sonia | A small victory from speaking up

A year or two ago, there was a kerfuffle in the Balkan folk dance community about a "Bosnian" dance. Quotes around Bosnian because the music is certainly Bosnian, but the dance was choreographed by an American with at best a shallow understanding of Bosnian culture and dance.

The song, Ne Klepeci, is a Sevdah song, and people from Bosnia have said that it's inappropriate in their culture to dance to it.

There are complex and subtle cultural appropriation issues in International Folk Dancing. This isn't one of them. Folks from that culture say don't dance to that song, I don't dance to it. Simple. Easy.

Unfortunately, not everyone feels that way. Some people defend their colonialist "right" to dance to whatever music they choose. Here in Portland, several groups let the dance fade away without explicitly removing it from the repertoire.

I've been dancing via Zoom on Friday mornings with a group that has a lot of crossover attendance with other groups I attend, but which I never attended in person pre-pandemic. I got them started online and still act as backup tech support. The group does mostly slow, easy dances so I get a little bored, but the social interaction and movement are good.

This Friday morning, we were in the last fifteen minutes of the session, and suddenly Ne Klepeci was up next on the program. I was too surprised and outraged to address it in the moment, so I said, "See you folks later!" and noped right out of the zoom session. Seriously, wtf!

I then wrote an email to the three group leaders describing the issue. I said folk dancing is a very white hobby, and I don't know how to begin to address that. However, I do know how to begin to show cultural respect by not dancing to a song I've been asked not to dance to. I ended with, "Are you willing to take a stand for cultural respect by removing this dance from your group's repertoire?"

One of the group leaders immediately wrote back in complete agreement. She and I had discussed it in the past, so I wasn't surprised by that. We were both surprised when the other two leaders also agreed this time. They've been strongly resistant in the past. Yay!

It was on the program because someone requested it, and the group had put a policy in place to only do it if it was requested. So I wrote a brief email to the person who requested it saying I noticed she spoke up for the dance, and she may have noticed I felt strongly enough about cultural respect to leave the session, and did she want to have a conversation.

Turns out she'd forgotten it was that dance when she saw it on the group's list, and she apologized. She helps run another group, so now the dance has been officially removed from two groups' repertoires. Yay!

I've been working on how to speak up in general. In this case, the words flowed easily, and I got positive responses. I don't know if I phrased things better than before, or the people were more receptive, or both. I did try to stay with "calling in" and asking for the behavior I wanted rather than arguing or shaming. Not sure what I would have done next if I had encountered more resistance.