One thing about me is that I go contra dancing. For those of you not involved in the weirdly specific niche that is contra dancing, allow me to explain: Contra dancing is what would happen if swing dancing, Appalachian line dancing, and country square dancing had a passionate three way one night and then the strange bastard child that came of their union went off to college and decided to become a traveling musician. If that doesn’t help, this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YtE2lRhjUI&ab_channel=komaid) might not either but it’s worth a try. So the thing about contra dancing, as with most forms of social dancing (think ballroom, swing, latin dance, english dance, anything with a partner) is that it has two roles. The role of lead and the role of follow. And traditionally (again, as with most forms of partner dance) the lead is danced by a male-identifying person and the follow is danced by a female-identifying person. But there’s nothing about the lead role that demands a male identifying person dance in that role and nothing about the follow that demands a female identifying person. The lead and follow roles are also referred to as the gents and ladies, or jets and rubies, or the person coming out of the swing on the left and the person coming out of the swing on the right (all these titles are respective to the original ‘lead’ and ‘follow’—you figure it out). I’m certain there are more titles but that’s the extent of my knowledge.
Another thing about conta is that depending on where and when you dance, the dancers are of varying ages. This seems self evident but the truth is dances in more socially liberally climates tend have more female presenting people dancing lead roles and vice versa (not that there are only two genders and people who don’t fall into the gender binary also dance contra, but there are genders that are societally pressured to correspond with the dance role of lead and follow). Statistically, people in socially liberal climates tend to deviate more from societal gender roles as a whole and unsurprisingly this extends to dance. But even within those socially liberal climates folks in the older age bracket tend to dance the role that corresponds with their gender identity. That said, I’ve met plenty of women of an older generation than me (a female identifying person) who are happy to dance with me as long as I dance in the ‘lead’ role. From what I have noticed the same pertains to older male identifying people although they tend to make a bigger deal out of it. Like ‘look at me! I’m so liberal for accepting this man in the follow role’ which seems to be the equivalent of giving men a recognition for not being sexist. Also, in my expierience it gives older or more conservative minded people (most of the world is more conservative minded than me) more pause when a female presenting person is leading and a male presenting person is following than if two female presenting people or two male presenting people are dancing.
The caller (the person teaching the contra dance) may use any of the terminologies for lead or follow. I find it interesting that at many of the ‘gender neutral contas’ that I’ve been to (of which there are surprisingly many including a weekly dance in Brooklyn which you, dear reader, should check out if you’re ever in the area) the popular terminology tends towards ‘rubies’ and ‘jets’ which I think is weird, given the original names for the roles ‘lead’ and ‘follow’ are gender neutral.
Sequal coming (although maybe not next post): Contra and consent
Later: Monya
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