Chet Gray wrote:
<<In regards to the present variety in role terminology, I may be fairly alone
in this opinion, but I hope we never intentionally arrive at a grand consensus.
I love that different terms for roles have sprung up in different communities,
just as I love that so many wonderful terms have sprung up for
eye-turn/shoulder-turn/spiral. I love hearing "allemande", "hand turn", and
"hand 'round" in different communities. I love that "dosado" means drastically
different things in different long-lived community ("square") dances. I love
that some communities default to hands-across stars while others default to
wrist-hold stars. I love that there are at least three different promenade
positions, and each is default in different communities. As much as my engineer
brain would enjoy it, I hope we never have a CALLERLAB to strictly define
terminology and steps for contra dances.>>
Amen!
One of the things I’ve long lamented about the modern square dance movement is
the disappearance of regional variations. If square dancing is viewed as a
hobby, it makes sense (given the mobility of people in industrialized
countries) to standardize the meaning of calls, hand and arm positions, and
other rules and customs. But if it’s viewed as a folk art, it’s a crying shame
to lose the variations. To me, standardizing a folk dance form is like saying
there’s only one right way to cook chicken. (Given how far MSD has strayed away
from tradition and toward homogenization, it feels to me as if they’re saying
KFC is the only right way to cook chicken.)
The contra dance world has never had an entity like Callerlab with the clout to
convince local groups to standardize, and I don’t think it needs one. Two of
the big attractions of contra dancing (IMO) are its lack of regimentation and
the small number of terms a newcomer must learn. That small number (again IMO)
means that adjusting from one village to another is not difficult: Typically
only 3 or 4 terms out of 15 or 20 are understood differently.
A big question in my mind is whether there’s anything approaching a consensus
among contra callers (and interested organizers and dancers) on any points
beyond the obvious: that dancing should be enjoyable and a dance venue should
be a safe space. I would strongly caution folks against thinking there’s a
consensus when only a small percentage of callers and leaders has been heard
from. I’m thinking here, not specifically about the gender-free vs. gendered
issue or which gender-free terms to adopt, but about the big picture – which
includes those issues, but also includes standardization vs. local styles,
“gypsy” vs. a new term (and again, which one to adopt), and which, if any, of
the many new movements to expect dancers to memorize. This last issue is much
on my mind, as the contra vocabulary has more than tripled since I started
dancing. Do we really want to go down that road?
Getting back to the issue of gender-free terms (though I’ve changed the subject
line to allow more general discussion), I hope that here, as elsewhere, we can
feel free to experiment and not feel constrained by what other people and
groups are doing.
Tony Parkes
Billerica, Mass.
www.hands4.com<http://www.hands4.com>
New book: Square Dance Calling (ready Summer 2017)
