Picture of “SwingingOUT” Group in Toronto, Canada.
I’ve heard that there are a couple of lindy hoppers who are working on creating a LGBTQ-friendly swing and blues dance in New York City, which I say is long past due. Other places like San Francisco and Toronto have had long-standing queer-friendly swing dances for years and years. Given the large gay population in New York, and the large percentage of gay folk who like to dance, this just makes so much sense.
That said, it’s not clear to me how this will play out in the NYC lindy community.
Lindy hop is of course a vernacular social dance that carries with it the mores of the era from whence is was created: the 1920s-1940s. Back then, it was clearly understood that the men led the dance and the women followed. That said, women leading women was apparently not uncommon, as this 1939 footage shows. And you can see Al Minns and Leon James dancing together at the 2:30 mark of this badass dance showcase. But beyond these exceptions, it was generally accepted that the male was in the “leadership” role and the female in the “follower” role.
And so it is to this day. At every swing dance you go to anywhere on the planet, 99% of the dance community follows these gender roles.
There are a couple of possible responses to this situation:
- Accept it as a necessary part of the dance that shouldn’t change
- Challenge it as an archaic, sexist, homophobic practice that should be abolished
It looks like the organizers of this new NYC dance are seeking a middle path: creating an alternative space that is open to alternatives to the dominant gender roles. I’m curious to see what happens, and supportive of the effort. Frankly, I think that the lindy hop community has to evolve our definitions of “leader” and “follower” in order for it to survive and remain viable as a dance form.
One recent incident brought the issue home for me.
I was in a swing class with a bunch of beginner and intermediate dancers learning about connection and lindy frame. The male instructor happened to know one of the male dancers who liked to lead and follow (or was “ambidancestrous” as another dancer Mary Christenson coined to me.) So the instructor asked the male dancer to be his dance partner, to demonstrate a move for the class.
“Cool,” I thought. “This will be help people to be more open-minded about dance roles and gender roles.”
There were also a couple of female leads in the class, which added some nice diversity, I observed.
This was all well and good, except that for the entire class, the instructor kept referring to the leads as “gentlemen” and the followers as “ladies.” Even when he was dancing with another guy, he would say, “And ladies, I want you to do the following….”
And then he would refer to the leads by saying, “Gentlemen, here’s some of what I’m seeing.” This, despite that fact that there were two female leads.
It was just… weird and awkward.
Now I’m not saying the instructor was sexist. But he was perhaps being less mindful of how language informs and reinforces specific gender roles and heirarchies. I have to imagine what a transgender person or just a straight guy who likes to follow would feel like. They would feel like they were doing dancing lindy hop wrong.
From a historic perspective, lindy hop has always challenged the mores of its day. The Savoy Ballroom was one of the first integrated dancefloors in the country where blacks and whites could socialize and dance together freely. Lindy combines elements of various cultures — from African dance to tap and ballroom — into something uniquely American. Swing has always been about freedom and joyful abandon.
In 2010, it should be a welcoming space for people of any sexual orientation or identity.
Thanks to the nice folks at SwingingOUT in Toronto for letting me use the pic above. Check out their website and more photos at http://www.swinginout.ca.
I really don’t understand the need for swing clubs that cater specifically to the LGBT community, nor do I understand what that has to do with gender roles in dancing. Does one need to be gay in order to switch roles, or are gay people more likely to want to? Why don’t we all just dance together in whatever role we choose? Oh wait, we already do.
That being said… I don’t think our typical gender roles are archaic or sexist at all. In lindy hop, 99.9% of guys look better when they lead and 99.9% of girls look better when they follow. The movements were developed to work better for our respective physiologies. Furthermore, neither role is any better or more dominant than the other. They’re just different.
With respect, I think you may have contradicted yourself. In your first para you said that people “dance together in whatever role we choose” while in the second para you state that guys “look better” when they lead and girls “look better” when they follow.
If we continue to maintain that it just “looks better” for people to inhabit certain gender roles, I think we aren’t creating spaces that welcome everyone to inhabit “whatever role we choose.”
I’m sure in the 1940s, people maintained that blacks just looked better dancing with blacks than they did dancing with whites.
Thanks for the excellent post, Rik.
I think a lot of dance teachers are in the same type of place as the person you mentioned: by demoing with a male follow, he showed his support for breaking the prescriptive gendered roles, but then his language sends–probably unintentionally–the opposite message. Most teachers are comfortable both leading and following, but still use gendered pronouns in class.
I sympathize–it’s a hard habit to break! When I started teaching ambidancetrous classes, it felt really awkward to say, “Leads, you’re going to take the follow’s right hand and…” and never say “lead *her*” or “wait for *him*.” But, I got used to it after a month or so, and now it feels natural.
Rik, with respect, I would like to use this post in a compilation project I’m doing on gender roles in social dancing (specifically lindy hop). Please let me know if this would be alright.
