April 12, 2017 • 28 mins
Some men dance, many don’t. What are the unspoken rules that govern the ways we move our body, and what does it say about our society and how we treat each other?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
When I say men dancing, what's the first thing you
think about? What's the first thing that comes to your mind? Reluctance. Um.
I feel like there's a societal expectation that you stay composed, um,
or that you should be embarrassed in many situations. I
(00:22):
don't know it bums me out, but it does. My
name is Julie Douglas and this is the Stuff of
Life today. I'm joined by correspondent and How Stuff Works editor,
Eve's Jeff Cote, and we're talking about men dancing. And
for the record, Julie, you're a woman and I'm a woman,
(00:42):
Yet we're talking about men dancing. Why do we even
decide to tackle this topic? I believe it all started
with our male coworkers who we observed mostly head bobbing
instead of dancing to music at our company holiday party. Yeah,
and that sent us down a rubbit, all of thoughts
on what it means for gods to move their bodies
(01:03):
to a beat. In this episode, Eves explores what it
means to be a man taking on dance and talks
with Emory University professor George Stabe. It was just great
to do things to music, and it can feel really
authentic and natural to do that. And if we can
connect to something like oh, I can relate to this
in one we or another, that's when magic happens. And
(01:27):
Duke Universities Professor Thomas de France discusses race, identity and dance.
Black lives are expressed through culture and especially through music
and dance. We love music and dance, we need it,
we engage it. And finally, Eaves talks to a couple
of regular Jo's are co workers Christopher Hessiadas, Dylan Fagan,
and Jonathan Strickland to find out why they do or
(01:50):
don't dance. But there's something subversive about about a bunch
of men dancing, right. I mean, as we've we've mentioned
a couple of times men dancing. The reason why they
we're even here talking about this is because the idea
of men dancing together in American mainstream culture is noteworthy.
(02:17):
Maybe you've seen awkward dads and viral videos trying sometimes
too hard to do the latest dance craze, or fraternity
members strolling in unison, or your brothers and uncles and
cousins dancing at family reunions and wedding receptions. But despite
how common dancing is and how long humans have been
doing it. Dancing is emotionally complex. It's the departure from normalcy,
(02:43):
the rope movements that get us from A to B,
and for men it can be super problematic. Only two
years ago, ABC reportedly nixed idea of two men dancing
together on Dancing with the Stars, and it may entertainment
news when two guys share at the floor for the
first time on the reality show early last year. Now
DeMarco and Kio Mazepe dancing together starts here and ends there.
(03:20):
That's twelve seconds of two guys dancing together if you
weren't counting. So people are uncomfortable with men dancing, especially
with each other. Who cares? You might say, haven't we
given enough space to men's grievances? They and all their
problems have dominated history after all. But this men dancing
(03:44):
is a matter of acceptance, of freedom, of expression, of equity,
of living our personal truths, ideals we could all get behind.
And if you think about it, the actions and characteristics
that make up gender can be considered their own performances.
So what's it like to be a dancing man in
a world that cares so much about upholding the mantle
(04:05):
of masculinity. What's it like to swivel your hips and
buck the authority of social norms and a culture that
often rejects vulnerability and encourages conformity. A scene as basic
as a man dancing can become a psychological labyrinth, and
we're going to enter it here. This is four ish
(04:28):
when Janet Jackson's Pleasure Principle came out. It was my
after school project every day to memorize that whole video,
and my sister and I, if we could drink, we
would have chugged champagne after we figured out this one
scene where she was in front of a mirror doing
all this intricate hand stuff that storage State the artistic
(04:52):
director for State Dance and a senior lecturer in the
dance program at Emory University in Atlanta. This is which
is wait. George was born in Tehran, Iran. At age nine,
I was with my mother picking up our cousin from
the ballet class, and I remember watching it and thinking, Oh,
that looks fun. I want to do it. And I
(05:13):
asked my mother can I do that? And she said no,
boys don't do this. Years later, after getting a degree
in political science in a stint at Georgetown's Law school
doing legal research, impressive career choices that would appease his parents.
He says it was an impromptu duet at a freshman
frat party that inspired him to take modern and ballet classes,
(05:37):
and upon graduation from college, I remember distinctly telling my parents,
I did this for you. Now grad school and dance
is going to be for me. That didn't come without doubts,
feeling embarrassed as a new dance professor in a room
full of scientists, his mom telling family members he was
a French professor. He went from being a stranger and
(05:59):
one strange and to another. But that was okay because
he felt liberated in those moments when I'm just lost.
It could actually feel like, I guess, a drug trip
where you're completely not aware of stuff, or you are
aware that I've completely abandoned and let go and I
don't have to pull myself back at all, and that's
(06:21):
kind of crazy. Imagine a tantrum, like when you have
that tantrum and the breakdown or laughing fit or a
crying fit um where no one's around to see it
in the most pristine, sublime way, that's kind of how
I feel or like to go to. You know, it's
not necessarily I want you to see my passion. I
want to feel it myself, and if other people notice it,
(06:45):
that's great to him. Dance class was a place with
many doorways, a place to explore, make mistakes, and try
new things. But the line between introspection and perform a
it's fine, you're taking all that emotion and putting it
on the world stage in front of judgmental eyes. And
(07:07):
even though it doesn't happen all the time or in
every culture, George says that sometimes negativity can start to
creep into spaces that aren't as accepting. There's only one
clans left, but it happens to be the coolest one
of all. That way dancing is for girls, well you
should have gotten near earlier. Okay, steady board taking ballet
(07:33):
doesn't make you any less of a man. That constant
reminder that um like, oh you would be thought of
as a sissy, or this is not a real career,
or you must be gay, or all of these things
do creep in and when you're gonna get your real job.
