Nora Arbelbide: In Basque dance the existence of dances of boys and girls has become popular. Is this distinction still a reality? How do you see the dew from the reality of your environment, from the IDB?

Ihintza Irungarai: Yes, we realize, not all of us, but in many groups the courses are still held separately by girls and boys. The course of the girls on one side and the course of the boys, teaching each other to the group of girls the dances that are identified as the dances of the girls, and the boys to the group. Not in all, of course not, the realities are very different in the three provinces and in the provinces themselves. But in many groups, though, it goes like this, and where I've also been as a professor it still is.

NA: In his book, Oier has researched this historical aspect, where you show that tradition is not so old or traditional.

Oier Araolaza: Yeah, that was exactly one of the questions that we started with the research. And in our groups it is too, or it has been for a long time. I mean, we've known female dances and male dances. From the beginning, it used to be that basic category or distinction. Has that always been the case? And if it doesn't, how long has it been, or what did it look like? And well, in the conclusions I've drawn, what I've seen in the research is that this way of organizing our dances is newer than we thought. The categorization of dances by gender does not exceed 100 years.

After the First World War, the ways of seeing, understanding, living, creating, building genders have become global. These changes will affect local expressions and dance in our case. Before, gender was not the only trait that identified those dances. Dances were dances, both for women and men.

NA: How do you see Alaia, as an anthropologist student, from the perspective of other types of dance?

Alaia Cachenaut: As Oier explained goodness, in the end dance is not intrinsically associated with a genre, but we transmit it like this, so we build it and so we learn to performer. And that's an obvious goodness when you look at other types of dance or so. Let me take an example. Les danses ahidous entre Moyen Atlas et Ariège, published in 2017 by Balladine Viall, explains the influence that the migratory process had on the type of ahidous dance. In the dance that studies the roles of each are defined according to gender. It touches an instrument like the pandero, more linked to men, they are the ones who build and act when the ahidous dance takes place in the public space. And therefore, children learn by imitation over the years, and over the years they reach a good level of dance knowledge until they have their transmission turn. So, this dance shows great kindness to the age class, and if you're in the circle means you're from that family or your close friend.

It has to be said that in Morocco women also participate in the dances of ahidous in public spaces, but they have a very simple role, they have to attend to their body movements, which are the eyes of others on their movements and, on the contrary, they can dance in the part of the house, especially among them. And with the migratory process, so what happens when you get to France is that the transmission of that dance changes, because after you become a father, men usually can't participate anymore in that dance. And since they are not the people of the family and their elders cannot be transmitted by migration as in Morocco. And as a result, the relay is lost, but the women take it again. Speed up your role in this dance and take on the role of men. And in this we see the goodness of how the role of gender can vary depending on the context, place and knowledge given to it.

 

 

 

 

ID: Ihintza, can we mention this questionnaire that you have conducted within the BDI?

II: In this talk, we also wanted to extend the word of the other groups. We have therefore created a questionnaire and have responded about 200 people with enough fite for a week. Although, as I said later, in most dance groups the boys and girls have still been distributed, the young people have another point of view: in their answers it heals a lot that tradition is something that is created today, that society develops and therefore not Basque dance. In the responses denied, it is common for girls to experience this situation as a rapid injustice and that it is time to change it, to overcome it, because they are retrograde ideas that we should not live longer today.

Then there are other answers that are still present in the early thoughts, that is, tradition is tradition. They feel like they see it as something linked to the past, as if it were a disaster, that they are like this and that they have to be like this, period. It's pretty significant. But the majorities are betting on development to start with, on progress and we see it quite positive.

NA: What do you think is played in this distinction? What do you think about it?

OA: Justice clearly. It seems to me that Alaia can tell us more about this and explain it, but we are dealing with an absolutely undeniable right from the point of view of cultural rights, the right to dance, I do not know how it can be internalised to deny the right to dance, right? In an interview that I have been given these days in connection with this round table, that is what we got out of the way; I would say that these are behaviors that today we do not accept at all in terms of racism. And I've said it right and I've seen it in the days in two dance events, black dancers in Basque dances, and I don't think that's being challenged in any dance group today. And instead, we don't allow women to dance in many acts and dances. Any activity that takes place against anyone, turning aside, denying anyone, is not culture, heritage or anything, is aggression.

AC: We're aware that people identify us in a way, that they associate a special role, and through dance, they ask you about the performance of that role. And that's what you learn -- we don't believe it that way -- it's something that we learn from young people, and for example, the sociologist Marcel Mauss, in his article, what's called Les techniques du corps, therefore, body techniques. This theory explains at the end how the movements we make to perform any action are coded. According to our society, we learn how to make a movement. In his article he investigates, among other things, the example of swimming and explains that having learned himself that he did not swim in the way of swimming from his ancestors. Explaining that our body is our first technical instrument, the sociologist demonstrates that we assimilate and reproduce different techniques. It is often heard that in a female body everything will not be able to give the same strength as a male body in a dance, for example to hit clubs. And in the end what Marcel Mauss demonstrates the goodness is that we learn to move in a special way and perform our actions based on the role that has been given to us since we were young. And we know that, and I think we can demand the roles that are associated with each gender.

