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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

> A cute trend, especially in Lindy Hop circles, is to wear vintage outfits from the 1930's and 40's.

Some scenes in the US apparently went too far with that. When too many new people started coming in in their best vintage outfits, there were a few (current teachers) who made a point of going to competitions as casual as possible.

> In the past it has been the tradition that men asked women to dance. But this custom has gradually changed. Today, women should feel equally comfortable asking a partner for a dance, even in a formal setting.

Also fortunately these days many scenes are closer to "smash the patriarchy" idea and people are happy to dance with whoever. There's no role assignment, which also helps when there's no balance in genders in the room.

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It's not as clear to me that this development is fortunate. The customs of social dance have evolved over centuries, and I'm leery of doing away with things simply because we no longer understand them.

I learned to contra dance in a groovy, gender-free group, and I found it frustrating for several reasons.

Contra dance is designed for bodies that fit together, statistically, as men's and women's bodies do, and it was far more often the case that a figure designed for a man and a woman would become physically awkward when attempted with two men.

Many of the figures involved four or eight partners, and it's honestly confusing for beginners when you lack a visual reference point for whom you're supposed to dance with next.

Dance is a pretty mystical thing, and I don't find the question "why should the sex of your dance partner matter?" to be that compelling. It matters because I want to dance with women who want to dance with men. I don't begrudge anyone for setting whatever ground rules suit them, but I wish the STRICTLY GENDERFUL, PROBLEMATIC AND PATRIARCHAL dance groups would advertise themselves a little more loudly.

I'm not familiar with contra, so can't comment on the fitting part. Where I danced in social scenes, if you need a man's/woman's body specifically, (whatever that means...) that would mean you're either doing it wrong or in a really inappropriate way.

> The customs of social dance have evolved over centuries

The fun part is that in many cases they had to evolve first to gendered dancing, and now we're coming back. Which is what people are often not aware of and think it's somehow weird.

> It matters because I want to dance with women who want to dance with men.

And nobody can force you to do otherwise. I think it's a fortunate development that you can do that, or you can dance with everybody. You get more possibilities, not fewer. (And because it reduces the number of people without partners)

> I'm leery of doing away with things simply because we no longer understand them.

Ah, but we do understand them, we just disagree with them. People learn, traditions change, society advances.

It's fine that you may want to dance with women who want to dance with men, but not everybody may have the same preference. Besides, there might be a mismatch between the number of women and men.

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