There is such a thing as "reverse-role" dance (in the world of ballroom/latin dance) in which the roles are reversed in dances like the rumba, tango and paso doble, which are traditionally led by the man. As far as I can tell 'reverse-role' dancers aren't allowed to compete in mainstream competitions, but are confined to a 'fun dance' category (along with same sex dancers). So yes, it's most certainly gendered, although the woman's role in rumba, tango and paso is often characterized as 'powerful'. Interesting blogpost - thank you!

I do not really know the context of this choreography, is it art piece or some sort of competition dance, so it would seem kind of pointless to comment on it but but but...

No, I do not think that the theme itself is gendered, it being the abuse in relationships. Unless you make it to be about gender, like as in asking "is it usually the woman who is desperately trying to escape the man". Then again, in reality of life women are way more often abused in relationships and I do interpret that is this is the type of thing that dances such as this portray. In such dances there are conventionally pretty conservative gender roles so I think you can sort of say that this is gendered by default, obviously. About the message lisa is reading from it, well, I would interpret it differently. I do not see this performance stating "women want to be treated like this and it is okay" by a long shot. Somehow it feels also a bit lame to draw conclusions about a piece of art and generalise. Let us judge each performance on their own right.

Anyhow, about modern dance and pieces that really would deserve interpretation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPSXvL2fpVY

Slightly off-topic but this reminds me of the Adam Lambert gay kiss controversy (which happened about a week ago, at AMA). Although the controversy is focused on the gay kiss, I've heard some women expressing their outrage at the offensive, sexist moves in his dance routine. From what I heard, he was dragging a woman onstage and being aggressive toward her to the point it was "sexist." I never saw this, so I'm not sure what the dance routine was like.

So I'd probably say "yes" and conclude that this is a gendered concept. We rarely see female dancers become aggressive and controlling of their male dance partners. But then again, I've only watched classical ballet.

This is not a common dance show. The dance took place at the Cirque de Demain festival. It was aired by the public German-French culture TV station "arte".

What's interesting to me is that though it's a partnered dance, the man is pretty much just a prop. The woman is good, don't get me wrong, and she totally sells it for me, but the idea of a woman thrashing about because of emotional indecision is hardly anything new. I would have preferred to see the man emotionally involved in this as well, because then it would have been covering some new ground.

The most disturbing expression of this pseudo rape-narrative I've seen was at a Korean karaoke bar. The televisions that ran the lyrics were set to generic music videos that had nothing to do with the song playing, often to hilarious or horrifying effect. (Nothing like seeing a woman shot in the back of the head while singing La Bamba.) But this one particular music video had a man attempting to propose to a woman that looked like she had just been raped. She had a traumatic, glazed look on her face, knees turned inward, eyes down, and every time he tried to get close to her or put his arm around her, she skittered away like he had just gotten through beating on her, never making eye contact or even raising her head. I think when he pulled out the ring to pop the question she outright slapped him. After that, he attacked her and began forcibly digging his fingers into her face to squish her mouth into the shape of a smile, all the while she's struggling as if for her life. (Or, maybe, as one would struggle when someone's trying to rearrange your face like it was inanimate putty.) The horrible abuse ends abruptly when she suddenly changes from rape-victim to passionate lover, and suddenly she can't stop kissing him! Turns out she wanted him all along.

In light of that, this video looks down right progressive.