@Bryn: If you were a transgendered individual, which gender role would “look better” on you? When you realize that there is no definite answer to that question, I think you will realize the answers to the questions you ponder in your first paragraph.
What I’m saying is, it’s about the right NOT to choose. I, personally, do not. I identify as neither a lead nor a follow. I have more experience in one than the other, but I do not isolate myself to one role– ever. This project is about keeping an open mind.
Furthermore, regarding your final paragraph, all I have to say is that lindy hop is not about looks at all; it’s about FEEL.
@Rik/@Mary: I’m hoping that this new wave will stimulate such changes as the ability to choose both/either lead and/or follow when registering for exchanges and workshop weekend. I’ve flat-out not registered for things because the form wouldn’t allow me to process registration without answering that question, a question that I refuse to answer.
Jan Marie, that is of course fine to use this post.
thanks for your comments.
Hi, I am a gay man living in New York City who both leads and follows. I dance with both gay and straight men—and women all the time. In my experience, very few people seem to care what sex I am, instead, people care about how much fun a dance is.
Every now and then, some guy will feel uncomfortable if I ask him to dance, but more often than not, even in other cities, the guy will say “yes”. Once he realizes that I really do follow, i.e. you get what you lead—they usually pull out all the stops. Which I think could be an interesting topic. I don’t feel comfortable leading all the most challenging stuff with a woman I don’t already know well, but it is different with a man… and I think most guys are like that.
My comments:
1) If you connect ambidancestrous dancing to sexual identity you are going to confuse a lot of straight people into thinking that same-sex dancing is “queer,” and it’s not.
(The proof of this is that I know very few queer dancers but *all* of my dance friends enjoy ambidancestrous dancing, or would like to try it.)
2) “I’ve heard that there are a couple of lindy hoppers who are working on creating a LGBTQ-friendly swing and blues dance in New York City, which I say is long past due.”
I disagree. To the extent of my knowledge, *all* of the dance events in New York City are LGBTQ-friendly, unless you can cite specific examples of homophobia or discrimination occurring at said events.
3) As such, if you wanted to create a dance event that catered specifically to queers you probably should be part of the community in the first place, and then host it in a venue where members of the queer community congregate, like, let’s say, the LGBT Center on 13th St. (gaycenter.org).
This is similar to if I were to organize a dance aimed at the Jewish community, I would host it in a synagogue or Hillel… etc.
Hopefully, though, gays and Jews and black people and Asians and white people and everyone else can go to any dance event anywhere and feel perfectly comfortable and not ostracized or discriminated against. As far as I am aware, that is the case in NYC (and everyplace else I’ve danced).
@Yakov: “To the extent of my knowledge, *all* of the dance events in New York City are LGBTQ-friendly, unless you can cite specific examples of homophobia or discrimination occurring at said events.” I can, in fact, cite specific examples. I have been to formal events (Swing Remix, for example), at which the lesson was taught by a man (lead), woman (follow) duo, who did not refer to leads as leads but instead as men, likewise with women instead of follows. The dynamic this created was IMMEDIATELY APPARENT AND DETRIMENTAL for me, personally, a woman who entered said beginner lesson as a lead. I was confronted with follow after follow (all women), who PERSONALLY INSULTED MY CHOICE TO LEAD, ACCUSING ME OF BEING A LESBIAN. Example enough?
You may know a lot of ambi- dancers, but I know a lot of people (mostly men), who would never even *think* of dancing with someone of the same sex BECAUSE they’ve confused queerness and ambidanctrousness. The point *I’m* trying to make is not that to dance ambi- is to be queer; my point is that to dance–period–is to be afforded an understanding, and to know both leading and following is important. The twist of the knife is that when gender identity and sexual preference get weaved into this basic fact, people put up barriers because of their preconceived notions about gender identity and sexual preference. I don’t think people are inherently anti-ambi-, but I do think that a lot of people are societally conditioned to be homophobic.
Regarding the check boxes, again, the fact that it can’t be fluid, that everyone is not encouraged to try both sides, is upsetting to me. I may want to take a workshop on turning as a follow but a workshop on connection clarity and relieving muscle tension as a lead. I, AS AN ORGANIZER MYSELF, see no problem with this fluidity. It only screws up rotation if the teachers get it in their heads that it will. If they make everyone open to it, it works out really well. I’ve seen this to be true in my local dance scene(s).
“[story]… Example enough?”
Yep! That’s a very good example. I think it points to a teaching technique problem that I never thought of before. As a teacher (I used to teach a lot back in the day, and someday will probably get back into it) I appreciate hearing about this issue. Thanks for raising it.
“You may know a lot of ambi- dancers, but I know a lot of people (mostly men)”
Right, and most of my dancer friends are women. I think more women in the dance scene are ambi than men.
