Supreme Audio Digital Square Dance Music page has been improved: they’re using streaming audio now (no more waiting while the whole RealAudio file downloads) and there are four new LouMac songs available. However, I really wish they’d provide an instrumental sample as well as the vocal sample. I’m paying for the music, not the singing, and I’d like to be able to hear what I’m buying.

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Heterosexism:

One of the criticisms of MWSD, at least in the U.S., is its “couple” bias. Many clubs are couples only, and at many dance weekends, one might as well not attend if one doesn’t have a partner. Couples tend to dance together for the whole dance (unless one member is physically unable to dance every tip, in which case an available single can sometimes serve as a pinch-hitter). Contra and traditional squares dances, on the other hand, are seen as friendlier to singles: dancers are encouraged to change partners between every dance so that everyone gets a chance to dance, whether they came with a partner or not.

However, contra dance weekends (known as dance camps) are biased against single women. Oh, they don’t say that…they just say they try to achieve “gender-balance”…but it always seems like there’s a waiting list of women, waiting for some single guys to register so they’ll be allowed to come.

For example, from Lexington Traditional Dance Association:

The Dance Trance will be limited to 270 dancers and a close gender balance will be maintained. 40 men and 57 women have signed up as of May 3.

Or, from CFOOTMAD Dance Events and News: “Gender balance will be maintained, register early.”

Or, from 2000 Bugstomp (boxed, all-caps, red-letters):

SINGLE FEMALE WAITING LIST NOW IN EFFECT (AS OF 20 FEB 2000)…WOMEN, PLEASE REGISTER AS A GENDER BALANCED COUPLE…YES WE ARE STILL OPEN TO COUPLES AND SINGLE MEN.. PLEASE REGISTER ASAP SO WE CAN CLEAR OUR WAITING LIST…. I NEED AT LEAST 15 SINGLE MEN

Needless to say, this issue has been raised in discussion on rec.folk-dancing; see: Gender balance: good, bad, necessary evil?

For me, as someone whose normal dance partner is another woman, the MWSD world is a little better: if I sign up with a partner, they don’t care (at least for women) what the gender of my partner is. At contra dance weekends, since the expectation is that partners don’t dance together the whole weekend, they do care…they don’t want two extra women around who are supposedly competing for those rare men.

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From gender-balancing to gender-free:

Here’s a great article on the gender-free contra dance scene in Boston: Contra Dance, including a comparison with straight (gendered) contra dancing. But notice the effort to distance themselves from MWSD:

Ask any contra dancer about the pastime, and odds are the first thing you’ll hear is that “it’s not square dancing.” No frilly skirts, no bolo ties. Period.

Think about it…these are people who like to do basically the same kind of dancing that we do, and yet they take pains to make sure that no one thinks they’re square dancers. Sounds like an image issue to me.