David Kaminsky's article on gender and sexuality within the Swedish polska dance tradition was extremely interesting, especially as we have not yet looked at dance from an ethnomusicological perspective. Kaminsky begins the article by describing an interaction he had with another male dancer; this ethnography is clearly "from within," as Kaminsky has extensive experience within this tradition himself. Kaminsky provides a quick introduction to polska itself, then describes the intricacies of the "narrative" within the dance; it seems that polska takes an interesting role where it isn't a narrative dance, but yet represents a narrative.
Clearly, as in most types of folk dance, the partner dancing traditionally has male and female (leader and follower) roles. Kaminsky describes these typical roles as "Guinevere and Lancelot" – chivalry (kavaljer) is encouraged from the male. However, new styles of teaching polska teach masculine and feminine roles to both genders; Kaminsky notes that there has been a movement in the past 10 years towards many more male-male pairings in dance, where there had only previously been female-female pairings.
So how do these male-male pairings relate to the use of polska as a flirtation and "coupling" dance? It seems that the instance that Kaminsky describes in the opening of the paper was an anomaly; most flirtation routines involve the use of extreme gender roles. Kaminsky closes the paper by talking about when mixed-gender couples decide to "flip" gender roles, and the difficulties involved in this switch. His interview with Cissi Strombeck was interesting, as she seemed not to agree with his assertions, yet he did not directly address this point.
Discussion question: Is it important to have people within a musical tradition proofread papers such as these? What happens if they don't agree with the author's assertions?
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