Because the body, as it twists, spins twirls in jar
(07:55):
rates is the focus. Dance can often reinforce or negate
perceptions about gender in sexuality. For men dancing at a party,
whether they are married or single, it's amazing ritual in
a way. And even in Greek culture, Persian culture, Armenian culture,
(08:16):
there often be the men who danced together and then
the women dance together, and then if they do I
mean by gender, and if they do connect with different genders,
it's in a sort of benign circle. So I think
it's almost like a peacock streading, you know. And I
think you might even find that in country western lined.
I think that happens there. I'm not very familiar with that,
(08:38):
but I almost think there's like, hey, watch me do
this fancy foot thing and TOAs my cowboy had around.
I hope I'm not offending anyone, but I just don't
know that stuff. But I think it that's what it
isn't if you go to clubs, it is that either
the men or in the background just kind of watching
and praying on the women there, or they're going to
(09:01):
go out there and kind of show off a little bit.
And in that respect, it's okay. I think the moment
you put it on stage and put a weird costume
on and try to express yourself in a different way
other than sexually. Then it's a bit naughty, I guess,
or not naughty but taboo. Sure, dancing is often visceral,
(09:25):
igniting hormones and firing up our most basic desires. But
it isn't just a physical act. It's a process of
learning and discovery. The body becomes a means of discourse.
Movements become questions, gestures become demands, and interactions become statements.
(09:46):
It peels back the layers of assumptions and perspectives that
we hold. You know everybody, and I don't. I see
sometimes like just because if you let yourself connect to
something abstract, you might find out more about yourself as
(10:08):
opposed to being fed a story, kind of like those
Hollywood blockbusters. You might want to go to see one
because you don't want to to think so much. But
when we're invited to think and explore uncomfortable territory, that's
what dance can do. And if you're patient enough and
let yourself be in the room for the hour or
so that you're watching the thing, that's when it speaks
(10:30):
and not to mention bringing community together, to move together,
to share stories through their bodies. It's so valuable. George
is a pro. He's trained in the art of dancing,
(10:51):
performs in front of crowds and as a dancer with
the capital D. But sometimes the spotlight is on guys
who aren't so well skillful. Could you describe your typical
dance style? Uh, I do the t rex. That's Donathan Strickland,
the host of Ford Thinking. That's where you get a
little the foe arms up and like you got your
(11:13):
your hands kind of curled into fists and you're just
sort of bouncing up and down a little bit to
the beat. You're not really doing anything in particular because again,
as I said, awkward, And here's an awkward dance story
recounting about Dylan, producer at how Stuff Works. When I
was in college, I had a radio show with um
my friend, and we had a green screen and decided
(11:35):
we're going to make some promotional videos for our radio
show and put it on Facebook. And I didn't know
what to do, so we thought, well, how we dance,
And so we'd danced for like three minutes at a time,
and then we'd find a song that fitted we we
would not have a song beforehand. Um, So you know,
there was one video that was Technotronics Pump Up the Jam,
and that just like lined up perfectly, and so we
(11:56):
put that there and I realized halfway through it I
was really feeling it, and I did what I called
the spitting dinosaur, which is like this, like it's more
fluid than that, but Dylan's putting his hands behind his
ears and waving them around. It was from growing up
watching Jurassic Parks. The Jurassic period is great with the
frill dinosaur. The frill dinosaur that's that spits poison. Yeah, that,
(12:18):
and I thought, hey, look look guys, it's the spit
and everyone's like that. I like that movie if it
works for you going in. Yeah, I remembered from my
high school days, from my college days, where dancing, engaging
in that activity was unless you were amazing, it was
(12:41):
just considered something that was lame or stupid, or or
you felt lame or stupid for wanting to do it.
But there's something subversive about about a bunch of men dancing, right.
