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Gender, race and lindy hop
I was at a swing convention this weekend; mostly it was for West Coast Swing (WCS), though there was a fair-sized lindy hop crowd there as well, along with a few Balboa people.
I've been meaning to post on race and gender and lindy for a while but have been too lazy and too tired; also, I would like just one area of my life to not have to deal with this all the time! Ha, wishful thinking, I know.
For this post, I'm categorizing ballroom as standard ballroom (waltz, foxtrot, two-step, etc.) and Latin (salsa, cha-cha, etc.) and throwing in things like hustle and WCS and tango that are sort of in-between (I think?). Though lindy and WCS are both under the "swing" umbrella, they are very different. Lindy's basically the type of swing that you see in movies like Swing Kids and Malcolm X, although social lindy has much fewer aerials. To me, lindy also feels more casual than WCS: the stance is much less upright, there's a bounce in the dance, and the legs are usually much more bent.
Anyway. From what I've seen, the SF Bay Area lindy community is a fairly white community, with a good deal of Asians in the mix. The Asians are usually East Asians, with a few Southeast and South Asians. The little I've seen of the SF Bay Area ballroom community has a fairly similar racial mix, only with fewer Asians. The ballroom community also tends to skew a little older than the lindy community (40-60 vs. 20-40, in my best guess). Both communities seem to be very straight, though I've seen posters for Queer Ballroom up. I'm not sure how much of this is specific to the Bay Area and how much isn't, but from the demographics of the swing convention, which was international and had people traveling, I'm guessing it's not too far from the norm.
And of course, all this is from someone who's only been dancing for about a year or so, so grain of salt, etc. etc.
The gender stuff with partner dancing is pretty obvious. The thing that I do like about the lindy classes I've taken vs. the ballroom classes I've taken is how the lindy instructors will term the roles "lead" and "follow" and stick with these terms. Ballroom classes do as well, but I've noticed that the language usually slips to gendered terms once the class is underway ("Ladies on the right, gentlemen on the left" vs. "Follows on the right, leads on the left"). Usually the breakdown is extremely gendered for all classes, though all the instructors will note that women are welcome to be leads and men are welcome to be follows.
I'm sure all of you can pick out the gender roles and stereotypes that go with leading vs. following -- leads are supposed to listen to follows, but they have to make what they want clear, because they're the ones directing the dance. Follows have to learn to anticipate and read the lead closely. When you get more advanced, there's more room for play -- follows can sort of lead or add accents in their own way to the music, leads can let go of the lead for a little to let the follow show off. And there's an emphasis on mutual respect, but it's very similar to the whole "women are more delicate therefore men must be more sensitive" rhetoric.
The interesting thing about the usual split is that when you come across a man can follow or a woman who can lead, that usually means they're really good dancers -- they've had time to learn both parts. I did see less of this at the ballroom socials I've been to and more at the lindy ones, but again, grain of salt. It also means there's a certain cache in breaking with the female-follow/male-lead dichotomy. On the other hand, it's a cache that comes from knowing both parts; i.e. I have met no one that I know who started out in the "opposite" role.
I feel the gender stuff is more pronounced in ballroom than it is in lindy, though this may be my bias showing. On the other hand, ballroom tends to be more codified and more formal because it's a larger community. I also wonder about the image of ballroom vs. lindy; my general impression is that ballroom's image is formal and romantic for standard ballroom and sexy and sassy for Latin, whereas lindy's is more bouncy and energetic. I get this largely from the costuming and clothing choices, particularly for formal competitions and showcases. Latin in particular is (in)famous for its incredibly revealing outfits for women, and the WCS showcase outfits I saw this weekend were pretty revealing as well, though not as much as Latin.
(As a side note, I realized just how few revealing clothing options are available to men while walking through the SF gay district and being startled by the amount of male flesh revealed (lots of suspenders-no-shirts, pants with cutouts, etc.). And then I realized that it only seemed to be a lot in comparison to the normal amount revealed for men and it wasn't really that much in comparison to all the scantily-clad women we see every day in the media.)
But there's still an undercurrent of homophobia that I suspect has to do with gender roles. This weekend, one of the performances was by two men, mostly done tongue-in-cheek as a parody of some WCS moves, particularly the women shaking their hips/butts. On the other hand, those two men were really damn good, and I am fairly sure the audience recognized that as well. There's also this lindy routine, which reverses lead/follow until a little bit right before the end. And both times, I feel there was the same type of reaction: if the men tried to act too much like women (aka, if they enacted too much of the signifiers that denote "feminine"), there was this general feeling of antipathy. Women acting as leads get less of this. Insert standard double-standard explanation here. And I note this as homophobia because the signifiers that denote "feminine" are almost all sex-related (wiggling of hips, suggestive poses, etc.).