II: It's hard to go with both of them. We are not researchers.

NA: But you know the reality well.

II: Yes, yes. No, I laughed that he told the role because, precisely, the majority responses are in favor of change, positive. We've had pretty surprising or significant answers. One of our questions was whether girls were dancing and whether male dance affected tradition. Most say no, no. Some do. And then the question was, why? Some say it because tradition is not. It doesn't talk about tradition, but it just says it's not. Or another says it affects virility and femininity. Another is that men have their style, their strength and their rapid presence in the dance, and that wives, on the contrary, have their style in warmth, grace and silence. So it's very significant in what roles they give us.

OA: Yeah, one of the things I've seen in my research is when and how gender is assigned to the dances of men and women, characteristics that are associated with stereotype. Because before I talked about the dances not having that distribution before that classification occurred, so men also did what we consider women today. Ribbon dances, bow dances, apple dances -- they have feminine characteristics from the current point of view: charm, dancing underneath, no violent gestures, no clubs, no swords. These men danced, and they weren't for that, either male, or that's why they were considered female. Therefore, these characteristics existed in both male and female dances, since there were no male and female dances. And therefore, one of the consequences of this classification is that these characteristics are clearly identified. At age 100, we see that these ideas are very strong. I would say that now there are also those who see it right that from the point of view of equality women do dances that men have done so far. That is, yes, "it's a shame that men don't dance like," or vice versa, "yes, it's a right, it's OK, but I don't like women dancing like men." Without realizing that construction, construction of bodies or invention is the basis Alaia talked about, and the distribution of those roles is purely cultural or artificial.

 

 

 

 

ID: What do you do with this? How to continue? And why?

OA: It's not easy, it's not easy to change the mental structures that we have deeply rooted. But I think they are changing little by little more than we would like. I at least believe, I am sorry, that 10 years ago and today things have changed a lot. I think we need to keep talking, reflecting, reflecting and learning together, and we need exercises like these. The data you mentioned indicate something, that there are so many answers in such a short time. This concern is manifested in young people and in Basque dance groups. Perhaps we do not yet know how to manage all cases and this is happening to us in all peoples and all groups. That is, one thing is at the theoretical level, "we do want to do", but then when we come to concrete things there are doubts. And they often come to me asking me as if I had answers, and no, because nobody has answers. Because we will all have to get it right in the coming years.

AC: That's right, there's no answer. But I think we have to keep asking to understand why we have to convey those roles through dance. Why are we still teaching this? What do we want to convey in the end when we do this, do we want our society to be divided by sex or gender? What do we do in the game, taking a role for our children? Therefore, the questions are alone, but we must remember that there are masculinities and feminities in plural. It is not a femininity, there are several models within this model and in Basque dance we always talk about male and female roles. And nothing else, and why go into that binarism, do you need to think about that binarism of dancing? Why can't we decouple the dancer's gender from the role of her dance to take the place that everyone wants? I think there's a big challenge to this, that we show our society dancing and what do we show? Maybe we have to pause a little bit and look at what we dance to understand our society.

II: To continue with society, one responds that it is not up to us (the Dantzaris) to change this. It will be society that decides, as if we were out of society. Then, all these questions are questions that we want to pose to our peers, because it means to those in charge of dance groups, to invent a project that we would create with snow on the subject, with the intention of incorporating it into the project of our BDI. Because we feel that the issues that young people and adjacent generations want to address are for some really painful issues. It is not a fashionable topic, as the anchors say, but a subject that we live and that finally appears published.

NA: What is your reflection on the importance of costumes in these debates?

OA: Probably the hardest knot of Basque dance towards equality is with garments. I have often thought that if we had solved the problem of clothing, surely many other disputes or conflicts we have had would have gone through the subject, much faster or more easily. We often use dance rites or other social celebrations (weddings, weddings) to express with satisfaction the roles we are assigned. And how do we dress in society? That is, we take advantage of that holiday not only to dress as beautiful as possible, but most of the time we take it to the extreme of the gender stereotype assigned. I'm not going to say it all the time, but if we look at wedding photos in society, we see it. So, in dance too, that happens, and therefore, the resistances we find often I see related to it.

Solution? For the time being, garments that do not have these gender characteristics are being used so clearly in many areas, groups and villages. In this way we avoid the gender category. Or there are traditions in which nowadays women and men wear long pants normally on the street, just like we wear long pants, because if the suit corresponding to that dance are long pants, we wear long pants. This is not understood as a male suit, but the suit corresponding to that dance. And well, it's a slow process, but it comes.

