Contra Dancing: Why Larks & Ravens?

A rough transcription of the Facebook video.

Hi, my is Doe. And for those of you who don’t know me, I’m a 27 yr old contra dancer, and I’ve danced in about 17 states and D.C so far. I love dance weekends and I teach some workshops. For full transparency, I run Queer Contra Dance Camp, just to be clear. I live in CA now but I grew up in the south and I’ve lived in Philly and I’ve come to know a few dance communities. I absolutely love contra dancing, it’s one of my favorite things and one of the core pieces of my identity. When I tell people about who I am or what I do, it is one of the first couple of sentences that comes out. This is my home, and these are my people.

I’d like to speak a little bit about my perspective about the Larks and Ravens ‘thing’ that’s going on. I live in a place where Larks and Ravens is very popular and we have a lot of success hosting Larks and Ravens events (the San Francisco Bay Area). We have dancers of all ages and types who are happy to come and dance [to L&R], but I know that’s not the case everywhere. I’ve been seeing some things online that stir up all sorts of feelings, so I feel compelled to share and say something.

So I’ve danced in places like Boston, Asheville, even like Cincinnati where there’s a generally a pretty good turnout of dancers, especially young dancers. There are a few dances that aren’t really hurting for young new dancers. But on the whole across the country, a lot of the community is aging and some of the community is aging out. I constantly will talk to very lovely people at events where they talk to me and they’re like “you’re so young! What can we do? How do we get more young people excited about our dance?!” Or they tell me, “you know there was a young woman and she seemed so nice! She came a few times and then she just stopped coming, and that was really disappointing for us.” Right? I’m sure this isn’t just me, these are things other people experience. So basically the battle cry that I’ve heard from a lot of older dance communities is “What do younger dancers want?!” “How can we get younger dancers!?”

The thing is, the young dancers have answered. We have collectively shown, and discussed, and told, that on the whole young dancers want two things. Thing number one: they want gender-free calling. At this point, Larks & Ravens. I see in chat groups, “oh why Larks and Ravens, why not ‘shanties and whistles?” And the answer is, we did a lot of research! We tried a few different names: bands and bares, point and star or something? I don’t know. And we would take surveys and we collected data, and the data just showed that L&R was a good fit. Yes, it could be something else. At this point, there’s sort of a carrying capacity where that’s the thing. If some community really came up with terms that were so much better I’m sure that folks would be open to trying it, but the main point is the gender-free calling. So the first thing is the L&R, and that’s mostly what I’ll be talking about.

The second thing: if a young woman comes to a dance organizer and says that there is a man who is making her feel uncomfortable, that the organizers believe her and do something about it. That’s why you have young dancers who come and they don’t come back. Holding those people accountable. And that’s a whole different topic that we don’t have to do today.

So Larks and Ravens. Who benefits from Larks & Ravens?

I see a lot of posts that are like “this is the gay agenda,” sometimes in more or less hurtful terms. And I just want to touch on that. I’ve danced at a lot of spaces that use Larks and Ravens at this point, some of the dancers are very much for LGBTQ dancers, and that might not be your thing. But I also dance in places like the Palo Alto dance near Stanford that has a lot of older, heterosexual people who like to dance. Across my experience, here are the groups I’ve seen who benefit:

#1 The LGBT community. That is true, I’m not going to tell you it’s not.

#2 The super switchy hyper people. More and more, dancers of all ages (and some of the people I’ve seen posting against Larks and Ravens) enjoy switching, right? Enjoy having fun in the dance, and sometimes taking the back role and then the front role and kind of playing, right? Because us experienced dancers who have been doing the same thing over and over for so many years find it’s fun to mix it up, right? And the switchy dancing is confusing with the Ladies and Gents roles, and creates confusion in the dance. And that’s where we get that popular phrase ‘dance with who’s comin’ at cha,’ right? So you get it.

#3 Then after the switchy dancers we have something that comes up in a lot of communities which is some women who really only like to lead. And people will give them a hard time about it. Or I was in Colorado, and they wouldn’t let me lead unless I was wearing a tie. They had this table full of *hideous* ties and I had to put on a tie every time I wanted to lead a dance! That’s not really a welcoming feeling for me, I don’t like it.

#4 Then a group that’s a little less talked about: men. Straight men who want to get to be the “raven” or the “lady” sometimes, and we unfortunately live in a culture where if a woman leads and follows people don’t look at it so much, but if a man wants to follow that can be seen as weakness or all these terrible things. There are really lovely men, some gay some straight, who like getting to dance the role that feels good for them. Not even that feels good for them all the time! Maybe you just want to try something new and dance the other role and see what that’s like, while not having people give you shit for it.

Now, I want to address the kid thing, because this comes up as an argument a lot. “Children will be so confused! They won’t know what to do without Ladies and Gents.” A few months ago we had at one of my gender-free dances, somehow, a group of twelve-year-olds had decided that for someone’s birthday party they wanted to come to the contra dance. We had never seen any of these kids before. There were maybe ten of them who showed up and came to the beginner lesson, and then were in line with us. It was so cute! And the thing is, for a lot of cisgender, heterosexual twelve-year-olds, you know, it’s the beginning of puberty, things are a little overwhelming, and your body is changing. So for a lot of straight boys, girls are mortifying. And for a lot of straight girls, boys are mortifying. What we noticed was a lot of times the boys wanted to dance with each other, and so they would be a Lark and a Raven, and the girls wanted to dance with each other and they would be a Lark and a Raven. There were also a lot of the young boys who liked dancing the Raven’s role.

