CONTRA AND CONTRADICTION:
Gender and Agency within a Social Dance Community
Shaina Kapeluck
Sociology/Anthropology Directed Research
Warren Wilson College, 2006
Abstract
This research explores the ways in which gender roles are shifting within the extended contradance community in Asheville and around New England. Though at first glance, the structure of contra dance (a couples’ dance) appears binary, current dancers are re-interpreting its structure. Anyone, regardless of their gender identity, can dance the ‘gents’ or ‘ladies’ role, highlighting performative aspects of gender and opening the discussion of power dynamics between dance partners. In my observations and interviews, I found dancers to be striving towards a sense of their own agency over this binary structure, in the ways it governs dress, movement, and nonverbal communication.
Introduction
I have been a part of the contra dance community since my early teens, attending local dances and working as a vendor at large-scale annual dance festivals around New England. Growing up in rural upstate New York, where there was no cohesive ‘gay community’, and where a boy could get in-school suspension for wearing a skirt, I was always attracted to the attitudes towards gender that I encountered at the dances. Even though they proved a striking contrast to conceptions of gender in other social spheres, I never once looked askance at these aspects of the dance community. I took it for granted until college, when I began to acquire vocabulary such as ‘essentialism’ and ‘binary gender system’, and cast a critical eye on the gendering system I had come to accept.
Contra, as a dance form, engages participants in what, at first glance, appears to be a clearly-delineated binary structure. A dancer is always dancing one of two roles, and these two roles are gendered in their titles. (except in the case of ‘gender-role-free’ contras, which I will discuss later.) Throughout this text, I shall refer to these roles as ‘ladies’ and ‘gents’ respectively, as the majority of callers do, to distinguish the roles from the gender identities of my informants. The caller’s instructions are directed, for the most part, at either one role or the other. Dancers interact with one another based on both the caller’s instructions and the roles ascribed to the other dancers in the line. As restrictive as this may sound, it is the ways in which the community approaches who can perform these roles, and how, that makes the contra dance community unique, I feel, among ‘traditional’ folk dance communities.
What is Contra Dance?
It is difficult to describe an authoritative, linear history of contra dance. Though a dance form referred to as ‘contra dance’ has been popular in New England since it was colonized, at this point in its conception, contra is hardly about historical re-construction. Knowledge of the dance’s history is not required in order to participate in this dance community, nor is it frequently emphasized during the course of a given dance. The opportunity to alter the dance steps to one’s own liking is part of what makes contra popular today. Still, a bit of background, as well as a basic outline of the dance form as it currently exists, will help to clarify my further descriptions of this community. The term “contra-dance” is enmeshed in folk-etymology to the degree that there is no authoritative answer to whether the ‘contra’ in it’s title is a mutation of ‘country dance’ or the French word contre, meaning ‘facing’ or ‘opposite’. Either explanation would be apt, and has evidence to support it, as contra dance has roots in English Country Dance, but also draws from French influence, and dancers line up to face one another up and down the dance hall. This format, described in New England as ‘longways –for as many as will’ is usually what comes to mind when people think of ‘contra dance’ today. “Between 1650 and 1728 this form gradually superceded all others in popularity so that the term country dance came to be primarily, often exclusively, the longways type.” (Holden, 3) Contra became fashionable among English and French high society despite, and because of, it’s peasant agricultural roots. Its favor among multiple social strata was a factor in its staying power once contra crossed the Atlantic.
Contra suffered a fallow period in the United States which is not well-documented. It never quite went away in parts of New England, but American ‘folk revivals’ before the 1960’s didn’t rekindle widespread interest in the form. The information I could find about contra in the 1930’s came from interviews with older dancers from that era, so perhaps a lack of ethnographic research on social dance before the 1970 contributed to my impression of said ‘fallow period’. In 1934, for instance, Ed Larkin, of Royalton, Vermont, put together a group of ‘exhibition’ contra dancers, meant to demonstrate the sort of dances he encountered in his youth at events such as the 1940 World’s Fair. (Nevell, 95) One recently-composed contra dance, “For Those Who Cared” was “dedicated to the people who kept dancing alive in the 1940s, when not many people were interested.” (Jennings, 110) Contra dance picked up more amplified attention around the early 70’s, when a new demographic began showing an interest in the form, what one of my informants, David, described as:
“back to the land’ population…and then there were a lot of hippies… We had a few college kids. In the late 70’s there were actually quite a few college kids, around here, around Amherst, where they have all the colleges. I think that contra dancing kind of brought them all together very quickly.”
