In this episode of Queers & Co., I'm joined by dancer, choreographer, dynamic relationship facilitator and heart centred dance & embodiment educator, Rachel Sparks.

We chat about gender-neutral partner dancing, the importance of consent, the experience of making the short film, Swivel, as well as the lack of representation of LGBTQ+ folks in mainstream shows like Strictly Come Dancing.

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Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D'Souza

Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• Rachel and Henri's dance duo, Iron&Sparks
• You can follow Rachel's work on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter
• Rachel holds Sunday Afternoon Tea Dances throughout the year. The next one is on 2nd Feb 2020
• Rachel recommends the dance duo, Thick and Tight
• Find out more about Swivel, the short film starring Iron&Sparks here
• Catch an upcoming screening of Swivel at the Love Story Film Festival on 20th Feb 2020
• Photo of Rachel at the Royal Opera House by Laura Aziz

Full Transcription

Full Transcriptions of every episode are available here.

Gem: Hi Rachel. Thanks so much for joining me. How are you?

Rachel: Yeah, no problem. I'm great. I'm feeling good today. Having had a nice workout this morning, I'm feeling really kind of full of energy.

Gem: Awesome. so there were quite a few things that I'd love to chat to you about particularly around your work with gender neutral dancing. But for anyone who doesn't know your work, I wonder if you could just tell us a bit more about what it is that you do before we start?

Rachel: Yeah, sure. So most of my business is teaching people to dance. And my focus has always been on how to make dance a safe place for more people. And in particular, I, as part of the queer community, I saw that there was a need for a safer space, particularly for partner dancing. As I was a Latin and ballroom dancer, I decided to start teaching and to find a way to teach it so that the gender roles were just not an issue and a problem. So that's, that's how gender neutral partner dancing and came about. There are other people doing it. I just wanted to put my spin on it. Another important thing for me in that is creating good spaces that help people to be autonomous in their bodies and feel that they're making choices rather than just being told what to do. So consent is really big in my classes and I try to work mindfulness and self-awareness into my teaching as well. That's the bulk of my work but I also teach couples to prepare for their weddings - queer couples, but also straight couples and always given the option to swap roles or mess it up a bit. I like to mess with the traditions. And I also coach as well now. I've trained in Embodiment principles. I now coach people on basically learning how to listen to themselves, to their bodies and their intuition better. For me it's about freedom, finding freedom in themselves and freedom in their choices.

Gem: Yeah and you can see how all of those things link together really well. I know on your website, you mentioned that other people are doing it as well, but this is your spin, but you said that there are records going back to the 1980s of gender neutral dancing.

Rachel: Yeah. So it's been called same-sex dancing really. And it was out of necessity. People like Jacky Logan who's just recently been given an Honour in the New Year Honours List for her work. Her and Ralf Schiller did this incredible thing of starting same-sex dance classes for queer people, for gay and lesbian people mostly, cause that was the language that people had at the time. They wanted to be able to dance with their own partners so they created spaces for that. That was a risky time to do that as well. They're the pioneers really. We've shifted in culture and in society in lots of ways but there's still a need. For me it's a slightly different angle because just linguistically saying 'same-sex' you're also assuming gender, you're assuming gay or lesbian really. I was thinking about the broader community and particularly because my personal partners have been trans or non-binary and I was thinking about what makes these spaces unsafe. Even the same sex spaces are they unsafe or at least they don't feel necessarily inclusive or welcoming? Not to diss people who are still doing those things. For me I guess it's very present in my life. I surround myself with great people of different experiences and different gender expressions. So it became a priority for me.

Gem: Yeah. And I really liked what you said about who you dance with doesn't have to represent your sexuality because historically, I guess one, we assume everyone's straight when you see a straight couple dancing and two, there's often some kind of romantic implication by dancing with someone rather than dancing alone and to take the kind of romance out of it and to actually... I think you talk about it's being a conversation rather than anything else. And that seems different as well.

Rachel: Yeah... It can be both though. You can think about it as being like a ritual. It can be a dating ritual to dance together. And at one point in time, you could look back tribally, that's important in some cultures to dance and do ritual. But it's not just about mating, it's also about creating connection and keeping community alive. I think it's just the sexualization of things that we just do in our society at the moment... I don't want to take away from the fact that actually it can be incredibly bonding and it can be useful to people who are in romantic connection to try dancing as a way of exploring their relationship. And that's something I offer as well. And... I guess it's not but, it's and... there's real value in us as individuals exploring how we communicate with other people. Dancing really shows stuff up. It's super obvious as soon as you start looking at it as to how people communicate and partner dancing requires this listening and this paying attention to ourselves and to another person. For me there's value in it across different configurations if you like. So the configuration of a couple finding value for their relationship but also the configuration of just an individual person exploring what it's like or what their habits are in relationship to another person and that could implicate or impact positively how they then think about their work colleagues or how they communicate with their friends, do you see what I mean? It's about relationship in general and how we relate. It's what I'm super curious about and what I've been exploring. So I diverted a bit but there's the potential for romantic connection to be explored and really nourished by partner dancing. And it's not the only thing cause any person we come into contact with we are in some kind of relationship with straight away.

Gem: Yeah. That makes so much sense. And so with that in mind, I know that you've obviously been dancing since you were really young. I think you said age 3. I guess it's been a real kind of evolvement of different dance styles and different things that you've been exposed to. But what do you feel you've learned about yourself through dance?

Rachel: Mmm. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's a great question. It's really interesting cause I learnt some very classical styles like ballet and then I also did partner dancing but in a different dance school and they had a very different emphasis. Up until about the age of 17, I was very used to just being told what to do and instructed. I became very, very disciplined as a person. It really shaped me as a person. It was only when I was about 17, I had this massive change in my life. I had a