That's Christopher editor at How Stuff Works. As we've we've
mentioned a couple of times men dancing. The reason why
they we're even here talking about this is because the
idea of men dancing together in American mainstream culture is noteworthy,
(13:07):
is not necessarily the standard mode of operating. So if
you're already in a culture where you feel kind of
set aside, whether it's nerd culture, gay culture, nerdy gay culture, uh,
the act of dancing is you're embracing the fact that
you're sort of accepting your status as an outsider and saying,
(13:27):
you know what, let's celebrate this. Let's let's yeah, we'll
be outsiders that uncomfortable territory. Those moments of surprise are
a border something Thomas Defrance called slippage. It's the place
where things don't quite work. It's the if we think
of it as a physical space, it's the spot on
(13:49):
the ground where a literal slip happens. And it's also
the remains of that slipping. When you slip, there's a
slippage that's left behind. So I love this word because
it's a it's a noun, but it's all so an
adjective and and something of an adverb. It has all
of these different balances, and it implies this this kind
of place where things don't quite add up, something doesn't
(14:11):
quite shive the way you think it's going to. He's
a professor of African and African American Studies and Dance
at Duke University. Queerness and dance, to de France, is
that slippery, unpredictable, and sometimes unsettling place between what we
assume about gender and dance and how certain dances buck
those notions. You know, your little niece who you've never
(14:34):
seen really move, suddenly bust bust the dance out at
the birthday party with all this fierce power and energy,
and maybe she slides to the floor in a vogue
astraw like. There's something queer about that moment because it
surprises us. And that's what I mean by queer when
I use it in terms of queer gesture. It's the
(14:54):
physical movement that suggests something really unexpected, so emboyant probably
and also unusual and non noormative. We need queer gestures
in our lives because they remind us that there's there's
more to learn, there's more to do, there's explorations to
have among each other and with ourselves, that we're not
(15:17):
stuck in our jobs and stuck in our kind of
every day now is that we have the capacity to
express and explore corporeal rature your body telling a story,
and that's what that phrase means, telling a story with
your body without words, but through gesture and doing it
in a queer way, in a way that surprises the
(15:37):
people who are receiving a story or witnessing your dance.
Queer corporeal gesture is a way to narrate our possibility.
It's a way to perform how we can surprise ourselves
and keep learning things. Think of it as a sort
of resistance or subversion of norms, but it's more than
(15:59):
just a statement. It's surviving through expression. I think that
concept is really important when we're thinking in any way
about African American expressive, expressive arts and black lives in
the United States. There's a way that how our lives
are organized and circumscribed. Things almost work, but they don't quite.
And this is why I think we have this amazing
(16:20):
social justice movement right now, because we're still trying to
deal with the legacies of the path that have created
this um circumstance where it's very hard for Black Americans
to kind of find ourselves and find our way forward,
and especially for our youngest, our youngest family members, um
are always having a hard time figuring out how to
(16:40):
be a black person. In the concept of the US
for Black men in America, he says, a lot of
dance is simply about navigating how to exist, and there's
science to back that up. Some research says that because
there's evidence of humans dancing in cave paintings from thirteen
thousand years ago, it has a genetic basis that dance
(17:01):
likely popped up around the tom Homo sapience did and
is linked to good social communication, a hand equality to
have when your survival depends on bonding, and community support.
Black Americans have also always had to monitor our physicality.
We turned that into dance, and we've always turned that
into dance. In the nineties twenties we called it eccentric dance,
(17:22):
and now in the twenty tens, there's a form of
movement called bone breaking, and this is a physicalization of
a kind of shifting body, a body that can do
unusual things. So we're turning that need to corral or
physicality in order to survive in a relatively hostile environment
and hostile daily environment, and we turn that into expression
(17:45):
and turn it into dance. And that's what we see
in bone breaking. We see this this kind of physicalization
of how to be shifty and odd with the body
to suggest something really unusual and and expressive a creator. No,
he's not talking about actual bone breaking. It's a social dance,
(18:05):
which is one that involves group participation that has roots
in bed mooin and dance battles. Dancers can tot their
limbs into apparently impossible and painful poses, dislocating their shoulders
and realigning their arms, pushing the limits of their bodies
and creativity. In this case, pain depicted is pain internalized,
(18:26):
and that coping through movement isn't just limited to dance
floors or social dance. It can extend into other realms
of expression, like protesters who raise their hands in an
outcry against Michael Brown's shooting, or celebratory end zone dances
on the football field. We have a penalty marker on
(18:50):
the field. Here's John Perry's fun Sports from like conduct
of the excessive celebration of her twenty two. That penalty
will be forced there Go Defrance calls this the policing
of black culture. Or imagine the opposing postures of President
Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama when they met
(19:11):
in the Oval Office. Legs spread, lips taught back stiff,
our brows furrowed. Our bodies often betray our thoughts even
when we don't say, let alone understand them. But dance
isn't passive. It's a deliberate channeling of emotion that takes
courage and audacity, a willingness to be outside of the
(19:33):
everyday experience. As Defrance puts it, an impulse to dance
is a desire to speak with the primal, essential language,
and it's not easy to be bare stripped to our
essence when our identities are exposed. The great things about
Black social dance is that it always challenges the space
(19:53):
for jender nor maturity. It always does so even if
we have Chicago steppanding, which is built upon two roles
leader and a follower, Well, in Black social dance, that
follower role done an awful lot of leading to. So
we can call these roles masculine and feminine, or the
male role or female role, but in practice that's not
really how they play out. There's always going to be
(20:14):
places where um, the female role or the feminine spaces
leading the interaction, and there's going to be places where
the woman, if you will, is shining and she's going
to do something really extraordinary and amazing. So this is
one of the reasons we love social dance so much.
It gets it gives us a chance to explore alternative
ways of being, to explore, for you know, really powerful
(20:37):
men to explore our feminine sort of abilities, and for
women to explore their power if those are hard of
what masculine and feminine um contained. So Black social dances
are always kind of getting into that space where it's
not one or the other, but it's a both and
(21:00):
course defined tradition doesn't come without backlash. Take Elvis, a
performer who was controversial for different reasons in different circles.
