's try to generate something humorous, elevating, easy
to say and remember, and truly neutral. All we need them for is to say who is
crossing in a chain, and who needs to end the swing where in order for the
dance not to turn into a mixer. We could always resort to diagonals for same
role moves, even chains for that matter.
So. Some people want no change from trad terms. Fine. Know that a certain number of dancers may object or not return, but it's your dance. Some want new terms. Ok. If they are awesome, I bet even trad series might adopt them eventually. Arguing whether we should change them is different from arguing which of the terms we already use to keep using, and different again from evaluating the merits of new alternatives. It's become a bit of a mash up.
I don't know whether we should, as a whole community, abandon trad terms for
new ones.
That doesn't keep me from gleefully generating new terms, just in case we hit
on that totally perfect set. (See the FB thread.)
But when I see people arguing for terms which by their use change how it is
likely for people to conceptualize the roles, in a way that curtails the
potential for the kind of beautiful shared dancing I saw and felt tonight, I
have to say no. No, that is not a set of terms which serve us well. No fine
tuning of your arguments will convince me that they will. Please, stop
defending the terms lead/follow as if they were something we might find
desirable. Broaden your vision to imagine the grace they impede.
Soulfully,
Andrea
S