These ‘back to the land’ dancers could well have been drawn to contra dancing by the same pastoral allure that the form once held for French and English ‘dancing masters’. In any event, this new crowd made contra dancing popular and visible again, and, in turn, attracted a,
“new generation that longed for the rural idyll [but] also liked rock and roll, and it included fewer and fewer farmers, more computer programmers and engineers who commuted to dances, drove hours to hear hot bands…wanted more challenging moves.” (Collins, 2)
With each influx of new dancers, the scene expanded, and its expectations and attitudes changed. One noteworthy shift was the breakaway of some GLBT contra dancers to form the ‘gender free’, or ‘gender-role free’ contra community.
A contemporary contra dance consists of those same ‘longways’ dances, usually between two and five lines of pairs of dancers, with the band, and the caller, at one end. The caller will repeat a sequence of moves by which these dancers will interact with their partners and other dancers in the line, as couples ‘progress’ up or down the hall. Calls are to the rhythm of the music provided by a dance band, in a patois which is familiar to seasoned dancers but virtually meaningless elsewhere, a hybrid of pidgin French and English. I will describe individual moves, such as ‘gents allemande’ or ‘ladies chain’ as needed throughout this text. Every dance includes an opportunity to ‘swing your partner’ and, usually, an opportunity to swing every dancer in the line who is dancing the opposite role, so, by the end of the night, it is possible to have danced with every person in the room.
Previous Research
The relationship between dance and ethnographic research is always shifting. Early influences include “…the European tradition of dance ethnology and folklore studies…where the analyses of dance forms and traditions take precedence over the social and cultural contexts of their performance.” (Thomas, 66) Feminist and post-structuralist critiques of performance-oriented dance-forms such as modern dance and ballet are also informative to this discourse. (Aalten, 42) Social dance is a more difficult topic to examine, due in part to the challenges involved in analyzing non-verbal communication. The lack of ‘standardized notational system or language to represent dance’ does create space for ethnographers such as David Walsh, Dick Hebdige, or myself to instead take on issues within a dance community, issues of race, class, power and gender, as opposed to examining these same issues concretely in terms choreography or use of space. David Walsh discusses the construction of gay identity within the disco community, and Dick Hebdige’s descriptions of punk dance forms are incidental to his larger discussion of social issues in Britain at the time. To a certain extent, I take up that invitation, and much of my research focuses on aspects of the contra dance community that will stand still for their portrait: issues of gender relating to dress, social dynamics between dancers as members of the same community. Still, a portion of my research addresses directly the spaces negotiated by dancers, and the shifting exchange of power as dictated by the caller and interpreted by the dancers within their roles. In each case, I draw some of my inspiration from theorists whose work discusses social arenas other than dance. At the same time, I am attempting to examine the formal and informal choreographies of a social dance community from a similar angle to the post-structuralist and feminist theorists, whose work focuses on performed dance, such as Anna Aalten in her discussion of ballet. In my research, I am implying that social dance is no less about performance, or different uses and representations of bodies.
Contra dance attracts me as an enthnographer not only in its familiarity and uniqueness, but also as an ideal site to test out some theoretical approaches that inspire me, and see where their weaknesses may be. I do not presume to be ‘speaking for’ the members of the dance community with whom I spoke, nor do I want to imply that I am stepping in and improving matters in some way by means of my research. I can say, however, that the issue of gender expression proved to be a fertile topic that sparked a great deal of interest among contra dancers. I also feel that as limiting as a language which reinforces binary systems (much like the one in which this paper is written) may be, research on the subject of the nonverbal ways we subvert those expectations can help to change the way dancers, and ethnographers, discuss and use gender.