I had no idea that this performance of round was
going to call it such a round. I still can't
figure out what round. To his fans, he was a rebellious,
(21:20):
pioneering sex symbol. To his detractors, his dancing was inappropriate
or even animalistic, and too many black people, Elvis the
pelvis was yet another symbol of appropriation, acclaimed for moves
he seemingly lifted from black artists like Jackie Wilson. The
problem wasn't the invitation, per se. The problem was Elvis
(21:42):
getting cultural credit for elevating a sexualized performance style that
black artists had already been doing. And we're shamed or
simply I'm recognized. For historian Eric Lott says in the
book Love and Theft quote, what appears, in fact to
have been appropriated were certain kinds of masculinity. To put
one of the cultural forms of blackness was to engage
(22:04):
in a complex affair of manly mimicry. The Elvis debate
goes deeper, as he's perhaps one of the most contentious
figures of so called edginess or unorthodoxy and performance. But
there's another huge factor that causes people to get riled
up when dance questions norms, the way that norm ativity
or gender normalcy is about being afraid, being afraid of
(22:27):
the unknown or the unexpected. I mean, the only reason
to be afraid of something is because you're not sure
what it will mean for you in some in some
weird way, although that happens a lot less than social dance.
He points out, we're at a party, for example, the
excitement of the moment of dance is most important. Think
(22:47):
of popular dances you may have seen go viral, quant ETCETERA.
Flamboyance doesn't get much flak. It's often celebrated and for
black folks, especially to Francis, dancing is like air and water.
It's always been a part of life. We danced at
the high school reaunion. We dance at the graduation party.
We dance at the birth, we dance at the coming home.
(23:09):
We dance. Dance is important to us. We dance in church. Um.
We even have movement things that we executed in times
of morning. There's a way that music and movement are
important to our practice of morning as well, so for
us dances everywhere. He mentions the Nicholas brothers who jumped, twisted,
and tap danced their way into people's hearts from the
(23:30):
stage and screen in the early nineteen hundreds, and he
talks about the high energy, dramatic street dance styles crumping
and clowning, which grew out of the desire for an
alternative to gangs and violence and for an outlet for aggression.
During the aftermath of Rodney King's beating in Los Angeles,
in if I hadn't start from him, I would be
(23:51):
in jail for sure, or I would have got caught
up in something that I would have him killed. Very
early in my life because I was around a drama
in violent but dance and always kept me away or
sent nigger time from ritualistic and ceremonial dance like the
(24:13):
hula tow line dancing to country Western music, dance holds
a mirror to the social climate as a sign of
the times. Dance can be as important to cultural documentation
as records of war, policy and technology. It's an uninhibited
declaration of self, showing us as we are, for who
we are in every fleeting moment. As father of modern
(24:35):
American dance, Ted Sean, who performed with an all male
dance company throughout the US in the thirties and forties,
put it, you see, a peter can paint something that
it goes on the wall, or a sculptor makes something
and it stays there. But this is the most ephemeral
art you see. You do it, and it's born and
dies in the very second you're doing it. We engage it.
(25:07):
We let it be unusual, we let it be weird,
we let it be queer, and we learned from it.
We need society, yet so many of us feel left
(25:28):
out and yearned to be understood and recognized. When you're
struggling to be seen, especially when you're part of a
marginalized group, asserting your existence through dance can be cathartic,
powerful and pleasurable. And for anybody, dance can be a
means of release that they often don't get to or
want to say with words, for fear of being embarrassed, moralized, dismissed,
(25:54):
or simply ignored. It gives men a chance to be genuine, creative,
and present. And what more do we need now than
open and honest communication. Maybe try dancing sometime. There's something
about when you finally get out there and everyone around
(26:15):
you is encouraging you that really, um, it's one of
the best feelings. It's just like yeah, like when you
get that head and no, like yeah, yeah, I like that,
Like look what you're doing, Like yeah, like what you're
doing too. And you don't have to dance with anybody.
You can just dance by yourself. You know, if you're
a guy and you're not sure if you like to dance,
(26:37):
going to a go into your bedroom, closed the door,
put on hot Pants by James Brown, the the song
and or the article of clothing, and and see if
you you know and and just try dancing a little
bit and moved to the beat. And if you dig it,
keep doing it. And if you feel like you want
to test it out, go to and go to another
(26:58):
town where there's a dance club and go dance are
and see what happens. Or go crash a wedding where
you don't know anyone and try that and uh yeah,
do not actually take that. Thank you to Eve's Jeff Cote,
(27:40):
who wrote and produced this episode. You can find more
of her work on Eve's jeff cote dot com. Thank
you to Thomas de France and George Stabe for the
political and personal breakdown of dance. And thank you to
Dylan Fagan, Christopher Hessiadas, and Jonathan Strickland for bearing your
dancing souls. The Stuff of Life is written an executive
produced by me Julie Douglas and co produced by Noel Brown.
(28:03):
Original music is by Noel Brown, and editorial oversight is
provided by contributing producer Dylan Fagin and Head of Production
Jerry Rowland. This episode also featured music by Tristan McNeil,
Aaron Grubbs, and Dylan Fagan. If you have a story
you'd like to share with us, you can call into
our podcast line at one eight four four hs W Stuff.
(28:26):
We'll be doing a wrap up episode at the end
of the season and we want to hear your voice
in it, so leave us a message. You can also
find The Stuff of Life on Facebook and Twitter, and
you can email us at the Stuff of Life at
how staff works dot com.
