Playing Well With Others

[akirlu]

In celebration of the end of Don't Ask/Don't Tell, and prompted by celebrations of inclusiveness passim, I wanted to take a moment to mention one of the (multiple) highlights of Bentocon: the gay square dancing.

I had of course read about David and Kate's adventures in gay square dance in Bento, and been curious. I had even had a hand in providing Kate with restaurant suggestions¹ for a fly-in in Orange County some years back, and met up with David and Kate at that dance event. I had picked up some of the notable differences between straight square dance clubs and gay, and already had the sense that the gay square dance community (not unlike roller derby) is exceptionally inclusive, but Bentocon provided not only the live demonstration but the extended, live-action, interactive footnote. Which is to say, before we danced the dance, there was an explanatory panel. (Bentocon was a lot about "I'll show you my fandom if you show me yours.")

The questions that the SF fans asked highlighted a lot of the differences between (and some unexpected similarities among) straight and gay clubs, and them and the square dancing that many of us learned in grade- or middle school. Gay clubs dance "modern Western square dancing," which means that the dances are not pre-set whether to a particular piece of music or even in the order specific calls making up a dance that is danced to various music. The caller just calls what he or she thinks will make an interesting sequence and (eventually) get the dancers back to original positions and partners. So necessarily the callers are live, and the music they call to can be any damn' thing that the caller thinks fitting for the mood or effect. There's nothing necessarily Country or even bluegrass about the music. At Bentocon we danced to the disco version of the theme from Star Wars.

Additionally, unlike the straight clubs, no particular costuming is required, no crinolines or Western shirts or boots, unless you wanna. Gay square dancing is also not created around the unit of the couple: Anybody can dance with anybody, and anybody can dance as a 'boy' or a 'girl'. The actual dancing can also be very attractive to geeky folks because there's a lot of the programmer brain that is engaged by the fact that calls are not set in advance, but come moment-to-moment in real time. As I observed at the Bentocon dance, it's a lot like a skill/gimmick rally set to music. And fast.

But to me one of the most interesting (and cool)facets of the gay square dance clubs as opposed to at least some of the straight ones is the open inclusiveness. Gay square dancing started, after all, because there were gay folk who wanted to square dance and were turned away from existing straight clubs. When you get together for a reason like that, it would be normal and expected to feel a bit prickly and build fences around your space. (And indeed when Kate first started dancing with a gay club, it was as a closeted straight, because she didn't know if the other dancers would let her play if she came out as non-gay.) But in reality it's the opposite. You don't have to be gay/lesbian/queer/trans/bi/alphabet to dance in a gay club. No one cares about your orientation; it's a non issue. You don't have to be in a dancing couple, and you don't have to be single (unlike some straight clubs who, if they allow singletons, insist that they also be unattached and available to other singles). You don't have to dance your cisgendered part but you can if you wanna and nobody minds either way.

The stories about how straight clubs can work were fascinating, in a squicky sort of way. Apparently in the straight world, the quantum unit of dancers is the couple. If you attend a dance weekend as a singleton, you will be hooked up with another singleton for the weekend, and you will then be a couple for the weekend, so that the callers and the squares and the registrars can deal with you. You simply do not join a dance as an individual person. You must come pre-partnered. This couple-centric view extends even to bureaucracy: dance clubs or events will have a couple as chairman, a couple as treasurer, a couple as secretary, and so on. Appallingly, some straight clubs are so couples-centric that it is not unknown for a recently widowed dancer to be asked to leave their club! So one source of cross-pollination these days is formerly straight-club dancers joining the local gay club after their partner has died. Because in the gay club, they are still welcome to come and dance.

And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, while both straight and gay clubs are graying out and shrinking, the straight clubs are doing so much faster, and are in much more immanent danger of dying out. Me, I'm hoping to do my part to keep the gay clubs alive longer (though perhaps not less gray) by starting to take lessons with the Puddletown Squares the next time a lesson series comes around on the guitar. I missed the inaugural class for this fall, alas. Then again, with yesterdays stress fracture diagnosis of my left foot, I guess I shouldn't be dancing that much for a while anyway. Still, I'm with them in spirit. And in January I'll be there in leather-soled cowboy boots. Because you may not have to dress Western, but you can.





