Name: 【TED】Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox: Ballroom dance that breaks gender roles (Ballroom dance that breaks gender roles | Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox)
Uploaded: 2017-02-03T03:27:26.000Z
Duration: 15 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Trevor Copp: When "Dancing With the Stars" first hit the airwaves,

Jeff and I were full-time ballroom dance instructors

I mean, all of the ballroom dance geeking out that we had always done

on why salsa worked differently than the competitive rumba

all of that just hit the public consciousness,

the excitement that suddenly, somehow, we were cool --

Jeff Fox: When Trevor and I would get together for training seminars

take a break from having to lead all the time.

We even came up with a system for switching lead and follow

as a way of taking turns and playing fair.

It wasn't until we used that system as part of a performance

that we got an important tap on the shoulder.

Lisa O'Connell, a dramaturge and director of a playwright center,

"Do you have any idea how political that was?"

So that began an eight-year collaboration to create a play

which not only further developed our system for switching

but also explored the impact of being locked into a single role,

classic Latin and ballroom dancing isn't just a system of dancing;

There's one thing that stayed consistent, though:

So street salsa, championship tango, it's all the same --

you were learning to "man" and to "woman."

And in the way of relics, you don't throw it out,

but you need to know that this is the past.

It's like Shakespeare: respect it, revive it -- great!

This doesn't represent how we think today.

JF: Well, the core principle of partner dancing

is that one person leads, the other one follows.

The machine works the same, regardless of who's playing which role.

The physics of movement doesn't really give a crap about your gender.

So if we were to update the existing form,

we would need to make it more representative

When you watch ballroom, don't just watch what's there.

The couple is always only a man and a woman.

So, same-sex and gender nonconformist couples just disappear.

In most mainstream international ballroom competitions,

same-sex couples are rarely recognized on the floor,

TC: Try this: Google-image, "professional Latin dancer,"

and then look for an actual Latino person.

What you will get is page after page of white, straight Russian couples

There are no black people, there are no Asians,

so basically, non-white people just disappeared.

Even within the white-straight- couple-only paradigm --

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【TED】Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox: Ballroom dance that breaks gender roles (Ballroom dance that breaks gender roles | Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox)

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