When I say men dancing, what's the first thing you
think about? What's the first thing that comes to your mind? Reluctance. Um.
I feel like there's a societal expectation that you stay composed, um,
or that you should be embarrassed in many situations. I
(00:22):
don't know it bums me out, but it does. My
name is Julie Douglas and this is the Stuff of
Life today. I'm joined by correspondent and How Stuff Works editor,
Eve's Jeff Cote, and we're talking about men dancing. And
for the record, Julie, you're a woman and I'm a woman,
(00:42):
Yet we're talking about men dancing. Why do we even
decide to tackle this topic? I believe it all started
with our male coworkers who we observed mostly head bobbing
instead of dancing to music at our company holiday party. Yeah,
and that sent us down a rubbit, all of thoughts
on what it means for gods to move their bodies
(01:03):
to a beat. In this episode, Eves explores what it
means to be a man taking on dance and talks
with Emory University professor George Stabe. It was just great
to do things to music, and it can feel really
authentic and natural to do that. And if we can
connect to something like oh, I can relate to this
in one we or another, that's when magic happens. And
(01:27):
Duke Universities Professor Thomas de France discusses race, identity and dance.
Black lives are expressed through culture and especially through music
and dance. We love music and dance, we need it,
we engage it. And finally, Eaves talks to a couple
of regular Jo's are co workers Christopher Hessiadas, Dylan Fagan,
and Jonathan Strickland to find out why they do or
(01:50):
don't dance. But there's something subversive about about a bunch
of men dancing, right. I mean, as we've we've mentioned
a couple of times men dancing. The reason why they
we're even here talking about this is because the idea
of men dancing together in American mainstream culture is noteworthy.
(02:17):
Maybe you've seen awkward dads and viral videos trying sometimes
too hard to do the latest dance craze, or fraternity
members strolling in unison, or your brothers and uncles and
cousins dancing at family reunions and wedding receptions. But despite
how common dancing is and how long humans have been
doing it. Dancing is emotionally complex. It's the departure from normalcy,
(02:43):
the rope movements that get us from A to B,
and for men it can be super problematic. Only two
years ago, ABC reportedly nixed idea of two men dancing
together on Dancing with the Stars, and it may entertainment
news when two guys share at the floor for the
first time on the reality show early last year. Now
DeMarco and Kio Mazepe dancing together starts here and ends there.
(03:20):
That's twelve seconds of two guys dancing together if you
weren't counting. So people are uncomfortable with men dancing, especially
with each other. Who cares? You might say, haven't we
given enough space to men's grievances? They and all their
problems have dominated history after all. But this men dancing
(03:44):
is a matter of acceptance, of freedom, of expression, of equity,
of living our personal truths, ideals we could all get behind.
And if you think about it, the actions and characteristics
that make up gender can be considered their own performances.
So what's it like to be a dancing man in
a world that cares so much about upholding the mantle
(04:05):
of masculinity. What's it like to swivel your hips and
buck the authority of social norms and a culture that
often rejects vulnerability and encourages conformity. A scene as basic
as a man dancing can become a psychological labyrinth, and
we're going to enter it here. This is four ish
(04:28):
when Janet Jackson's Pleasure Principle came out. It was my
after school project every day to memorize that whole video,
and my sister and I, if we could drink, we
would have chugged champagne after we figured out this one
scene where she was in front of a mirror doing
all this intricate hand stuff that storage State the artistic
(04:52):
director for State Dance and a senior lecturer in the
dance program at Emory University in Atlanta. This is which
is wait. George was born in Tehran, Iran. At age nine,
I was with my mother picking up our cousin from
the ballet class, and I remember watching it and thinking, Oh,
that looks fun. I want to do it. And I
(05:13):
asked my mother can I do that? And she said no,
boys don't do this. Years later, after getting a degree
in political science in a stint at Georgetown's Law school
doing legal research, impressive career choices that would appease his parents.
He says it was an impromptu duet at a freshman
frat party that inspired him to take modern and ballet classes,
(05:37):
and upon graduation from college, I remember distinctly telling my parents,
I did this for you. Now grad school and dance
is going to be for me. That didn't come without doubts,
feeling embarrassed as a new dance professor in a room
full of scientists, his mom telling family members he was
a French professor. He went from being a stranger and
(05:59):
one strange and to another. But that was okay because
he felt liberated in those moments when I'm just lost.
It could actually feel like, I guess, a drug trip
where you're completely not aware of stuff, or you are
aware that I've completely abandoned and let go and I
don't have to pull myself back at all, and that's
(06:21):
kind of crazy. Imagine a tantrum, like when you have
that tantrum and the breakdown or laughing fit or a
crying fit um where no one's around to see it
in the most pristine, sublime way, that's kind of how
I feel or like to go to. You know, it's
not necessarily I want you to see my passion. I
want to feel it myself, and if other people notice it,
(06:45):
that's great to him. Dance class was a place with
many doorways, a place to explore, make mistakes, and try
new things. But the line between introspection and perform a
it's fine, you're taking all that emotion and putting it
on the world stage in front of judgmental eyes. And
(07:07):
even though it doesn't happen all the time or in
every culture, George says that sometimes negativity can start to
creep into spaces that aren't as accepting. There's only one
clans left, but it happens to be the coolest one
of all. That way dancing is for girls, well you
should have gotten near earlier. Okay, steady board taking ballet
(07:33):
doesn't make you any less of a man. That constant
reminder that um like, oh you would be thought of
as a sissy, or this is not a real career,
or you must be gay, or all of these things
do creep in and when you're gonna get your real job.