And I haven't even gotten to race! There's the obvious, given the demographics. I wonder if there are POC-centric lindy places around here, which I think is a different question than "ZOMG! Where are all the black and brown folk?" *everyone looks around and shrugs while ignoring the somewhat less visible to certain demographics but still there POC cf Where are all the bloggers of color?* Because if fandom has taught me nothing else, it's that if POC are absent from a certain space, it's usually because that space has not been welcoming to POC (and yes, this is different from "POC don't feel welcome" which puts the blame right back on us). Anyway, I meant to ask if there were POC-centric lindy places around because lindy is a small community and it takes a lot of people and time and money and energy to run a weekly dance, not to mention instructors for lessons, DJs, advertising, etc. And dancing communities seem to be fairly local, since you need to dance in person, which precludes online communities as anything but ancillaries. Don't get me wrong; they are important! But the key component to a dancing community is the dancing.
The general whiteness and interspersed Asian-ness of my dance communities is even more problematic when you look at the history of swing dancing. It, like so many other arts, was taken out of the black community, gentrified, and then spit back out as something that was largely white. And, well, this is why I feel like I've been expecting more from the lindy community.
I ended up going to a panel on the history of swing; it was personal rather than academic, especially given that two out of three of the people on that panel had either shaped the dance itself (lindy and WCS) or had had a lot of contact with people who had originally danced lindy. And there was awareness of past race issues (the Savoy Ballroom where a lot of lindy came from was integrated, unlike many clubs) but not necessarily of current race issues.
And there's this strange tension between the past and the present. My general impression is that lindy hoppers in particular are concerned with the history of the dance because they are in part trying to preserve it as a living dance, not as a museum piece. WCS is too, since both dances come from the same roots, but WCS has gone a lot further from those roots than lindy. Also, I think a lot of lindy that is taught now was pieced together from old routines that remained on film and from the surviving dancers from the Savoy. So there is this great emphasis placed on the past history of lindy because that's exactly where the current lindy revival stems from. But there's still the fact that some time in the middle, lindy became much, much whiter, as has WCS.
So. I am not sure where that leaves me. I am happy that there are a fair number of Asians in WCS and lindy, and even happier that there seem to be a balanced number of Asian men and Asian women (completely non-scientific opinion). On the other hand, the balanced number tends to be with East Asians; I think Southeast Asian leans a little more toward the women and South Asian leans more toward the men. And on the competition level, I feel there are more Asian women than Asian men (again, no stats). And the whitewashing of lindy really, really bugs me. I don't think it's at the point where I will stop dancing, especially because lindy's not as established of a dance as many other partner dances. But still.
I've been meaning to post on race and gender and lindy for a while but have been too lazy and too tired; also, I would like just one area of my life to not have to deal with this all the time! Ha, wishful thinking, I know.
For this post, I'm categorizing ballroom as standard ballroom (waltz, foxtrot, two-step, etc.) and Latin (salsa, cha-cha, etc.) and throwing in things like hustle and WCS and tango that are sort of in-between (I think?). Though lindy and WCS are both under the "swing" umbrella, they are very different. Lindy's basically the type of swing that you see in movies like Swing Kids and Malcolm X, although social lindy has much fewer aerials. To me, lindy also feels more casual than WCS: the stance is much less upright, there's a bounce in the dance, and the legs are usually much more bent.
Anyway. From what I've seen, the SF Bay Area lindy community is a fairly white community, with a good deal of Asians in the mix. The Asians are usually East Asians, with a few Southeast and South Asians. The little I've seen of the SF Bay Area ballroom community has a fairly similar racial mix, only with fewer Asians. The ballroom community also tends to skew a little older than the lindy community (40-60 vs. 20-40, in my best guess). Both communities seem to be very straight, though I've seen posters for Queer Ballroom up. I'm not sure how much of this is specific to the Bay Area and how much isn't, but from the demographics of the swing convention, which was international and had people traveling, I'm guessing it's not too far from the norm.
And of course, all this is from someone who's only been dancing for about a year or so, so grain of salt, etc. etc.
The gender stuff with partner dancing is pretty obvious. The thing that I do like about the lindy classes I've taken vs. the ballroom classes I've taken is how the lindy instructors will term the roles "lead" and "follow" and stick with these terms. Ballroom classes do as well, but I've noticed that the language usually slips to gendered terms once the class is underway ("Ladies on the right, gentlemen on the left" vs. "Follows on the right, leads on the left"). Usually the breakdown is extremely gendered for all classes, though all the instructors will note that women are welcome to be leads and men are welcome to be follows.
I'm sure all of you can pick out the gender roles and stereotypes that go with leading vs. following -- leads are supposed to listen to follows, but they have to make what they want clear, because they're the ones directing the dance. Follows have to learn to anticipate and read the lead closely. When you get more advanced, there's more room for play -- follows can sort of lead or add accents in their own way to the music, leads can let go of the lead for a little to let the follow show off. And there's an emphasis on mutual respect, but it's very similar to the whole "women are more delicate therefore men must be more sensitive" rhetoric.
