At the Ralph Page Legacy day last month, Chrissy Fowler did a session in which she called dances as she called them at different times in her career. In it, she talked about how, at one point, she and other female callers were insisting on the term "women" because they weren't ladies, and then several years later they were insisting on the term "ladies" because that was understood to be the name of a role.
I can't give a year when it happened, but I do believe I remember a time when at least some callers were making it explicitly clear that the terms Gents and Ladies referred to roles, and anybody could dance either role. Jacob On Wed, Feb 8, 2023, 2:29 PM Tony Parkes via Contra Callers < contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote: > I believe it’s in Myrtle Wilhite’s *Lullaby of the Swing and other contra > dances, tunes, waltzes, and essays* (Madison, WI, 1993). I can’t lay my > hand on my copy at the moment, but perhaps someone else has one. > > > > Tony Parkes > > Billerica, Mass. > > www.hands4.com > > New book! Square Dance Calling: An Old Art for a New Century > > (available now) > > > > > > *From:* Mary Collins <native...@gmail.com> > *Sent:* Wednesday, February 8, 2023 2:11 PM > *To:* Jeff Kaufman <j...@alum.swarthmore.edu> > *Cc:* Tony Parkes <t...@hands4.com>; Joe Harrington < > contradancer...@gmail.com>; contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net > *Subject:* Re: [Callers] Re: Gentlespoons/Ladles (from Rompin' Stompin') > > > > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net > To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net >
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