Because the body, as it twists, spins twirls in jar
(07:55):
rates is the focus. Dance can often reinforce or negate
perceptions about gender in sexuality. For men dancing at a party,
whether they are married or single, it's amazing ritual in
a way. And even in Greek culture, Persian culture, Armenian culture,
(08:16):
there often be the men who danced together and then
the women dance together, and then if they do I
mean by gender, and if they do connect with different genders,
it's in a sort of benign circle. So I think
it's almost like a peacock streading, you know. And I
think you might even find that in country western lined.
I think that happens there. I'm not very familiar with that,
(08:38):
but I almost think there's like, hey, watch me do
this fancy foot thing and TOAs my cowboy had around.
I hope I'm not offending anyone, but I just don't
know that stuff. But I think it that's what it
isn't if you go to clubs, it is that either
the men or in the background just kind of watching
and praying on the women there, or they're going to
(09:01):
go out there and kind of show off a little bit.
And in that respect, it's okay. I think the moment
you put it on stage and put a weird costume
on and try to express yourself in a different way
other than sexually. Then it's a bit naughty, I guess,
or not naughty but taboo. Sure, dancing is often visceral,
(09:25):
igniting hormones and firing up our most basic desires. But
it isn't just a physical act. It's a process of
learning and discovery. The body becomes a means of discourse.
Movements become questions, gestures become demands, and interactions become statements.
(09:46):
It peels back the layers of assumptions and perspectives that
we hold. You know everybody, and I don't. I see
sometimes like just because if you let yourself connect to
something abstract, you might find out more about yourself as
(10:08):
opposed to being fed a story, kind of like those
Hollywood blockbusters. You might want to go to see one
because you don't want to to think so much. But
when we're invited to think and explore uncomfortable territory, that's
what dance can do. And if you're patient enough and
let yourself be in the room for the hour or
so that you're watching the thing, that's when it speaks
(10:30):
and not to mention bringing community together, to move together,
to share stories through their bodies. It's so valuable. George
is a pro. He's trained in the art of dancing,
(10:51):
performs in front of crowds and as a dancer with
the capital D. But sometimes the spotlight is on guys
who aren't so well skillful. Could you describe your typical
dance style? Uh, I do the t rex. That's Donathan Strickland,
the host of Ford Thinking. That's where you get a
little the foe arms up and like you got your
(11:13):
your hands kind of curled into fists and you're just
sort of bouncing up and down a little bit to
the beat. You're not really doing anything in particular because again,
as I said, awkward, And here's an awkward dance story
recounting about Dylan, producer at how Stuff Works. When I
was in college, I had a radio show with um
my friend, and we had a green screen and decided
(11:35):
we're going to make some promotional videos for our radio
show and put it on Facebook. And I didn't know
what to do, so we thought, well, how we dance,
And so we'd danced for like three minutes at a time,
and then we'd find a song that fitted we we
would not have a song beforehand. Um, So you know,
there was one video that was Technotronics Pump Up the Jam,
and that just like lined up perfectly, and so we
(11:56):
put that there and I realized halfway through it I
was really feeling it, and I did what I called
the spitting dinosaur, which is like this, like it's more
fluid than that, but Dylan's putting his hands behind his
ears and waving them around. It was from growing up
watching Jurassic Parks. The Jurassic period is great with the
frill dinosaur. The frill dinosaur that's that spits poison. Yeah, that,
(12:18):
and I thought, hey, look look guys, it's the spit
and everyone's like that. I like that movie if it
works for you going in. Yeah, I remembered from my
high school days, from my college days, where dancing, engaging
in that activity was unless you were amazing, it was
(12:41):
just considered something that was lame or stupid, or or
you felt lame or stupid for wanting to do it.
But there's something subversive about about a bunch of men dancing, right.
That's Christopher editor at How Stuff Works. As we've we've
mentioned a couple of times men dancing. The reason why
they we're even here talking about this is because the
idea of men dancing together in American mainstream culture is noteworthy,
(13:07):
is not necessarily the standard mode of operating. So if
you're already in a culture where you feel kind of
set aside, whether it's nerd culture, gay culture, nerdy gay culture, uh,
the act of dancing is you're embracing the fact that
you're sort of accepting your status as an outsider and saying,
(13:27):
you know what, let's celebrate this. Let's let's yeah, we'll
be outsiders that uncomfortable territory. Those moments of surprise are
a border something Thomas Defrance called slippage. It's the place
where things don't quite work. It's the if we think
of it as a physical space, it's the spot on
(13:49):
the ground where a literal slip happens. And it's also
the remains of that slipping. When you slip, there's a
slippage that's left behind. So I love this word because
it's a it's a noun, but it's all so an
adjective and and something of an adverb. It has all
of these different balances, and it implies this this kind
of place where things don't quite add up, something doesn't
(14:11):
quite shive the way you think it's going to. He's
a professor of African and African American Studies and Dance
at Duke University. Queerness and dance, to de France, is
that slippery, unpredictable, and sometimes unsettling place between what we
assume about gender and dance and how certain dances buck
those notions. You know, your little niece who you've never
(14:34):
seen really move, suddenly bust bust the dance out at
the birthday party with all this fierce power and energy,
and maybe she slides to the floor in a vogue
astraw like. There's something queer about that moment because it
surprises us. And that's what I mean by queer when
I use it in terms of queer gesture. It's the
(14:54):
physical movement that suggests something really unexpected, so emboyant probably
and also unusual and non noormative. We need queer gestures
in our lives because they remind us that there's there's
more to learn, there's more to do, there's explorations to
have among each other and with ourselves, that we're not
(15:17):
stuck in our jobs and stuck in our kind of
every day now is that we have the capacity to
express and explore corporeal rature your body telling a story,
and that's what that phrase means, telling a story with
your body without words, but through gesture and doing it
in a queer way, in a way that surprises the
(15:37):
people who are receiving a story or witnessing your dance.
