Aside: does anyone have a copy of the "I am not a lady" essay? I'd be interested to read it.
Jeff On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 9:54 AM Tony Parkes via Contra Callers < contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > Joe Harrington wrote: > > > > *> *When I started dancing in the late 1980s… Callers were taking the > revolutionary step of not calling "men" and "women" but rather using > "ladies" and "gents", to signal that switching roles was ok, since nobody > referred to themselves as a "lady" or a "gent" in casual conversation. > > > > Where was this, Joe? And are you talking about contra callers (rather than > ECD)? I can only speak about the NYC area in the 1960s and early ’70s, and > New England starting in the late ’60s and continuing to the present. In > both regions, square/contra callers (contras were a subcategory of square > dance until around 1975) universally used “gents/ladies.” (I believe ECD > teachers have always used “men/women,” presumably emulating Playford and > Cecil Sharp.) AFAIK, northeastern callers pretty consistently used > “gents/ladies” until some of them started to move away from gender-related > terms. Tolman and Page’s *Country Dance Book* (1937) uses “gents/ladies,” > as do most of the other standard American dance books from the 1900s to the > 1950s (a few, aimed at schoolteachers, use “boys/girls”). > > > > I know of no region where callers changed from “men/women” to > “gents/ladies.” I know that some callers, beginning I think in the ’80s, > changed from “gents/ladies” to “men/women,” feeling that “gentlemen” and > “ladies” smacked of classism. (One female caller, in an essay titled “I am > not a lady,” requested that other callers not use her contra compositions > if they adhered to “gents/ladies.”) As an amateur (= lover) of dance > history, I would like to know about past changes of which I was unaware. > > > > Tony Parkes > > Billerica, Mass. > > www.hands4.com > > New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century > > (available now) > > > _______________________________________________ > Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net > To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net >
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