Dancing (sort of)
Hey, all. It's been ages, I know. I blame my own decision to become a doctor. It will leave me with little to no free time for a good 10 years or so...
Last year I won a piano competition at my school, so me and the second place winner as well as a couple of other graduates of my piano school were treated to tickets to Riverdance in Philly. The show was AWESOME. I especially liked how they incorporated other genres into the somewhat traditional Irish style...they had a couple of flamenco-inspired numbers as well as a jazzy take on step dancing, which were all really, really cool. Not to mention the drumming. As a percussionist, I was enthralled by the number of supermegafoxyawesomehot instruments.
The show did get me thinking though. With myprettycabinet's awesome shirts and the Obama campaign's focus on gay marriage lately, I've been thinking about how gays and lesbians are portrayed in various aspects of society. One of the things I noticed was that I've never seen any dance number with same-sex courship. Dancing at these types of shows is definitely not explicitly sexual but there are a lot of symbols for courtship within the numbers. I'm not an expert at dance, and most of the dance I've seen is Irish, as that's my heritage. With the Irish dances, typically one or maybe 2 guys go after a girl and they do some peacocking with some really badass dance moves and then she responds. She'll usually either take one of them up and dance with him, or spurn them both with some insanely awesome choreography because she's just way too cool for them. And I quite enjoy that. But I've never seen a guy go after a guy or a girl go after a girl. Maybe I'm being ridiculous, but I'd totally love to see it happen, especially in this day and age. Now, I'm totally not pinning any of this on Riverdance or Irish stepdance in general, because I love both of those things. From what I know, this is a general blanket statement, so no one genre is really at fault. And it needn't be like, EVERY dance. Because statistically speaking, I know there's probably not a gay couple in every little Irish town that jigs around singing about sunsets and suffering. But it'd be cool if someone tried this.
What do you guys think? Would you like to see a dance troupe try same-sex courting? Have you ever seen it? (I'm not exactly watching dance performances every week or anything, so maybe I'm just behind the times!)
Last year I won a piano competition at my school, so me and the second place winner as well as a couple of other graduates of my piano school were treated to tickets to Riverdance in Philly. The show was AWESOME. I especially liked how they incorporated other genres into the somewhat traditional Irish style...they had a couple of flamenco-inspired numbers as well as a jazzy take on step dancing, which were all really, really cool. Not to mention the drumming. As a percussionist, I was enthralled by the number of supermegafoxyawesomehot instruments.
The show did get me thinking though. With myprettycabinet's awesome shirts and the Obama campaign's focus on gay marriage lately, I've been thinking about how gays and lesbians are portrayed in various aspects of society. One of the things I noticed was that I've never seen any dance number with same-sex courship. Dancing at these types of shows is definitely not explicitly sexual but there are a lot of symbols for courtship within the numbers. I'm not an expert at dance, and most of the dance I've seen is Irish, as that's my heritage. With the Irish dances, typically one or maybe 2 guys go after a girl and they do some peacocking with some really badass dance moves and then she responds. She'll usually either take one of them up and dance with him, or spurn them both with some insanely awesome choreography because she's just way too cool for them. And I quite enjoy that. But I've never seen a guy go after a guy or a girl go after a girl. Maybe I'm being ridiculous, but I'd totally love to see it happen, especially in this day and age. Now, I'm totally not pinning any of this on Riverdance or Irish stepdance in general, because I love both of those things. From what I know, this is a general blanket statement, so no one genre is really at fault. And it needn't be like, EVERY dance. Because statistically speaking, I know there's probably not a gay couple in every little Irish town that jigs around singing about sunsets and suffering. But it'd be cool if someone tried this.
What do you guys think? Would you like to see a dance troupe try same-sex courting? Have you ever seen it? (I'm not exactly watching dance performances every week or anything, so maybe I'm just behind the times!)