Queer corporeal gesture is a way to narrate our possibility.
It's a way to perform how we can surprise ourselves
and keep learning things. Think of it as a sort
of resistance or subversion of norms, but it's more than
(15:59):
just a statement. It's surviving through expression. I think that
concept is really important when we're thinking in any way
about African American expressive, expressive arts and black lives in
the United States. There's a way that how our lives
are organized and circumscribed. Things almost work, but they don't quite.
And this is why I think we have this amazing
(16:20):
social justice movement right now, because we're still trying to
deal with the legacies of the path that have created
this um circumstance where it's very hard for Black Americans
to kind of find ourselves and find our way forward,
and especially for our youngest, our youngest family members, um
are always having a hard time figuring out how to
(16:40):
be a black person. In the concept of the US
for Black men in America, he says, a lot of
dance is simply about navigating how to exist, and there's
science to back that up. Some research says that because
there's evidence of humans dancing in cave paintings from thirteen
thousand years ago, it has a genetic basis that dance
(17:01):
likely popped up around the tom Homo sapience did and
is linked to good social communication, a hand equality to
have when your survival depends on bonding, and community support.
Black Americans have also always had to monitor our physicality.
We turned that into dance, and we've always turned that
into dance. In the nineties twenties we called it eccentric dance,
(17:22):
and now in the twenty tens, there's a form of
movement called bone breaking, and this is a physicalization of
a kind of shifting body, a body that can do
unusual things. So we're turning that need to corral or
physicality in order to survive in a relatively hostile environment
and hostile daily environment, and we turn that into expression
(17:45):
and turn it into dance. And that's what we see
in bone breaking. We see this this kind of physicalization
of how to be shifty and odd with the body
to suggest something really unusual and and expressive a creator. No,
he's not talking about actual bone breaking. It's a social dance,
(18:05):
which is one that involves group participation that has roots
in bed mooin and dance battles. Dancers can tot their
limbs into apparently impossible and painful poses, dislocating their shoulders
and realigning their arms, pushing the limits of their bodies
and creativity. In this case, pain depicted is pain internalized,
(18:26):
and that coping through movement isn't just limited to dance
floors or social dance. It can extend into other realms
of expression, like protesters who raise their hands in an
outcry against Michael Brown's shooting, or celebratory end zone dances
on the football field. We have a penalty marker on
(18:50):
the field. Here's John Perry's fun Sports from like conduct
of the excessive celebration of her twenty two. That penalty
will be forced there Go Defrance calls this the policing
of black culture. Or imagine the opposing postures of President
Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama when they met
(19:11):
in the Oval Office. Legs spread, lips taught back stiff,
our brows furrowed. Our bodies often betray our thoughts even
when we don't say, let alone understand them. But dance
isn't passive. It's a deliberate channeling of emotion that takes
courage and audacity, a willingness to be outside of the
(19:33):
everyday experience. As Defrance puts it, an impulse to dance
is a desire to speak with the primal, essential language,
and it's not easy to be bare stripped to our
essence when our identities are exposed. The great things about
Black social dance is that it always challenges the space
(19:53):
for jender nor maturity. It always does so even if
we have Chicago steppanding, which is built upon two roles
leader and a follower, Well, in Black social dance, that
follower role done an awful lot of leading to. So
we can call these roles masculine and feminine, or the
male role or female role, but in practice that's not
really how they play out. There's always going to be
(20:14):
places where um, the female role or the feminine spaces
leading the interaction, and there's going to be places where
the woman, if you will, is shining and she's going
to do something really extraordinary and amazing. So this is
one of the reasons we love social dance so much.
It gets it gives us a chance to explore alternative
ways of being, to explore, for you know, really powerful
(20:37):
men to explore our feminine sort of abilities, and for
women to explore their power if those are hard of
what masculine and feminine um contained. So Black social dances
are always kind of getting into that space where it's
not one or the other, but it's a both and
(21:00):
course defined tradition doesn't come without backlash. Take Elvis, a
performer who was controversial for different reasons in different circles.
