Workshop
Each year International experts in the field of equality dancing will give their statement and will be teaching their ideas and methods in the most beautiful dance studio in Vienna
The theme this year: Leading and Following
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» Instructor
» Time, location, costs and preconditions
» Registration and payment
» Thoughts about role change and equality dancing
Content
The theme of this workshop is leading and following. It's all about optimizing the communication between the dance partners. This is achieved through adopting, interpreting the roles of the follower and leader and playing with it; altogether within the interactions in a same-sex dance couple.
Instructor
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| Niels behind dance partner | Niels |
Latin and Ballroom: Niels Hartvigson
Pansdans, Copenhagen, Denmark
Time, location, costs and preconditions
When: Friday, 24 September 2010
Latin: 3 p.m. to 4:20 p.m. Standard: 4:40 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Where: LABI-Studio, Kriehubergasse 9, 1050 Vienna
Costs: per person € 10 for Standard or Latin, € 15 for both
Preconditions: at least gold-level, no competition experience necessary.
... and afterwards:
• Practice possibility at LABI-Studio 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
• Welcome drink in Café Willendorf as of 7 p.m.
Registration and payment
Registration required and prepayment until one week before.
In case you take part with the same partner in the workshop and in the competition, then you mark in the competition registration form also the workshop and if Ballroom, Latin or both. If you want to participate in the Role-Change Workshop alone or with a different partner than in the competition or want to register later, please fill in a new form only for the workshop.
Participation in the workshop is limited. We can reserve a place for you only after payment (latest by 19 September 2009) and according to availability of places. So register early!
Payment
Please pay the workshop per credit card or per
your PayPal account and use the following PayPal button.
In case the name of the card holder is not the same than the participants, please
inform us per email to , so that we can connect the
payment with your registration.
You'll get a confirmation email about your payment for the workshop from PayPal.
ONLY participants, who have no access to a credit card or a PayPal account AND
don't live in Austria can register (binding) in the registration form and pay at the
workshop.
Please inform us per email to
, so that we reserve your
place.
Thoughts about role change and equality dancing
What is Equality Dancing?
What is the potential of role change for samesex dancing?
Equality dancing means that two women or two men dance together and have the possibility to dance Latin or Ballroom choreographies in which the classical understanding of the roles of mixed couple competition dancing is suspended. Nearly everything is possible for each partner. Traditional elements can be newly arranged and new figures and steps are created. Role change is allowed and is a specialty of equality dancing. It is a change in the dancing role and not in the gender role in which the leader and follower change positions within the flow of dancing.
Not every couple, not every routine, not every coach or teacher uses all these potentials (new interpretations of relationships beyond the stereotypes and role change) of Equality dancing for different reasons and not every judge is aware of and appreciating these potentials. Knowledge, personality and preferences of dancers, but also knowledge, open-mindedness and awareness of coaches and dance teachers of different possibilities to change roles and to show a (love and flirt-) relationship in a routine between two persons with the same gender beyond the stereotypes of man and woman.
The most obvious potential is the role change. Nearly all judges see this as a new art, changes in the stereotyped interplay between leader and follower are more exposed to the amount of open-mindedness. German couple at mixed competition: Style did not fit. New styles always took a while.
Judges need education?
With this we can also refer to changes in the society to changes in the variety of relationships between man and woman.
At the beginning of dancing we focus on steps, not so very much on expression of relationship and we have enough to do with learning the steps of one role, so of Leader or Follower. Later personal preferences, identities and personalities, lacking dance knowledge of a partner in the other dance role, choosing the more successful combination of two dancers, bigger differences in height (especial in Ballroom), heterosexual coaches and dance teachers orientating themselves by the established characteristics of the interplay between man and woman in mixed competition – which means in Latin dancing the quite restricting heterosexual "flirt and love stories". Lacking knowledge and therefore awareness of especially coaches, but also dancers, of different possibilities to change roles and to show a relationship in a routine between two persons with the same gender – in Latin who show a "flirt and love story" – not only by copying the stereotype of man and woman.
We change roles in our dancing to have fun, to express various aspects of our personality in interplay with others, to get better results at competitions, but also to make a political statement.
So dancing can mirror a special love relationship between women or between men. Through it we can question roles and behaviour which are often taken for granted. Everything is possible for each partner – an interplay of two personalities in the flow of dancing and life. Equality and diversity live. (Roswitha Wetschka)