Dance and gender

[Guilli Milli Mu]

So, I’ve been dancing all my life and all my life I’ve been putting on stage with dresses and clothes that was necessarily different from the guys clothes. And this differences makes me think: Are they really necessary?

 

Like, on the last two years I’ve been dancing on a Israelita dance group. Our last choreography was about people from different places finding out that they are not that different from each other - there was no need of explicit the binary genders. But they did. The teacher ask to the seamstress to do not put glitter on the guys pants, just on the girls pants. Also, she made different makeup’s for each binary gender, with no good reason but: “the boys makeup’s need to de different from the girls”.

 

On stage, the divergents outfit make a strange effect, cause the objective was to prove that, at the end, we are all the like each other.

 

I know that, in some dances and choreography’s, the definition of each gender can be important to the context and the comprehension of the story the dance told. But I had seen a lot of choreography where the identification of gender by the clothes isn’t necessary and sometimes even distract from the rest of the group.

 

So I wanna ask how to deal with that in the world of the dance, principally when you are in the non-binary spectrum. 

 

(I don’t really know if my question and points are valid, but I really can not take this out of my head).

[SithLord]

I'm not really sure since I'm not in the world of dance, but you reminded me of Viktor from Yuri on Ice who had a time where he wore his hair long and intentionally wore more effeminate outfits to play with gender as a figure skater.

It seems like it really doesn't matter but yet the binary is still enforced in small but strict ways. 

[OneConfusedBoi]

I don’t do dance, however I did colorguard for a while. We did winter guard shoes that often had various themes. My first show was based off of Once Upon a Time where several girls played guys (we didn’t have any guys on the team that year). However, those were only the soloists. Everyone else was in gender neutral outfits. When we did have boys on our team, they often wore outfits to match the girls, they just had pants instead of dresses. As a whole, unless they were a specific character, everyone was dressed gender neutral I guess to not upstage the soloist/character. Like you said, there are some times where costumes should reflect a specific gender, but I don’t think it should be common. To deal with that, I feel like you could speak up about the issue with whoever’s in charge. As a shy person I realize that this is not as easy as it sounds, but it’s really important if you want to change it. I hope this helped a little, although I know I didn’t have much in the way of advice. Just keep your head high and stay strong!

[Acing It]

This may be more down to the people making the decisions in this particular dance maybe. I do feel that a lot of story telling is strongly based in the stereotypical binary, either as a confirmation and exagerration of or as a reaction against, in the worst case making fun of what doesn't fit in. I wouldn't be surprised that if you were to bring this up with the people who made the decisions in what you said above, they wouldn't even be aware that was what they were doing or that it's possible to make a different set of decisions. I've come to see that for most/many binary the binary is automatic and unconcsious.

[PoeciMeta]

Haha! ^^ That reminds me of my early childhood. I started dancing at, probably around 5? And I refused any makeup very early, was told I looked like a ghost on stage and I liked that ^^

My choregraphies weren't always too heavily gendered, thankfully, I even got to dance in a shirt and bowtie once... 

My favourite choregraphy was when we danced as the chimney sweepers (all AFABs, yes) from Mary Poppins, and this time I accepted the makeup, comprised entirely of charcoal! 

These memories almost make me sad I gave up dancing in favour of rock climbing. Almost. 

[DarkStormyKnight]

Yeah I'm a dancer as well and I really can't stand how BINARY it all is. I come from a ballet background, specifically, and the teachers have the males learn different moves and partnering is always male + female, et cetera. And then there's the extra level of how many female dancers there are so we feel like a dime a dozen but the males get treated as something rare and special. It frustrates me a lot, and definitely contributes to an unhealthy environment imo.

As I've grown as a dancer I've started choreographing my own stuff and try to make it as ungendered as possible, but also I rarely work with dudes since I'm just working with a student-led group and very few dudes join those. But the world of dance is soooooo traditional and conservative, someone needs to shake it up already with gender, race, class, everything!

[LeChat]

On 12/17/2019 at 12:52 AM, Guilli Milli Mu said:

...I know that, in some dances and choreography’s, the definition of each gender can be important to the context and the comprehension of the story the dance told. But I had seen a lot of choreography where the identification of gender by the clothes isn’t necessary and sometimes even distract from the rest of the group.

 

So I wanna ask how to deal with that in the world of the dance, principally when you are in the non-binary spectrum. 

 

(I don’t really know if my question and points are valid, but I really can not take this out of my head).

I haven't been a part of the dance world, but I'm wondering whether, perhaps, the differences in clothes for the genders might also have to do with giving the audience a visual experience (e.g. if all dancers were dressed exactly the same, it wouldn't have the same visual effect while, for example, having certain only a certain gender perform the same moves/positions while crossing back and forth across the stage/floor to give the audience a visual, colorful pattern to look at, a bit like a kaleidoscopic image).

 

The differences in clothes might also help the audience know where to look/which group to look at while they're performing the dance, whereas, if all of the dancers were dressed the same and trying to perform different dance moves at the same time, it'd be more difficult for the viewer(s) to know which dancer(s) to look at/that they should be looking at or focusing on for the performance/story.

 

Maybe, it'd help to think of it like that: that it might also be meant to be an exciting, visual experience for the audience. 

[Guilli Milli Mu]

23 hours ago, LeChat said:

I haven't been a part of the dance world, but I'm wondering whether, perhaps, the differences in clothes for the genders might also have to do with giving the audience a visual experience (e.g. if all dancers were dressed exactly the same, it wouldn't have the same visual effect while, for example, having certain only a certain gender perform the same moves/positions while crossing back and forth across the stage/floor to give the audience a visual, colorful pattern to look at, a bit like a kaleidoscopic image).

 

The differences in clothes might also help the audience know where to look/which group to look at while they're performing the dance, whereas, if all of the dancers were dressed the same and trying to perform different dance moves at the same time, it'd be more difficult for the viewer(s) to know which dancer(s) to look at/that they should be looking at or focusing on for the performance/story.

 

Maybe, it'd help to think of it like that: that it might also be meant to be an exciting, visual experience for the audience. 

So, I understand your point, if the point of different outfits is to be in favor of the visual experience, why the division needs to be between man and female? You can divide the group in how many parts you want to create the illusion that you want. My last dance, for example, was divided by groups of colors (yellow, green, blue, etc), so I didn’t understand why the boys costumes was different from the girls costumes. Also, in some groups, we have more of a gender than another. Without a propose, doing another outfit specifically for this gender (because of the gender) can broke the aesthetic of the dance