I had no idea that this performance of round was
going to call it such a round. I still can't
figure out what round. To his fans, he was a rebellious,
(21:20):
pioneering sex symbol. To his detractors, his dancing was inappropriate
or even animalistic, and too many black people, Elvis the
pelvis was yet another symbol of appropriation, acclaimed for moves
he seemingly lifted from black artists like Jackie Wilson. The
problem wasn't the invitation, per se. The problem was Elvis
(21:42):
getting cultural credit for elevating a sexualized performance style that
black artists had already been doing. And we're shamed or
simply I'm recognized. For historian Eric Lott says in the
book Love and Theft quote, what appears, in fact to
have been appropriated were certain kinds of masculinity. To put
one of the cultural forms of blackness was to engage
(22:04):
in a complex affair of manly mimicry. The Elvis debate
goes deeper, as he's perhaps one of the most contentious
figures of so called edginess or unorthodoxy and performance. But
there's another huge factor that causes people to get riled
up when dance questions norms, the way that norm ativity
or gender normalcy is about being afraid, being afraid of
(22:27):
the unknown or the unexpected. I mean, the only reason
to be afraid of something is because you're not sure
what it will mean for you in some in some
weird way, although that happens a lot less than social dance.
He points out, we're at a party, for example, the
excitement of the moment of dance is most important. Think
(22:47):
of popular dances you may have seen go viral, quant ETCETERA.
Flamboyance doesn't get much flak. It's often celebrated and for
black folks, especially to Francis, dancing is like air and water.
It's always been a part of life. We danced at
the high school reaunion. We dance at the graduation party.
We dance at the birth, we dance at the coming home.
(23:09):
We dance. Dance is important to us. We dance in church. Um.
We even have movement things that we executed in times
of morning. There's a way that music and movement are
important to our practice of morning as well, so for
us dances everywhere. He mentions the Nicholas brothers who jumped, twisted,
and tap danced their way into people's hearts from the
(23:30):
stage and screen in the early nineteen hundreds, and he
talks about the high energy, dramatic street dance styles crumping
and clowning, which grew out of the desire for an
alternative to gangs and violence and for an outlet for aggression.
During the aftermath of Rodney King's beating in Los Angeles,
in if I hadn't start from him, I would be
(23:51):
in jail for sure, or I would have got caught
up in something that I would have him killed. Very
early in my life because I was around a drama
in violent but dance and always kept me away or
sent nigger time from ritualistic and ceremonial dance like the
(24:13):
hula tow line dancing to country Western music, dance holds
a mirror to the social climate as a sign of
the times. Dance can be as important to cultural documentation
as records of war, policy and technology. It's an uninhibited
declaration of self, showing us as we are, for who
we are in every fleeting moment. As father of modern
(24:35):
American dance, Ted Sean, who performed with an all male
dance company throughout the US in the thirties and forties,
put it, you see, a peter can paint something that
it goes on the wall, or a sculptor makes something
and it stays there. But this is the most ephemeral
art you see. You do it, and it's born and
dies in the very second you're doing it. We engage it.
(25:07):
We let it be unusual, we let it be weird,
we let it be queer, and we learned from it.
We need society, yet so many of us feel left
(25:28):
out and yearned to be understood and recognized. When you're
struggling to be seen, especially when you're part of a
marginalized group, asserting your existence through dance can be cathartic,
powerful and pleasurable. And for anybody, dance can be a
means of release that they often don't get to or
want to say with words, for fear of being embarrassed, moralized, dismissed,
(25:54):
or simply ignored. It gives men a chance to be genuine, creative,
and present. And what more do we need now than
open and honest communication. Maybe try dancing sometime. There's something
about when you finally get out there and everyone around
(26:15):
you is encouraging you that really, um, it's one of
the best feelings. It's just like yeah, like when you
get that head and no, like yeah, yeah, I like that,
Like look what you're doing, Like yeah, like what you're
doing too. And you don't have to dance with anybody.
You can just dance by yourself. You know, if you're
a guy and you're not sure if you like to dance,
(26:37):
going to a go into your bedroom, closed the door,
put on hot Pants by James Brown, the the song
and or the article of clothing, and and see if
you you know and and just try dancing a little
bit and moved to the beat. And if you dig it,
keep doing it. And if you feel like you want
to test it out, go to and go to another
(26:58):
town where there's a dance club and go dance are
and see what happens. Or go crash a wedding where
you don't know anyone and try that and uh yeah,
do not actually take that. Thank you to Eve's Jeff Cote,
(27:40):
who wrote and produced this episode. You can find more
of her work on Eve's jeff cote dot com. Thank
you to Thomas de France and George Stabe for the
political and personal breakdown of dance. And thank you to
Dylan Fagan, Christopher Hessiadas, and Jonathan Strickland for bearing your
dancing souls. The Stuff of Life is written an executive
produced by me Julie Douglas and co produced by Noel Brown.
(28:03):
Original music is by Noel Brown, and editorial oversight is
provided by contributing producer Dylan Fagin and Head of Production
Jerry Rowland. This episode also featured music by Tristan McNeil,
Aaron Grubbs, and Dylan Fagan. If you have a story
you'd like to share with us, you can call into
our podcast line at one eight four four hs W Stuff.
(28:26):
We'll be doing a wrap up episode at the end
of the season and we want to hear your voice
in it, so leave us a message. You can also
find The Stuff of Life on Facebook and Twitter, and
you can email us at the Stuff of Life at
how staff works dot com.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.