¹Hal was amused to hear one of the square dancing Bentocon attendees bragging on Kate's amazing restaurant-finding-fu by telling of this amazing Hallal Chinese restaurant that Kate led them to in Tustin. Yeah, that would be Jamilla Garden, which I told her about during her research phase. Happy to help, however remotely.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The panel discussion was very informative to me, because my experience with what I guess might as well be called "traditional" square dancing has been very minimal. My knowledge of Anglo-American set dancing comes exclusively from the country dance side: the spectrum including Regency dancing, English country dancing, contra dancing, and Morris dancing (in increasing order of vigor. And these do not have the social restrictive hangups that "traditional" square dancing does. Morris dancing is traditionally done by same-sex sets; the others allow cross-dancing, and it's particularly common in Regency. Taking different partners from dance to dance is always encouraged, and it's required in Regency, so there's no sense of the couple as an indissoluable unit. Morris and Regency encourage costumes, but except when the set is performing on display for an audience, they're by no means required.

None of those things being true of "traditional" square-dancing, I can see why gay dancing arose there, why this was inevitable, and why the more free-spirited straights are attracted to it. All Is Clear.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had already understood that the gay clubs didn't require costuming, skirts, or arriving partnered up, and so this was already more appealing to me, but I hadn't realized the draconian degree to which the couple-centrism was enforced in at least some traditional clubs. It does indeed make the popularity of gay clubs that much more transparent. I've spent too long in fandom, and with a partner who isn't as interested in dance as I, to want to live under the reign of the Social Monogamy Police.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Stress fracture? Ow.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, in the family tradition, I've been walking around on a sore foot for literally months and finally got in to the orthopod who thinks that's the reason the ball of my foot is sore when I walk on it. So I've got my own boot of shame and I'm supposed to get a bone scan for a better check. It's not big pain or anything, but it's pretty clear that walking/dancing around on it as if nothing were wrong is not the way to get the stupid thing to heal.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting. English ceilidh does not require people to come as couples, and if you do, you are still actively encouraged (though not required, it's a very relaxed environment) to dance with people other than your partner. "Sex is a position not a gender", and by and large, 'man' and 'woman' are used to mean 'person on the left' and 'person on the right', though some callers practice gender neutral calling.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

My everlasting regret is that I didn't just book a couple of extra days onto the end of my TAFF trip so as to stay through the end of Eastercon instead of leaving early Sunday morning, because then I would have had the time to take Ronan Murphy up on his offer to squire me around at the Saturday night ceilidh and show me how it goes. It was the only offer of ceilidh I had all trip long.

But yeah, it is surprising, if not shocking, to hear how the obnoxiously restrictive the 'traditional' square dance clubs can be. I didn't explicitly mention, but apparently even in clubs that don't insist on full crinolines and partner-matched outfits, women are required to wear skirts. All of this is completely alien to my experience in folk- and Regency dance, and even the basic square dancing instruction I had in grade school.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Fascinating stuff, and resonates with my experience of going to clubs like Tugs and the Re-Bar that were LGBT-friendly and tended to be the most tolerant, diverse clubs in Seattle, where a geeky straight guy like myself could feel comfortable dancing alone or with friends of whatever gender.

This made me laugh: At Bentocon we danced to the disco version of the theme from Star Wars.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I did not know that about your club experience. That's cool. It really does my heart good to hear of people who have been pushed out and excluded from other venues still being open and welcoming to everyone, because God knows, that's not the only possible response to being outcast. It gives me a new faith in humans, really.

[paulcarp.livejournal.com]

Probably sideways from topic, but I loved one night at the Re-Bar where a square-dancing couple showed up, in full costume, and danced to a punk band next to the mosh pit. Julie kept saying, "I think they're in the wrong bar, but they seem to be having a good time."

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

An excellent, succinct post on exactly what I've experienced with MWSD in my 28 years being involved as a dancer and a caller!

With your and David and Kate's permission, I would love to be able to post this in the period IAGSDC newletter as an article with the backstory that you aren't currently a dancer with a gay club.

As the invited caller for the event, I was bubbly with joy that the dancers for the little 2 hour dance I called were so into it. It was one of the more eclectic dances I have put together. I don't get that in the standard fun-nighter out in the general world, since general the dancers that come to them have ZERO experience in any form of dance.

Very sorry to hear about your stress fracture! Take it easy on that!

Cheers from Albuquerque!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Gosh, thanks for stopping by! It means a lot that you liked my write-up. By all means, if you want to reprint it, you have my permission. If you need a slight rewrite to add context or whatever, that's fine too.

I think it's safe to say that we all had a marvelous time at the Bentocon dance, and yes, it certainly helped that some of us had dance experience of one sort or another, and that there was a high percentage of "angels" too. I would do it all again in a heartbeat, which is why I'm hoping to get hooked up with the Puddletown Squares at next opportunity.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

How odd. I read this through before I hit 'send' and completely missed my grammatical errors. Apologies for my dearth of brain cells this morning!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Gosh, no worries. I typically find my typos / brain farts only after I hit "post". Except the ones I find months later, when I re-read something. Luckily, with posts, as opposed to comments, I can sneak back in and edit.