In my personal opinion, as a man, the constant reinforcement of the idea that women are bound to lose in their struggles against their attraction to a man has been very damaging in my relationships with women in the past. Years later I came to understand that I in fact had ignored the woman's will, if I was convinced that deep inside she was still in love with me and her reasoning was bound to be defeated. A friend of mine said to me that "the bottom line is if she doesn't want it, it's just not gonna happen...". Quite simple to see now, but not so easy to act out if your male role models tell you that if the woman resists you but in fact she wants you, she is bound to submit if you pursue her long enough. And instead of love or romance, your relationship becomes like prey and predator, deteriorating and potentially becoming terribly tragic and hurtful for years subsequently. You may say the story could end well, with the woman giving in and the couple moving on without a dent, but though I've seen many of those in fiction, I have never seen such in real life.
When it is a man who needs to tackle a problem like this, he often turns into this paternal figure and wisely turns away from the affair, like in this new Twilight movie trailer in which the vampire man decides that it is for her own good that they should be apart, and leaves to never see her again like a tragic hero, and the woman will have no choice in the matter but to cry like a helpless child. If it is her rationale that tells her to resist, it is misplaced, like a woman trying to discuss politics, she doesn't know any better, and the man has a duty to tire her into submission, while if it is the man that decides they need to have restraint, the woman is too weak physically to be able to oppose it. "Bright Star" is another recent film where the woman has nothing to do but cry helplessly, while the John Keats she loves leaves her because of serious duties like work and illness.
Tragically, this kind of idea gets applied to real life, which obviously is not like fiction and not at all like dancing. I believe I have destroyed 2 beautiful relationships with 2 wonderful women by not truly understanding that they are entitled to their own free will and their own self. And this is the saddest thing to learn for me, how much of what's at the heart of our established male-to-female romantic relationship model is actually sexist and oppressive. It's like finding that all the heroic romantic stories that we grow up with, marvel at and yearn to live in real life are actually dirty tricks by the devil or something.
Sure the theme is based on something human, real and pretty universal, but it's always acted out in a pretty distorted way, I think...

I've actually been noting a similar phenomenon in Bollywood films and dance. From outside of the culture, it can be hard to tell the symbolic and subtle cultural signifiers in a narrative that might provide evidence as to whether the dance is meant as support (and fetishization) of the gendered sex struggle, or a commentary on it. ('Morey Piya' and 'Kaahe Chhed Mohe' from the 2002 version of Devdas, in the context of the story, seem to provide multiple points of view on the gendered struggle between desire and propriety, and in my interpretation ultimately conclude that the man was selfish and lacked empathy in his domineering behavior.)

It might have something to do with watching it with the music off. All I could see was them playing out an emotionally abusive relationship. For the first 56 seconds it's almost physical violence, or it feels like that could happen at any time. After that you can almost see him talking her into it, then at 1:26 she's trying to get away again. He apologizes, she forgives and returns. It's good for a while. Rinse. Repeat. It's a classic abusive relationship.

So far I have seen exactly one dance routine where the woman was clearly expressing open, honest female desire, and the participants were clearly expressing a seduction between equals. It was an impressive thing to see. I only wish more choreographers would let their female dancers express desire, as opposed to fear and desperation.

Granted the show also died at the box office, but I think that has more to do with the Irish Dance fad dying off about that same time.

Does anyone know of real-life examples of a woman giving in to a man that pursues/harasses/stalks her? It's a common motif in 'art' but not so much in real life. In real life it's actually a hallmark of a criminal testing to see if a target is safe for him to attack - if she says "No" and he ignores the "No" and she lets him ignore it, that means she's a good target for crime.

I was just about to post a comment without actually watching the video, since I was sure I knew the trope that was being discussed. But then I watched the first 35 seconds or so and... yikes. That seems a lot more [not-sure-what-word-to-use!] than I'm used to. Is he... choking her?? She may be fighting her forbidden desires, but she's also straight up fighting him, physically. Leave her alone! Queasy...

Here's what I was going to say:
Is this theme gendered? Oh heck yeah. Or, perhaps more accurately, the genders are always in these roles. But there is one timely exception that comes immediately to mind: Twilight. Haven't read/seen it; don't intend to. But I admit to a horrified fascination with the phenomenon, and I've read several reviews and plot summaries. From what I gather, the entire point of it is that the "boy" character (actually a 100+ year old vampire, and therefore an adult, squick) is drawn to, but simultaneously repulsed by, the female lead. He's the one in the "I mustn't! Ah, but I cannot resist!" role. Although... since he's an vampire, there's a rather distinct overtone of threat, which isn't usually present.