The interesting thing about the usual split is that when you come across a man can follow or a woman who can lead, that usually means they're really good dancers -- they've had time to learn both parts. I did see less of this at the ballroom socials I've been to and more at the lindy ones, but again, grain of salt. It also means there's a certain cache in breaking with the female-follow/male-lead dichotomy. On the other hand, it's a cache that comes from knowing both parts; i.e. I have met no one that I know who started out in the "opposite" role.
I feel the gender stuff is more pronounced in ballroom than it is in lindy, though this may be my bias showing. On the other hand, ballroom tends to be more codified and more formal because it's a larger community. I also wonder about the image of ballroom vs. lindy; my general impression is that ballroom's image is formal and romantic for standard ballroom and sexy and sassy for Latin, whereas lindy's is more bouncy and energetic. I get this largely from the costuming and clothing choices, particularly for formal competitions and showcases. Latin in particular is (in)famous for its incredibly revealing outfits for women, and the WCS showcase outfits I saw this weekend were pretty revealing as well, though not as much as Latin.
(As a side note, I realized just how few revealing clothing options are available to men while walking through the SF gay district and being startled by the amount of male flesh revealed (lots of suspenders-no-shirts, pants with cutouts, etc.). And then I realized that it only seemed to be a lot in comparison to the normal amount revealed for men and it wasn't really that much in comparison to all the scantily-clad women we see every day in the media.)
But there's still an undercurrent of homophobia that I suspect has to do with gender roles. This weekend, one of the performances was by two men, mostly done tongue-in-cheek as a parody of some WCS moves, particularly the women shaking their hips/butts. On the other hand, those two men were really damn good, and I am fairly sure the audience recognized that as well. There's also this lindy routine, which reverses lead/follow until a little bit right before the end. And both times, I feel there was the same type of reaction: if the men tried to act too much like women (aka, if they enacted too much of the signifiers that denote "feminine"), there was this general feeling of antipathy. Women acting as leads get less of this. Insert standard double-standard explanation here. And I note this as homophobia because the signifiers that denote "feminine" are almost all sex-related (wiggling of hips, suggestive poses, etc.).
And I haven't even gotten to race! There's the obvious, given the demographics. I wonder if there are POC-centric lindy places around here, which I think is a different question than "ZOMG! Where are all the black and brown folk?" *everyone looks around and shrugs while ignoring the somewhat less visible to certain demographics but still there POC cf Where are all the bloggers of color?* Because if fandom has taught me nothing else, it's that if POC are absent from a certain space, it's usually because that space has not been welcoming to POC (and yes, this is different from "POC don't feel welcome" which puts the blame right back on us). Anyway, I meant to ask if there were POC-centric lindy places around because lindy is a small community and it takes a lot of people and time and money and energy to run a weekly dance, not to mention instructors for lessons, DJs, advertising, etc. And dancing communities seem to be fairly local, since you need to dance in person, which precludes online communities as anything but ancillaries. Don't get me wrong; they are important! But the key component to a dancing community is the dancing.
The general whiteness and interspersed Asian-ness of my dance communities is even more problematic when you look at the history of swing dancing. It, like so many other arts, was taken out of the black community, gentrified, and then spit back out as something that was largely white. And, well, this is why I feel like I've been expecting more from the lindy community.
I ended up going to a panel on the history of swing; it was personal rather than academic, especially given that two out of three of the people on that panel had either shaped the dance itself (lindy and WCS) or had had a lot of contact with people who had originally danced lindy. And there was awareness of past race issues (the Savoy Ballroom where a lot of lindy came from was integrated, unlike many clubs) but not necessarily of current race issues.
And there's this strange tension between the past and the present. My general impression is that lindy hoppers in particular are concerned with the history of the dance because they are in part trying to preserve it as a living dance, not as a museum piece. WCS is too, since both dances come from the same roots, but WCS has gone a lot further from those roots than lindy. Also, I think a lot of lindy that is taught now was pieced together from old routines that remained on film and from the surviving dancers from the Savoy. So there is this great emphasis placed on the past history of lindy because that's exactly where the current lindy revival stems from. But there's still the fact that some time in the middle, lindy became much, much whiter, as has WCS.
So. I am not sure where that leaves me. I am happy that there are a fair number of Asians in WCS and lindy, and even happier that there seem to be a balanced number of Asian men and Asian women (completely non-scientific opinion). On the other hand, the balanced number tends to be with East Asians; I think Southeast Asian leans a little more toward the women and South Asian leans more toward the men. And on the competition level, I feel there are more Asian women than Asian men (again, no stats). And the whitewashing of lindy really, really bugs me. I don't think it's at the point where I will stop dancing, especially because lindy's not as established of a dance as many other partner dances. But still.