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

[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.