AC: Clothing has great importance as a differentiating element, as demonstrated by historian and anthropologist Nicole Pellegrin in his various works, about what has been done in several studies and states that our first image is at the end of the suit. It is the first element that sees the other and through it collects information about us. And, therefore, this researcher has worked mainly on the laws of old regime clothing, or what kind of suit was given at the time and that links it to the end with the prohibition of religiosity and, above all, of Christianity; that is, those who have a male body do not have to give other sex garments and the opposite. We are ultimately descendants of that idea.

Today, if women wear piggy pants, men don't put their skirt easily. Wearing a high skirt will not define your gender, although what you see from the outside identifies us in most cases with garments or with our physical appearance. So, to relate to dance, I personally share with you that the dress that dance has as such should be any body or gender, but we are aware that this is not the case with people. I talked to some dancers, and it was important for them to have a differentiating element to differentiate themselves from the other sex or gender. On the other hand, it is true that some are afraid to lose the dance costume because it is a nice heritage, but it is not necessary to associate the type of costume with the genre of the dancer to make that heritage live. I believe that we must give priority to personal identification and to the practice of dance in which everyone feels good. In the end I am more in favour of the choice and I believe that everyone should be left to choose whether they want to dance on skirts or on pants. In the end it doesn't matter when every dancer dances when he feels good.

II: This question has been the hardest question for people. It was a question: "What do you think today dancers have to dance with skirts and men with pants?" More than half say wrong and the other half good. Some say that the clothing shows the history of the province or of the group, therefore, it is important to retain, that at that time it was done like this and danced like this, that therefore it must be maintained, that if we do not lose, the heritage appears quickly. For reasons of tradition. We have to dance the greeting with the costume men danced, but the others say that because today we dance the wives with the skirts and this is our suit, we have to dance the greeting. There are quite clear views. Others, on the other hand, say that it needs to be changed. We also asked if we had to leave this choice of clothes. And yes, there the majority, almost 80 percent, yes, that everyone or everyone who wanted to choose, either dressing up as a man or a suit as a woman, that is, we could choose.

The last question was 'as I thought we had to create non-wine clothing'. 55 percent say yes, but in the end a majority says no. The fear of losing tradition, losing one's garment or the group's own garment reappears. We have also read that it is beautiful when skirts are returned and aesthetic effects appear with these different suits, so you have to keep them, because it is nice.

D.N.I. : There are many suits where there is a gon and a pant. Joaldunes, for example, have bark. It seems that gender is less marked in very old garments. Don't I know what that looks like in history?

OA: In the dressing area, two types of garments are distinguished. There are those who say civilians, who we use in everyday life, and there are uniforms, that is, we wear them for a special trade or activity. And in Basque dance, we have a problem, at one point, let's say, little shells, both the ezek and dantzaris, they talk about uniforms, special dance costumes, but there are later recreations based on the civil costumes of yesteryear. And then they're also used for dance, which makes the problem difficult. What? Well, the uniform is uniform, and that's where things have normally been handled, I always think about doctors. Doctors also have uniforms and all the doctors who were men in their day, but when women have also done medical studies and have earned the title and have started working as doctors, a uniform has not been established with the skirts, at least today, maybe a few years ago yes, but today that is not the case, right? Because being a woman or a man when being a doctor doesn't change anything, and you don't have to say it in clothes. So the idea that I always defend in the case of uniforms is the one that corresponds to the dancer, not the dancer man or the dancing woman. Those derived from the civil suit have a more complex solution, as the moments when they have been adopted already have a gender separation. And that's where management is more complicated, but I believe in the path that Alaia put forward. In the end, and it's going to come, and that's going to cost more, admitting that everyone makes their choice if they have to play their role, because today in most dances there are no differentiated roles to dance as a woman or as a man. There is no way of dancing the sargos as men or women, the musician is Baltic and they are all different, they are all equal.

Bibliographic references mentioned by Alaia Cachenaut

DEMETRIOU Z. Demetrakis, 2015. « La masculinité hégémonique : lecture critique d’un concept de Raewyn Connell » en Genre, sexualité & société [Zuzenean]. Available: https://journals.openedition.org/gss/3546

MAUSS Marcel, 1936. « Les techniques du corps » in Journal de Psychologie, vol. XXXII, No. 3-4.

PELLEGRIN Nicole, 1999. Le genre et l’habit. Figures du transvestisme féminin sous l’Ancien Régime », in Clio. Histoire femmes et sociétés [Zuzenean]. Available: https://journals.openedition.org/clio/252

VIALLE Balladine, 2017. « Les danses ahidous entre Moyen Atlas et Ariège », en Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire [Live]. Available: http://journals.openedition.org/clio/13746