ABSTRACT
This chapter delves into the power dynamics of the lead/follow system. Leaders typically maintain tenser muscle engagement, which allows them to conceal information from followers. Followers’ greater relaxation, meanwhile, makes them more readable and biddable. An essential follower’s technique involves briefly resisting any lead before accepting it, so as to maintain an effective, constant, and pleasurable connection with the leader. Troublingly, this “no” that becomes a “yes” can always be read on some level as aestheticizing sexual violence. Dancers have challenged these disturbing gender politics through various queering interventions: role-flipping, same-sex dancing, co-leading, and switch dancing. The aesthetic and ideological power of the traditional relationship of male leader to female follower is a significant obstacle to these interventions, however, in that leader techniques of chivalry and caretaking can provide real emotional rewards for followers. The chapter concludes by proposing that partner dancers should consider adopting compensatory techniques developed in kink and bondage communities for mitigating harm when playing with such asymmetrical power dynamics. These include: (1) clarifying that where resistance means “yes,” non-response means “no”; (2) delineating clear boundaries between fantasy and reality space; (3) respecting the rules of engagement set by the bottom/follower; and (4) disconnecting role from gender.