But now, having watched 35 seconds of the video, I'm totally taking that back. The Twilight situation is exactlythis trope; the roles are not at all reversed. The female lead is attracted to the boy/vampire, but she's aware that he's dangerous (ie: inhumanly strong and sexually violent). Indeed, he warns her of that directly, several times! (I like you, but if I so much as kiss you, there's a good chance I might black out and literally tear you apart and eat you.) Even knowing that, he won't leave her alone. She tells him that yes, she likes him, but he needs to back off [ref: the woman's "leave me alone" shrug-off right at the start of the dance]. He doesn't. If anything, he steps it up. But apparently that's fine, because true to form, she eventually submits and "melts into his arms" or whatever. Oh, and she never stops being afraid of him. (And why should she; he's exactly as dangerous as he always was. Ah, love.)

So this trope is alive and well, and not just in dance. The OP says she can see why this trope continues to be popular, but frankly, I cannot. I don't say that because I'm a feminist (I am), I say that simply because it's an anachronistic cliché. And not an especially loved one, at that, since it reeks of Cheesy Romance Novel. (These days, even those fans are moving away from this kind of thing: Why Young Readers Don't Like Romance Novel Rapists) But maybe upping the (implied or overt) violence "brings it into the 21st Century." Sigh.

Once in a while, this blog (and commenters) take a really thin premise and run it pretty dry. This is one of those times.

I suppose this level of projection (yes, projection, not interpretation) is possible with just about anything that's relatively non-specific (dance), and at times I think it says more about this blog's authors than anything else.

(The contrarian in me wonders if this blog could identify an art performance as non-sexist in some way....kind of answers itself.)

There's a lot of information missing about this performance (choreographer's intent, performer's interpretation, etc), but the absence of that information is what enables folks to project on it.

Imagine if the dancers themselves commented here with something like "Wow, you guys are completely off base!" - would this community reexamine its reactions and conclusions? (methinks "no.")

This is a very common theme in dance, but the roles aren't exclusively gendered as in this clip. So You Think You Can Dance (on US tv) has had several performances similar to this one, but has also had quite a few others in which the woman either did hold her own and walk away or otherwise maintained control over the relationship.

Also, I think we need to be careful in assuming that all roughhousing is abuse - I'm not actually making a call here, but just getting into sexual dynamics in general, power play isn't abusive, but may look that way to people who aren't familiar with it.

A lot of dance shows have seductress/vixen goes after disinterested man themed dances. I see it all the time.

Social dance is one of my hobbies. I've taken several classes on the subject and been instructed in a variety of styles (waltz, tango, foxtrot, cha-cha, east coast, west coast, etc. etc.) I've also had instruction in varities of folk dance that involve partnering.

I can tell you for a fact it is gendered. In partner dance there are two roles, the "lead" and the "follow," and the male is lead by default. In the most recent class I took, the professor said "men" and "women" instead of "lead" and "follow" and she was very disconcerted when I took the lead to help one of the other girls understand something she was having trouble with.

When I was learning about Tango, one of the first things the instructors talked about was how to set the "mood" of the dance with little flourishes and touches, and one of the "moods" we learned about was the persuit-escape mood. In this style of the tango, the man is always trying to bring the woman closer, and she is always cleverly slipping away. He turns her body towards him; she snaps her head to the side and looks away. He pulls her towards his hips; she does a spin to the side and ends up out of his reach. He steps toward her; she steps back.

So yes it is common, and yes it is gendered. It was taught in explicitly gendered terms: the MAN is persuing the WOMAN and the WOMAN is resisting, except that in the context of the dance the woman is really playing coy, and of course by the end of the song there will be a dramatic finishing move in which she is quite clearly captured...

Social dance (ballroom and latin) is hardly alone in this. I don't remember what it was called, but I remember participating in a folk dance (scottish, I think) where men and women were partnered up and the women spent the dance switching back and forth between the men; however, the narrative context was that the men were fighting over her, and every time she made to leave the circle, another man would catch her up in the dance. Really creepy if you think about it. Fortunately we didn't actually partner up male/female and the context was explained later on so that it was just a dance while we were doing it.

The comment made above about how the man is just a "prop" is also kind of literally true. The lead rarely gets flashy moves. The way it was explained was that the purpose of the dance was to display the follow (and her dress) to full effect. This is why we have moves that involve the lead standing still and holding up his/her arm while the follow struts in a full circle around him/her.

I remember that there was a pair of moves termed the "manly move" and the "half-manly move" that involved the lead mostly standing still while pulling the follow toward and around him/her.

