Hey folks,

Shifting Lanes:  Engendering In Private and Public Spaces

(Although admired, this writing is not trying to claim scholarly honor.  It is a reflective essay that is developing, knowing and shifting.)

“Stay in your lane.”  A well-versed J-Setter, from Donte Beacham’s squad Mystic Force, said this to me in Dallas, Texas during a late night rehearsal.  He feels there is really no need to make the privately-public J-Sette community of gay, Black males a mainstream public venture.  The private spaces he enters are safe and the ecstasy he has felt ever since the first time he danced on a J-Sette dance floor is liberation like no other.  So, why fight if you don’t have to?  Staying in your lane creates spaces that avoid conflict—allowing the joy of the movement experience to live at the forefront.  Ironically, it seems J-Setters have made their own lanes completely and will break it down literally to the ground at the drop of a hat, even in a Philadelphia club that has no idea what in the twirl they are doing.  Philly (Philadelphia, PA, USA) can be harsh and folks will give you some intimidating looks if you crowd their territory without a proper introduction.  J-Setting is from the southern part of the U.S. and although Philly is an urban dwelling it has some small town tendencies like glances with an attitude from locals directed toward perceived intruders.  The residents of Philly have a right to protect their local lanes from the general passerby who wants a moment of fame in their town, right?  The truth is they have cause to be concerned because if you give them some space, J-Setters will take it.  They step out of their lane and into that of others boldly—gay, Black, male, and in full swing and they do it well.

When you see the sparkling wristbands flailing, nude tights flying, sports bras gripping with alter ego names flashing, and shorts accenting the crevice between the thighs and the buttocks bouncing, you can’t help but take a second look.  Being present first-hand for the bodily transformations and split-second swerves between masculine and feminine norms is like watching a butterfly surfacing from and retracting into a cocoon. The sheer embodied delight they wear in every cell of their bodies shifts your consciousness until you are visually invested in the agile feminine/masculine overtones and may soon find your own body unexpectedly mimicking—unconsciously encouraged by their engendered pleasure.  Although gay, Black, male J-Setters rarely emerge for public viewings in heterosexual communities they don’t exactly stay in their lanes either within their own environment.   They give themselves permission to live genderly free and they love shifting gender lanes.  One might even say that J-Setters thrive on the option to engender a character.  In the way I have heard it, the phrase stay in your lane, could mean anything from get out of my business to be who you are and I will be who I am.  Some people may not ever want to know a man who enjoys the spotlight when wearing womanly movement or attire and these people may take the concept of stay in your lane to mean don’t intrude upon my fragile consciousness with premature engagement.  I realize everyone will not agree that they have been deprived if they never experience gender transformations but I believe they will be missing an endearing and fierce part of life.

One of the most fascinating aspects of J-Setting, a nightimer social and club dance culture, is the absorption and emulation of masculine and/or feminine traits.  J-Setters take these traits beyond their normally understood qualities and recycle them into blurry traces and indiscernibly, indefinably gendered ways of moving.  For J-Setters this process of shifting is about being oneself to the max and acquiring a character. This is a culture where transgendered(ness) comes full circle in a cycle of mixing, underscoring, over scoring, and intertwining that conjures a feminine/masculine brew to intoxicate the privately-public community.  These dangerous brews are also visible in Voguing, an elder to J-Setting, through the competitive category of blending.  Blending explores the potential to purposefully fool the “normal” heterosexual daytimers into thinking that you are one of them.  Can you, as a transgendered, transsexual, or transwoman sit next to a heterosexual man and be so convincing (so real) as a woman that he never even thinks twice about whether you really are genetically a woman or not?  For many men living a heterosexual lifestyle, to consciously encounter a transwoman can be shocking, terrifying and even exhilarating as well as hazardous.  There are countless writings, movies, and news stories that expose volatile interactions of heterosexual men being fooled by the expertise of a transsexual and/or transwoman.  This ability is impressive and daunting at once.