I think there are fundamental differences between men and women. For some reason [straight] women seem to be in general more comfortable physically engaging each other than men — both in the lindy world and in the general world.
It could have to do with anatomy. Men definitely do not want to come in contact with each other’s junk. I’ve heard from follows I trust that I’m a good blues lead, so I think I lead blues properly, but when I lead on a guy my upper thigh can be pretty close to coming in contact with something I really don’t want to come in contact with, especially because — since men don’t have boobs — I have to come a lot closer to get a chest connection. And on the other hand, FOLLOWING blues led by a guy, I’m always sort of nervous that I’m going to be kneed in the balls, partly because, well, it’s happened.
None of this is an issue with open position dancing or swingouts, in which I’m very very happy to dance with dudes.
“I may want to take a workshop on turning as a follow but a workshop on connection clarity and relieving muscle tension as a lead. I, AS AN ORGANIZER MYSELF, see no problem with this fluidity.”
So there should be checkboxes per individual workshop. That sounds manageable. You could probably contact the relevant event organizers with your concern and you’d probably be accommodated.
Either way at least you’ll be letting them know what the issue is, which strikes me as being a better way to create change than by simply boycotting events and not telling anyone what happened or why until Rik happens to blog about it.
“Either way at least you’ll be letting them know what the issue is, which strikes me as being a better way to create change than by simply boycotting events and not telling anyone what happened or why until Rik happens to blog about it.”
I *always* notify organizers when they are marketing an event in a way that doesn’t please me. Some scenes have been contacted more than others… haha
I don’t think that there is any question that lindy hop venues are rife with homophobia. I imagine an openly gay or transgender person has a much harder time as a hip-hop dancer than as a lindy hopper for example.
The question is how are ensuring that we are creating spaces that are welcoming to as many sorts of folks that we’d like to participate: young, old, overweight, disabled, queer, etc.
Making spaces more friendly? Be friendly, and do your part to make cross-dancing the new normal (if you aren’t a cross-dancer, dance with someone who is).
And by calling teachers publicly on it when they use gendered language, when all they mean is lead/follow. (Thus far, I’ve never heard anyone (other than me) do this.)
Declaring a w/s role: I always declare as a lead (I am “read” as a follow), but whenever it would help the balance AND I am out in rotation, I switch (for those few minutes): 2 fewer folks out. Odly, though I am certainly Out to anyone who notices these things, switching roles in a class makes otherwise homophobic strangers less nervous (hmmm…).
Consuelo is sure right about the value of switching in when the class has an uneven number of leads and follows. In my experience, everyone is grateful that they don’t have to sit out quite so much. And I think for many less experienced dancers this is their first experience of amibidancterity (if that’s actually a word).
And I’ve experienced more awkward moments in classes, than at any dance in NYC. Those awkward moments have to do with individual teachers much more than with the students. When a man follows or a women leads in class, less experienced dancers are unconsciously looking for an example of how to react to it.
Those teachers that act like it’s normal provide a great example for beginners to adopt. Whereas those teachers who continually refer to follows as women, even when I’m following in a class accidentally reinforce the idea that gender and role are predetermined by what’s in your underwear.
I have never learned to dance blues or balboa because I just don’t want to have my pelvis that close to anyone other than my husband of 16 years. And I’d be very uncomfortable following anyone that close, but I guess that’s just my hang up.
One of the things I like best about lindy is that the dance is fundamentally asexual. Unless both dancers are 100% committed to making it romantic, it just isn’t going to be.
-Kevin
As Rik pointed out, I think much of this is about creating a safe space for people to feel comfortable dancing in the roles that they desire. As far as what makes that space comfortable, that will likely be different for everyone.
I do have to say that I would hope that the sexual orientation of the organizer (or even the extent of their involvement in the LGBTS community) would not be a cause for distress at an event like this. Though it would be great to reach out to members of the LGBTS community in an area like the village, I think suggesting that this is the only place an event like this can or should be started/take place is just as limiting as some of the problems mentioned above. I’d hate to have to hang out in a synagogue all the time just because I’m Jewish or because I want to run a Jew targeted event. I have no doubt that being an involved member of the LGBTS community would be an asset in running an event of this sort, but I just don’t think imposing these kinds of limitations is going to help anyone. It might even act as a deterrent for dancers who identify as straight, but are interested in dancing both roles. An all inclusive event will be a great way to way to encourage people to be more aware and hopefully more accepting throughout the dance community.
In addition, the use of gender specific roles for lead/follow can be problematic in any dance setting regardless of the sexuality of the ambidancetrous dancer. I personally have encountered many competitions where I would have loved to enter with a same sex partner, but the rules would not allow it. I think an event like this will be great to raise awareness of these kinds of issues in our dance scene. Hopefully, some of that awareness will start to spill over and will make all of our dance events more comfortable for those of us interested in more fluidity between dance roles.