On Dancing with Girls
At most of the contra dances I've been to, women have outnumbered men. I greatly prefer dancing with another woman than sitting out a dance, so it's never been too unusual for me to have a female partner. But I always thought of those dances as throw-aways - if there was some particularly awesome figure it might be fun, but I was resigned to the prospect of no really good swings (if I was leading, that is - maybe some good neighbor swings if I was dancing the girl's part) and just settling for being out on the floor.
Then I went to my first dance weekend this spring, and for the first time I had some really awesome dances with female partners. One where we switched roles each time through the dance, which was a fantastic and fun challenge, and two with really strong female leaders who were just plain great to dance with. It was this epiphany like, hey, women can actually lead each other and this is still really dancing. Seems silly in retrospect.
So I've continued practicing my leading skills (thanks especially to gender-role-free dancing) and trying to spread awareness of the potential for awesomeness in girl-on-girl contra. Tonight at the closing dance of the Thanksgiving Dance Weekend, I danced with other women 2 or 3 times, and all of them were really good - one was a little awkward at first while she was figuring out if she could trust me to lead her, but eventually she warmed up to it and at the end she told me I was possibly the best partner she'd ever danced with! Hell yeah. That's me. Opening eyes since 1983.
Now back to work. And laundry. And packing. Oh my!
Then I went to my first dance weekend this spring, and for the first time I had some really awesome dances with female partners. One where we switched roles each time through the dance, which was a fantastic and fun challenge, and two with really strong female leaders who were just plain great to dance with. It was this epiphany like, hey, women can actually lead each other and this is still really dancing. Seems silly in retrospect.
So I've continued practicing my leading skills (thanks especially to gender-role-free dancing) and trying to spread awareness of the potential for awesomeness in girl-on-girl contra. Tonight at the closing dance of the Thanksgiving Dance Weekend, I danced with other women 2 or 3 times, and all of them were really good - one was a little awkward at first while she was figuring out if she could trust me to lead her, but eventually she warmed up to it and at the end she told me I was possibly the best partner she'd ever danced with! Hell yeah. That's me. Opening eyes since 1983.
Now back to work. And laundry. And packing. Oh my!