Jeff, me too...if you find it, share please. mary "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn't hear the music." - Nietzsche
“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass ... it's about learning to dance in the rain!” ~ unknown On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 9:58 AM Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers < contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > Aside: does anyone have a copy of the "I am not a lady" essay? I'd be > interested to read it. > > Jeff > > On Wed, Feb 8, 2023 at 9:54 AM Tony Parkes via Contra Callers < > contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > >> Joe Harrington wrote: >> >> >> >> *> *When I started dancing in the late 1980s… Callers were taking the >> revolutionary step of not calling "men" and "women" but rather using >> "ladies" and "gents", to signal that switching roles was ok, since nobody >> referred to themselves as a "lady" or a "gent" in casual conversation. >> >> >> >> Where was this, Joe? And are you talking about contra callers (rather >> than ECD)? I can only speak about the NYC area in the 1960s and early ’70s, >> and New England starting in the late ’60s and continuing to the present. In >> both regions, square/contra callers (contras were a subcategory of square >> dance until around 1975) universally used “gents/ladies.” (I believe ECD >> teachers have always used “men/women,” presumably emulating Playford and >> Cecil Sharp.) AFAIK, northeastern callers pretty consistently used >> “gents/ladies” until some of them started to move away from gender-related >> terms. Tolman and Page’s *Country Dance Book* (1937) uses >> “gents/ladies,” as do most of the other standard American dance books from >> the 1900s to the 1950s (a few, aimed at schoolteachers, use “boys/girls”). >> >> >> >> I know of no region where callers changed from “men/women” to >> “gents/ladies.” I know that some callers, beginning I think in the ’80s, >> changed from “gents/ladies” to “men/women,” feeling that “gentlemen” and >> “ladies” smacked of classism. (One female caller, in an essay titled “I am >> not a lady,” requested that other callers not use her contra compositions >> if they adhered to “gents/ladies.”) As an amateur (= lover) of dance >> history, I would like to know about past changes of which I was unaware. >> >> >> >> Tony Parkes >> >> Billerica, Mass. >> >> www.hands4.com >> >> New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century >> >> (available now) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net >> To unsubscribe send an email to >> contracallers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net >> > _______________________________________________ > Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net > To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net >
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