Methodology
As a longtime contra dancer, my access to the community was based on friendships which consisted primarily of nonverbal interactions on the dance floor. Dancing with the same people at various events over the course of my adolescence creates a sort of close acquaintance relationship with whole roomfuls of people, one in which our brief conversations seldom, if ever, strayed from the topic of dance. My informants were all people I knew in this way, thus, arranging to meet and discuss the one thing I knew we held in common was an invitation that none of my intended subjects rejected. The subject of gender, however, which was always stated as secondary to discussion of dance, seemed to be a more tender issue for dancers who have participated in the contra community over the course of several decades. This may have to do with the fact that college-age dancers (as two of my informants are) are more likely to be familiar with open discussions of gender. Two interviews took place in dance halls before or after a dance, others at various locations convenient for my subjects. My subjects include two college-aged dancers, Adam and Hannah, who identify as male and female, respectively. My three other subjects have been dancing longer, and have watched the community evolve to a greater extent. David is a caller as well as a dancer, who identifies as male. I interviewed Nikki and her partner Kim together in a focus-group format, as they have been attending dances together for nearly a decade and have much to contribute to one another’s narratives. Both identify as female. None of my informants elected to use a pseudonym, though they were presented with the option in the IRB form.
My field observations took place at the Old Farmer’s Ball in Swannanoa, the Grey Eagle Monday night contra in Asheville, at the Ashokan New Year’s Contra in upstate New York, and the weekly contras that occur in Greenfield, Massachusetts and Peterborough, New Hampshire, respectively. Generally speaking, contra dances take place in structures designed for other purposes: libraries, school gymnasiums, community centers, and other public buildings. In that none of these spaces were constructed with dance in mind, dancers alter the dance to suit their surroundings. The Old Farmer’s Ball takes place in a gym on the Warren Wilson campus, and the Grey Eagle dance in a small concert hall, with the dancers lining up sideways instead of facing the band, due to the width of the stage. The Ashokan dances take place in a low-ceilinged, dimly-lit building which serves as a cafeteria for a summer camp. The Greenfield dance is housed in the Guiding Star Grange Hall, with a creaky wooden floor and similar lighting to the Ashokan dance. This dim lighting tends to foster a sneaky, seductive dance style which is somewhat inhibited by the setting of the “Town House’ where the Peterborough dances go on: a large, clean, well-lit hall with high ceilings and white walls. My fieldnotes include, on occasion, quotes from the callers instructing the roomful of dancers both before and during dancers. Excerpts from these calls appear in my research as cited. I also include, from time to time, observations accrued over my years of dancing before the year I began my research.
The primary challenge I encountered in my field observations is one to which Andrew H. Ward attributes the lack of enthnography on social dance. When a dancer is performing onstage, an observer is positioned to read easily whatever meanings they wish to derive. In the case of contra dance, the room is full of dancers moving in relative synchrony, performing for one another. The stage is the domain of the band, and the caller. In order to get a sense of what dancers were doing, I observed each dance from multiple locations in the room, dancing one dance, and then observing the following dance from various seats among the rows of folding chairs usually found flanking the perimeter of the dance hall. When in the throes of a dance, I get a sense of what each dancer in the line is doing as I progress up or down a line, but only the people in that given line. From outside the rectangular mass of dancers, I only see the dancers along the borders of that mass. Early on in my field observations, I attempted to remain passive, dancing only if asked and taking notes the rest of the time. Soon enough I came to realize that as a member of the community, I was ‘interfering’ more with my subjects by not behaving as I would if I were there merely to dance. Even without asking others to dance with me, I found myself dancing various roles with male or female partners. When I did initiate dances, I asked both men and women to dance, and danced whatever role they seemed most comfortable with my dancing. A contra dancer is in perpetual motion throughout the length of a given dance, so my notes from within the mass of dancers are impressions recorded in retrospect between individual dances.