When I was learning the part of the follow, I noticed a lot of controlling and arrogant behavior from some of the male leads. When gender roles are codified as an intrinsic part of the discipline you are learning, it really brings some of the shit out of the woodworks because people feel like they can get away with it. Some guys just feel entitled to having women do what they say, and they seem to get into social dance as an outlet for that. Fortuntely, those men can be spotted from a mile away.

I admit that I am hardly an expert in social dance. It is something I do for fun and I don't dig too deeply into the themes and traditions, partly because what I have seen so far hasn't been impressive. However, I think it is significant that somebody of amature level can tell the stories that I can. The gender roles are pervasive enough that that have filtered down to the point where they are unavoidable in 101 level classes.

Here's a link to a video of a dance that involves a woman ignoring a man's "no".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkDoSd2bZtg

Just one data point, but there you go.

As a choreographer/modern dancer, you can find this type of theme popping up again and again. Its one of the reasons I rarely work with male dancers--the power dynamic can immediately shift in a partnering sequence with the presence of a male, simply by the fact of his male body and "maleness".

But, in general, dance is an art form that lends itself easily to the portrayal of struggle and violence. It is non-verbal and referential, involves physical exhaustion, manipulation, and can very easily portray emotional content, particularly negative emotions. Dancers themselves can harbor a bit of masochism--its not a career that attracts the happy-go-lucky types. Dance that is happy is often viewed as cheesy, fit more for a Broadway-eque show than for a serious art forum.

However, I would say as an avid dance viewer in NYC, I have seen much more work dealing with struggle and violence between two (or more) women than male-female politics.

The dance culture is quite interesting. One one spectrum, there are a lot of choreographers who embrace and exploit male/female stereotypes which are easily read and communicated to the audience. On another side, there is an incredibly active feminist movement within the form, that is often subverting these kind of roles.

Here is a choreographer, Kate Weare, who plays with male-female desire quite well, in which the women are always agents. This clip is almost the reverse of the other, but still sexy, and yet still violent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htfr6ri5PMc

The video that Joshua sent kinda proves the point of how gender-oriented it is: the theme from the two scenes is similar - there's a couple, one of them isn't interested, but the other insists, and both of them deal with the stereotypes mostly associated to this situation.

But the way the scene is played out is completely different - on the first situation, the man is seen as completely "manly" and even "noble" for insisting, and the woman doesn't really want to say no - so, in the dance, his insistance is portrayed as "sexy", and she ends up caving to him.

In the second situation, her insistance is portrayed in somewhat childlike movements and in the end, the woman is crying while the man leaves.

Curiously, the violence goes the same way - even if the woman is insisting, it is the man who uses violence to prove his point, dragging her away in a way that is "strangely" similar to the way the first man drags the woman close to him.

Interesting. In a sense, i'm not bothered by the narrative *on its own* - attraction is complicated, this story can also be told - but its the trend: for every story/dance/movie/book where the woman is wrong, we have very few where she is right, and lots of dignified men as inspirers of wild contradictory passion, but very few women worthy of that. (Although...isn't the devastating seductive femme fatale figure you should know better than to want kind of classic?)

Slightly off topic, but:

"this is a man who is stalking and harassing her, but the narrative (which almost always ends in her giving in to him/her desire) suggests that this is perfectly reasonable, even passionate, loving, devoted behavior."

Twilight.

Just saying.

Some other SYTYCD links for consideration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS3qNcEBCv0
The man in this one is not really a man, as he represents addiction, but it is still a man doing damage to a woman who wants to get away. Choreographed by a woman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkSFLkU3dWw
(Same female dancer) I'm not sure if the female dancer in this one is a vampire, but the male dancer is definitely supposed to be one. It is danced to a song used in the Twilight movie. Choreographed by a woman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjAWdXYY89g
(Same female dancer) This one is a male zombie vs a girl in a skimpy school uniform. At the end he chokes her to death. Choreographed by a man.

Now these aren't based in reality since they include fantastical characters, but I still was a little bothered by this one female dancer getting all these dances where she was the victim. These three dances were very popular.

General shoutout:
Does anyone have any thoughts on the title that's been given to the video (by whoever uploaded it, ie: not SocImgs)? It's the sexiest this person ever saw.