Mimicking woman, is central to J-Setting just as it was to its club-culture-elder, Voguing.  Also central to voguing was its near obsession with affluent white culture and this high-class, dynasty woman can be seen in J-Setting reflected through particular movements and patterns of gesturing referred to as “prissy”. Prissy is delicate, cautious, and gorgeous, as opposed to it’s vibrant masculinized neighbor, “bucking”.  Bucking reminds me (vulnerably) of the base and booty shake isolation dances I used to do as a teenage girl in Florida.  There is a forceful aspect to bucking that prissys probably would not be caught dead performing and we as young girls would have been dead if our parents had seen us dancing like that in public.  The context for my potential death was the constant fight my grandparents and parents fought to rid us (the new generation) of stereotypes that may have hindered our ability to progress and attain upward mobility in society.  The context for the prissys is ironically similar, although with distinctions, in that they want to exude a glorious civilized nature and not employ their perceived understandings of bucking as wild and untamed.  The concern is questionable because some of the dances that our parents would punish us for performing are now a part of the Beyoncé and Michelle Obama work out plan for the health of our youth.  It’s (wait for it) “normal”.

The existence of J-Setting in the gay, Black, male communities began as male dancers recreated movement they admired from predominately female moving bodies.  Ironically, the original, all female, Prancing Jay Settes of Jackson State University, who started it all in the 70s with Shirley Middleton, are limited in their ability to publically associate or dance within gay, Black, male J-Sette communities.  The leaders of the Prancing Jay Settees discourage these relationships.  Furthermore, when  gay, Black, male J-Setters publically step out of their masculine lanes in an attempt to infiltrate and exude their full feminized selves in heterosexual and/or homophobic communities they risk becoming the object of physical violence.  So not only are J-Setters ridiculed by heterosexual and homophobic communities for being genetically men and wanting to embody what may be considered feminine movement qualities and garment choices, they are also somewhat ignored by the original Prancing Jay Settes of which they have been inspired.  To be fair, I did not have an opportunity to converse or interact with the female Jay Setters.  However, I did get a sense of the conflict that arises from these attitudes and through my own experience I can start to envision where the tension begins.

When I attended my first vogue ball, where males compete as tremendous diva figures reveling in woman from head to toe, I began to experience my own internal gender conflict.  They prance, honey, and gracefully, with soft force; they perform what seems like endless twirls in very, and I mean very, high heels as they gravitate, spiraling downward in a whirl of wonder to end splayed in an improbable half split—front leg in the air and back arched profusely until their head touches the ground behind them.  I think back to my fresh moments as a Philly (Philadelphia) citizen walking down 13th street on glowing evenings and thinking deep down inside and sometimes out loud, am I woman? Those geared up beauties floating down rainbow lane have me contemplating my womanhood and maybe even cowering a bit in my androgynous attire of loose linen pants and a cute curvy tank.  I quickly remember that no one can define my womanhood(ness) but me.  It is this cycling of gender in my mind and heart that brings me right back to the idea of stay in your lane.  What does gender or a desire to blur gender lines really tell us about our gendered potentials and possibilities?  How does physically exploring gender inform self?  idiosynCrazy J-Sette consultants, Donte Beacham and LeKendrick Davis articulate responses to these questions fiercely and fluently—expressing their gender shifting experiences from their own hearts.

When I put on the costume it makes me feel fish…
more like a lady…I can feel my body more.  DB

It’s a character thing.  I have a ghetto side…more
banjee and I can get hood and her name is Candace.
Candace will battle you down and battle for blood.
Emily is more competitive and enters all competitions.
She is not in your face like Candace.
Emily is strictly competition and agility.
When I step out of the club I am Ken.  LD

Hair gives you the extra umph.
I used to have hair and was doin’ it for J-Setting
but then I got sick of it.  The only thing the original Prancing Jay Settes
have over us is hair.  DB

Hair is not my moment but you have to imagine it swinging.  LD

Hood Rachet is when you get all the way down to the ground and scrub it.

