By GERALD BARTELL
Gay people are famously enthusiastic dancers at circuit parties and all night discos. But the dips, bends, and turns of ballroom dancing has been largely considered the domain of straight couples.
The OUTdancing gay and lesbian dance program has been working to change that perception for the last decade. And the group's tenth anniversary celebration on March 3 will say a lot about where gays have been in the last decade and where they may be heading in the next.
"Partnered dancing was all about Fred and Ginger," says Benjamin Soencksen, the group's business manager, of the state of choreographed affairs 10 years ago. "Somebody wore a suit and somebody wore a skirt."
A dance instructor at Stepping Out Studios in 1992, Soencksen eagerly supported Diane Lachtrupp, the studio's co-owner, as she set out to establish a same-sex dancing program.
Despite what its name suggests, Stepping Out then had nothing directly to do with gays dancing. Still, Lachtrupp, a straight woman, had many gay friends and knew many gay dancers. And her studio stood in prime gay territory – above Doo-Dah's, a country-western bar in Chelsea. After Lachtrupp taught some same-sex dance classes at Doo-Dah's, she started working on the idea of offering similar classes at her studio upstairs.
Dubbed OUTdancing, the program of dance classes and dance evenings caught on quickly. Chris Bates, who directs OUTdancing, remembers the day he walked into a same-sex dancing class at the studio. An avid fan of swing dancing, Bates had been shy of dancing in public with his boyfriend at, say, a wedding or a social affair.
"It was one of those light bulb experiences," he says. "An awakening on my part that men dancing with men was a possibility."
Along with other lesbian, bisexual, and transgender dancers who signed up at OUTdancing, Bates enjoyed the classes and events there for this freedom, and for other reasons as well.
"Dancing offers a nice, non-committal way to meet someone," Soencksen points out. "It has a sensuality that is not sexual. The events also became a way for couples to meet other couples, something that can be hard to do."
But progress hasn't always been a simple matter of asking a guy asking a guy or a woman asking another woman for the next dance. Out on the floor, issues as tricky as steps in a tango surfaced.
The first question to reckon with was 'Who should lead and who should follow?' Gender politics loaded the issue, since "leader" traditionally connotes "masculine" and "follower" connotes "feminine." OUTdancing set out to change all that.
"We did not take away a sense of masculinity and femininity from dancing," Soencksen says, "but the sense that there must be a leader and a follower."
With swing and Latin dances in particular, Soencksen choreographed routines in which partners alternate leading and following roles. That allows dancers to move beyond the traditional routines associated with "femme" and "butch."
Soencksen recalls a competitive dance routine during the 1994 Gay Games that used OUTdancing's philosphy. "In one dance, a muscular blond guy was leading a slender guy. Mid-dance, the slender guy became dominant. People were totally blown away by the possibilities."
And while the OUTdancing classes are geared specifically for same-sex couples, all of Stepping Out's dance lessons allow dancers to step beyond their gender roles. Women are free to lead their male partners, and since swapping dance partners is common, gay and straight men can find themselves moving cheek to cheek.
One night in a West Coast swing class, a straight man, Fred Taubner, found he had to take a gay man's hand.
"I thought, 'This is a little weird,'" Taubner recalls. "It wasn't a sexual tension, just something I wasn't used to. Angel Figueroa, the business manager there, said to me, 'Get used to it.' I got used to it. It's dancing."
Soencksen observes that some gays also feel uneasy about same-sex dancing.
"There's as much homophobia about men dancing together in the gay community as there is in the straight community," Soencksen says. At a demonstration the group recently did for a gay audience, he recalls, the sight of men dancing together still elicited giggles.
But there are signs that same-sex couples are becoming more accepted. Around the city, there are many options for gay couples to dance together, whether in folk-dancing, country-western, tango, or swing. Eurogames, the European gay and lesbian sporting championship, now includes same-sex dancing, and OUTdancing offers a weekly lesson for those gearing up for the Gay Games in Sydney this fall.
"Our hope is that dance becomes gender free," Soencksen says. "In 10 years? I don't know. In 25? Maybe."
If Soenecksen's "maybe" comes to pass, the dance workshops and exhibitions at OUTdancing anniversry celebration may offer a preview of the way dancers will be stepping out in 2027.