Gender norms questioned in folk dance: Is saying ‘ladies and gentlemen’ offensive?

Ceilidh dances often have defined male and female roles. Photo / Getty Images

• The English Folk Dance and Song Society advises using gender-free language to avoid offending minority genders.
• Guidance suggests avoiding terms like ‘ladies and gentlemen’ and using identifiers such as clothing colour instead.
• Callers and organisers are encouraged to model good consent and make events more accessible for disabled people.

Folk dancing should drop terms like “ladies and gentlemen” to avoid “offending minority genders”, a leading music organisation has said.

The English Folk Dance and Song Society is attempting to make centuries-old traditions more “inclusive”.

The charity, which is backed by the Arts Council in the United Kingdom, has created guidance that tells teachers and those hosting group dances to use “gender-free language”.

Barn and ceilidh dances often have defined male and female roles, with the caller, who guides participants through complex steps, using terms such as “men and women”, “ladies and gentlemen”, or “boys and girls”.

The society’s guidance on inclusion and accessibility states that this vocabulary could offend “minority genders” and should be dropped to avoid anyone being “misgendered on the dance floor”.

The term “misgendered” is used by non-binary and transgender people to mean that they have been described as a gender with which they no longer identify.

The guidance says: “Use gender-free language when calling dances. This ultimately makes your event more accessible to everyone.

“If you address a dancer directly, do not assume their gender or pronouns if you don’t know them, as there are plenty of easier ways for someone to be identified, such as their position in the set or the colour of a piece of clothing they are wearing.”

It adds: “Consider introducing yourself with your own pronouns to make others feel more comfortable to do so. It’s important to note that in some circumstances, gendered calling can be more accessible to some people.

“In all circumstances call with your dance community in mind and be careful to avoid misgendering dancers as a default position.”

Often ceilidhs are arranged on a vast scale, involving crowds of people who need to be efficiently arranged by a caller and then coached through traditional dance patterns.

The society has raised concerns over other long-established and fundamental dancing terms, such as “partner”, suggesting that it could be problematic.

The guidance states: “Saying ‘couples’ or ‘partner/partners’ in some contexts can make single people who are attending alone feel excluded, or could make people feel uncomfortable in regard to how their relationship status is being perceived”.

Guidance produced for the folk dancing community in 2024 stipulates that callers and organisers should “model good consent” by not pressuring people into joining a dance.

Dancers themselves have also been advised to be conscious of dance floor consent, with guidelines stating: “If you ask someone to dance, you should be prepared to accept no as an answer without expecting an explanation”.

Participants should also “avoid touching other dancers unnecessarily”, according to the guidelines, which also offer advice on making events more accessible for disabled people.

The society said the guidelines will “provide a framework for building safer spaces within the social folk dance world”.

Founded in 1932, it is based in Camden and has taken a leading role in both preserving and promoting folk music and dance.

It also maintains the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, named for the famed composer and folk enthusiast, which is England’s main repository of folk songs.

Following Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the organisation made a series of commitments to equality and diversity and pledged to “foster a new, more diverse folk scene suited to our multicultural, 21st-century landscape”.

The charity has also repudiated its own founder, Cecil Sharp, a leading Edwardian collector of folk songs, because he “held some offensive opinions, and his writings identify him to have expressed racist views”.