 Prissys always have on character heels. 

Prissy girls (as in guys) don’t want to be called J-Settes.

They don’t want to sweat.  Buck is more hard work.

It is about form and agility.  Prissy is hard also because it can be strictly ballet

and hip-hop and takes some formal training.  Prissy is boring.  LD

It was hard to get it in the beginning.  DB

When I first saw it I did not want to do it.

 I thought it was too flamboyant. 

All the boys were really trying to be majorettes and like girls.

 It has changed.  Now J-Sette is more masculine. 

We still do the thrusting but it is more about the agility that makes you a big team.  LD

I identify as a man.  DB

I do not feel different in terms of life or more like a woman. 

 It’s a character thing. 

I and everyone on my team have alter egos.  LD

 Concert dance choreographers frequently enjoy using club dance elements in their works without consulting the originators of the movement.  idiosynCrazy has taken a risk in its effort to include the often uninvited, club-culture experts to the party table of concert dance as consultants for their work Private Places.  By collaboratively consulting and interacting with current J-Setters, idiosynCrazy is shifting into critical lanes of engagement with club culture leaders.  The risky part of this choice, to be inclusive, is that at any moment the J-Setters could have an opinion about the choreography, or any portion of the process as they are now insiders; this could cause unexpected or unwanted ripples in the process.  Jumatatu Poe, the director, is not scared—well maybe a little nervous.  However, by dialoguing and brainstorming with consultants LeKendrick Davis and Donte Beacham Jumatatu approached potential obstacles in a consentual way and together they have developed new artistic processes and personal friendships.  The J-Sette consultants, this essay, and the panel were clever forethoughts created to extend exploration into the subject matter of J-Setting and its relationship to Private Places.  The varying outlets of engagement were purposefully created early on, knowing that participants (audience members, movers, etc.) may want continued open discussion.  It’s a model we may be seeing more of as concert dance continues to grow its many branches to leaves unknown.

The concert dance world is constantly inspired by the tireless work of those who traverse the deep evenings and break-of-dawn mornings of the club scene through Hip-Hop, House, Voguing, and Reggae, etc.  All of these nightimers were bursting from normalized lanes to become something fresh and new.  In their underground(ness) they were and are staying in and maintaining lanes.   With idiosynCrazy’s Private Places project, daytimer (concert) dancers have developed a certain level of respect for the nightimer kind of life, and they want to recognize and honor their contributions to the movement world.  J-Sette consultants Donte Beacham and LeKendrick Davis, interact with the idiosynCrazy movement artists with humor, grace, generosity and humility that is equally matched by a weird awe of what their new friends the daytime dancers do for a living.  And it is hard to ignore that the monetary reward for both genres of dance can be minimal to non-existent, but the love for the art is an inspiration that keeps the culture flowing and healthy.  J-Setting may one day be a money-maker, but for now, lives in the stardom and richness of progressively gaining respect through titles such as “statement”, “star”, and “legend“ –much like the reward of being a great voguer, their club-culture-elder.  These tireless gender mixers and movement makers sweat J-Sette daily and nightly.  It is a nightlife practice that transforms how we experience daylife.  It allows folks in their private communities to feel genderly free and to gradually shift lanes in more public arenas.  J-Sette provides spaces of exploration with fantastical truths that swerve, fluctuate and affirm burgeoning gender realities.

References

Beacham, Donte.  Personal interview.  June 2012.

Davis, Lekendrick.  Personal interview.  June 2012.

Paris is Burning.  Dir. Jennie Livingstone.  Lionsgate, 2005.

Sonic Boom of the South.  Ed.  Ramon L. Jackson. Jackson State University Marching Band.  5 May 2012

http://sonicboomofthesouth.com/history/the-prancing-j-settes/

 Unigo.  Founder CEO.  Cooper Marshall.  Unigo LLC.  14 June 2012

http://www.unigo.com/jackson_state_university/summary

photo by LBrowningPhotography