It’s an interesting argument that the kids will get confused because really the people who seem to be more confused are the people who have been doing this for a long time. That makes a lot of sense, and I have a lot of compassion for that. I understand that as we get older, change becomes harder. Especially when it isn’t change that we want. But just in general, when you’ve been doing something so long you can hear it in your head and in your sleep, I get that it’s hard to change.

So to that point, the thing is Larks and Ravens includes these groups of people that I’ve mentioned but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t include you!

There are going to be many dancers, (and at our dances there are!)there are women who only dance Raven and there are many who only dance Lark. And that’s fine! That’s great!

If you are really excited about your gender and you’re really excited about the role that’s been assigned to you in the world, no one is trying to take it from you. You can still do those things! If you are a woman, and you love going to the contra dance to flirt with older dudes, and you only want to do that, you can do that! That’s totally fine! That’s great!

The point of this isn’t that some people get to be happy and some people don’t. The point is that everyone gets to dance the way that they want to. And if the way you want to is the conventional way that’s always been done, that’s totally fine. You’re not alone, and probably like half of the dancers will join you. The thing is there’s this other half that’s being left out in that practice, and we want everyone included, not just us.

Those are my main points on why this is important.

And I guess some of my own thoughts about it. I’ve been pretty queer most of my life: I mostly dated women, I tried using they pronouns (these days it’s she or they, mostly she). But I actually… I’m 27 and I kind of really want a husband!? I think about it a lot. I’m interested in finding a guy- he’s gotta like dancing of course- and we get together and have babies and do the whole thing. I’m like, kind of excited about it.

The thing is, any man that I would be willing to be with would ask me before taking a leading position. Whether on the dance floor or in my life. That’s part of the 21st century thing I have going on I guess. Whatever we would face in life, whatever hardships would come up for us together, we would talk about it. Maybe what I would do is follow his lead, I bet there are times when I will. There are times when I really like following someone else’s lead. And there’s also times when my strength is a really big asset. The idea that I would always be subsumed into someone else because the default assumption is that I would follow them bothers me. Any guy that I would marry would a) at least have to be willing to try contra dancing if he doesn’t already and b) would have to ask, and not take for granted what my role in life is. We would share those roles, together.

I guess it does reflect my “political agenda” in that way. I like lovers, community, and friends where I have a choice. There are some nights where I only want to be the Raven. There are some nights where I’m switchy, some nights where I’m each, and sometimes actually for my own physical safety I only dance the Lark role. It’s safer when my knee hurts, so I do that.

I guess that’s the personal touch here. Larks and Ravens gives me a choice, it makes me feel more safe and welcome, even when I always want to do the thing I would be doing anyways. I have just had enough negative experiences when I try to dance the “Gent” role, and people try to move me or tell me that I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s insulting, and it is alienating. There are dances that I haven’t gone back to because the people there wouldn’t let me lead, or would bully me if there aren’t enough women and an older man wants to dance with me, and I want to dance with another woman. Maybe because she feels safer or she was nicer or she was a better dancer. They’ll give me shit for not dancing with one of the guys who needs someone to dance with. But I’m worth more than somebody else’s needs. I’m worth my own needs, and I’m okay with that.

So what do we do now?

Anyways, so if you are still listening, thanks. Again I really, I do understand that change is confusing and challenging and I have a lot of empathy for that. I think a lot of other “Larks and Ravens folks” do too. My general suggestion for communities, especially Cincinnati because we are all watching the things that you are saying and it is… a lot, there is clearly a lot going on there. But here’s my general suggestion. I would try doing an evening at your regular dance where, (and you can tell people in advance if you want) you do either the whole night or half of a night calling Larks and Ravens and at the end of the night you take an exit interview. And you ask people like how do you feel about the larks and ravens. There have to be three options (at least) — there has to be positive, neutral, and negative. Right? Collect your data. See what your community actually wants. Sometimes the very loud people on either side are not a true reflection of what’s going on. Get your data. So let’s say you find that 50% of people are neutral and they don’t care and they just want to dance. 25% of people feel negatively about it, 25% feel positively. Well, if you have four dances a month, then you do half of each and the people who feel strongly in either direction can pick the dances they want to go to.

If, as you are saying, your communities will not accept this and it’s a fringe group and let’s say you get a 75/25 where 75% of people feel negative about it and 25% feel positive, have one Larks and Ravens dance a month and maybe you’ll see that you get some younger dancers that start dancing at Larks and Ravens and bleed over into the Ladies and Gents. Because, again, this is about growing our community and maintaining our community. So that’s my main suggestion and then you can try to once or twice a year to poll and see how people do. What we’ve found out here in California is that the longer folks are exposed to it, the less of a big deal it becomes. I see a lot of folks in other communities struggling but we have some more conservative communities in California outside the Bay Area. We have dance weekends out here and some call L&R and some call Ladies and Gents and they all have their different levels of success and that’s fine.

I think… I think you can be welcoming for everybody. I wanted to put a face on one of these “evil gay agenda people” that keep being talked about. I’m just Doe and I love dancing and I like seeing all of you on the floor. I know that this is hard and if you’re still listening, thanks.