I think it's odd to see people noticing this theme in dance and foreign films, when it's a tired sick staple in American films. From Star Wars on up to whatever you've seen lately, it seems that if a woman spouts hatred and vitriol at a man in the first scene, he'll be doing her by the third.

I think it's a male rape fantasy, or at least one of subduing the stuck up bitch that turned you down.

From my own point of view, I'm seeing ambivalence from both dancers, not just the woman. Maybe it's just because I have been in a relationship like this? My partner is much older than I am and we struggled with the attraction for over a year. He would reject me but I kept coming back to him and vice versa. That is what I'm seeing here. A forbidden love where both parties struggle with attraction and rejection. There are several instances where I see the male dancer pushing the female dancer away or trying to get away from her persuits. They are much more subtle (looking away, turning his back to her, the woman clinging to him while he's obviously trying to get her off) and I guess that's where the gender stereotype comes into play. The woman's actions are dramatic, hard to miss and seem emotionally instable. The man's actions seem more rational, cool and aimed inwards. The woman is twirling around, jumping on/over him, playing the whole stage, while the man seems to be in thought most of the time.

I personally found this video creepy and disturbing. She doesn't want to be with him, but she keeps going back. Like Annie C said,

"It might have something to do with watching it with the music off. All I could see was them playing out an emotionally abusive relationship. For the first 56 seconds it’s almost physical violence, or it feels like that could happen at any time. After that you can almost see him talking her into it, then at 1:26 she’s trying to get away again. He apologizes, she forgives and returns. It’s good for a while. Rinse. Repeat. It’s a classic abusive relationship. "

This is my thinking on it, too. It's very unsettling.

yes,very well observed.I think tha what is called "subtile sexism".In adition,i would like to call attentiopn for the women clothes.The men in dances are always all dressed,and women,half-nacked,showing their bodies in a sexual manner.

There's a lot of interesting sociological data to be mined here, since it's a distillation of traditional hierarchical relationships, but it has to be understood within the framework of dance.

My old insructor used to say that on the floor men were in control, but that ends once the couple is off the floor. He also used to say that dancing with a woman was like driving a fine Italian sports car (with respect to how much power you need to control her movement), and that if you try to drive her like you would a 70s pickup, it would end badly. At the collegiate competition level, the Midwest has a fair few female-female partners due to a lack of guys (and some other universities have trouble recruiting women, but those don't do guy-guy partnerships - interesting, that).

As a final comment, I'd emphasize that the role of the man in ballroom dance is to make the woman look beautiful. It's secondary if he's even noticed. Which could say something about the objectivization of women.

I hope no one said this before because I don't really want to read all the comments at the moment and I dont know anything about dance but here is my interpretation of this situation.
I think this is a portrayal of the fact that women want sex just as men do but because a women giving in to her sexual desires means something much different than a man giving in to his sexual desires, she must be careful about who she enters into a sexual relationship with. When the man shows that he won't stop pursuing her after he says no shows that he actually is interested in her and so she feels more secure. A women who says yes to a man right away can be seen as impure while a man does not have this worry as much.

I've seen several dances that are the other way around, with the man being torn by wanting to pursue a woman and at the same time knowing that he shouldn't be with her. I have to admit, I prefer the reversed roles, if only because there seems to be more humor in them - the woman is usually depicted as somewhat innocently seductive rather than predatorial, and as such, the dances tend to be a little less on the skeevy side. I'll be one of the first to admit, that tendency in and of itself might be a little on the sexist side - but shoot, they're good dances anyway.

I am a farmer, in nature the female needs to do the tricks.

I would like to point out that if one watches this just as a dance piece and not as a social commentary - it is beautifully choreographed and performed dance. Just wanted to add that into all of this wonderful discussion on the implications of the piece! :D

While watching this dance, what really stood out to me was the acrobatics, and the comfort the two dancers appeared to have with each other. The female dancer obviously trusted her partner to catch her numerous times, and let no harm come to her in the tricky and potentially dangerous sequences. That feeling of trust between two professionals came across more to me than the drama of the dance. I watched it a second time, looking for sexism, and I can sort of see how some might interpret it that way.