Hi Jeff, Some points:
"You're classifying everyone who attends a dance with gender-free calling as having wanting it to be gender free, but I'm sure some are attending in spite of it being gender free, and many more don't care either way." If that's the case, one would assume there are also plenty of traditional venue dancers who don't care either way. To that effect, genderfree roles are not as scary as some have claimed. "The particular dances that have been gender free for a long time are mostly doing fine, but it doesn't look to me like they're growing tremendously. Instead, newer fast-growing dances are either started as gender free or are switching to it. I don't think the causality goes the way you're suggesting." Dances using gents/ladies up and down the East coast are dwindling in attendance. I'm hearing that from nearly every organizer I speak with. I don't understand discounting new dances at all. If there was a demand for a genderfree dance, and it was filled, how is that not proof of growth of overall genderfree dancing? "Some pushback seems reasonable to me. Just like I think people should be able to dance either role at any contra dance, I think all contra dances should move to being gender free. Not immediately -- it's fine to take some more time to consense on terms, have some brave dances try them out, have callers get used to calling them -- but I do think moving entirely to gender free terms is what we should be doing as a community." That may be in many peoples' beliefs, but I hadn't seen it specifically brought up by anyone in this email discussion until now. I might have understood pushback had it been brought up, but it wasn't. Best, Ron On Jan 27, 2017 12:58 PM, "Jeff Kaufman" <j...@alum.swarthmore.edu> wrote: On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Ron Blechner via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > To answer your question, though, about how many dancers want genderfree > terms, at least ten dances are genderfree, and I bet we can poll those > dances and find out how many active dancers they have. While the Western > Mass one by me is a little low, dances like Brooklyn, Portland Maine, and > Montpelier second Saturday boast very large crowds, and that's just ones > I've personally attended. There's queer dance camps, too. Clearly there's a > demand. I realize "huge" is a relative number, but we can safely agree on > several thousand dancers as a safe low estimate of dancers who want gender > free roles. You're classifying everyone who attends a dance with gender-free calling as having wanting it to be gender free, but I'm sure some are attending in spite of it being gender free, and many more don't care either way. > These genderfree dances exist, some for 39 years, they've grown tremendously > in the last 5 years *while many traditional dances are losing attendance*. That's not what it looks like to me. The particular dances that have been gender free for a long time are mostly doing fine, but it doesn't look to me like they're growing tremendously. Instead, newer fast-growing dances are either started as gender free or are switching to it. I don't think the causality goes the way you're suggesting. > This isn't some existential threat to non-genderfree > traditional dances. Let us talk. Some pushback seems reasonable to me. Just like I think people should be able to dance either role at any contra dance, I think all contra dances should move to being gender free. Not immediately -- it's fine to take some more time to consense on terms, have some brave dances try them out, have callers get used to calling them -- but I do think moving entirely to gender free terms is what we should be doing as a community. Jeff