Dancing with the Straw-person

Author Kathleen Rea
February 21, 2023

TRIGGER WARNING: Describes disturbing and manipulative tactics

Recently I was shamed on social media for running one of the most unsafe dance jams in the world. Now when venturing onto social media it is a given that this type of thing will happen to a community leader. I know by using social media I sign up for that risk, so when it occurs it is not surprising. Even so, I think there are things I can unpack about the experience.

Most of the concerns I have received over the course of running a dance jam for 25 years were legitimate and needed to be addressed. However, there were some I believe were more of a power play. I have occasionally come across people claiming that there are catastrophic safety issues at the dance jams I run and then setting themselves up as the person who can rescue the community from this. Now, this in some ways is easy to sell because contact improvisation (CI) jams will always have ongoing safety issues even with a community actively addressing them. Also, CI is an inherently risky activity both physically and emotionally. There will inevitably be some injuries across time that will seem to prove the person’s point. This tactic they are using I refer to as the “straw-person”

The “straw-person” and the rescuer
This term is usually called the “straw-man” but I decided to go with a nongendered version. This is a manipulation technique in which a person creates a fake enemy (the straw-person) and whips up a frenzy of fear and worry so they can step in as the rescuer. It is a standard cult technique designed to gain power over people.

“Straw-person” as justification for aggression
A made-up concern can be used to acquire the power, means and, justification to take down the competition. Purists, moralizers, and populists are the figures that engage the most in this behavior. The angrier the callout is the more on the side of good the “purist” seems to be. Aggression is justified because people need to be saved from the enemy. And the more spirited they seem; the more likely people will want to follow them to be “part of the movement” and to find status or safety in this judgment-based system. Historically the straw-person has been used to justify wars. An example is when the US government fabricated weapons of mass destruction to whip the public into a frenzy of fear to justify a war against Iraq. In the CI community, it can sometimes be seen in CI purists who insists that CI is not being taught properly (even though it is a non-codified dance form) and that they must aggressively protect people from all the bad teachers.

Communities with active care practices are at risk
This “straw-person” technique is especially effective in CI communities that are far along in their work of “caring” and “listening”. The community in which I practice CI has built up structures of care. For example, safety and boundary teams with skill sets in taking concerns seriously have been formed. This is important work, but it does put us at risk because this level of care can be used to get a “straw-person” through the door. One of the reasons I am writing this post is so people who do the work of taking concerns seriously are aware to watch out for a straw-person being flung their way.

A straw-person story
I am reminded of a story that occurred in my community eight years ago. A community member created a “straw-person” by convincing people that no one in the community did CI correctly and that everyone needed to be retrained. I found out later that he critiqued all the other teachers in the community discouraging people from attending their classes while at the same time setting himself up as the person who could rescue people from their bad training. I think he did this to build up his teaching practice. Some who joined his classes started to feel complicit in his harsh critique and felt ashamed when they were around other community leaders. Some isolated themselves only attending his events. He even went so far as to publicly shame me by telling people I got injured because I did not know how to give “real weight”. All the while he was very friendly to me, and no one told me this was going on. This all ended in a situation in which he sexually assaulted a community member and was banned from community jams. This created a deep wound in the community which many are still healing from.

“Fancy footed around” so whether the concern is valid is never questioned
When a complaint is brought forth in a community people need to do the work of assessing if the issue is valid. The person bringing forward a “straw-person” concern may bring forward other questions related but also removed from the main concern. The aim is to engage the group in arguments or debates that shift them away from asking the question “is this concern valid?”

An example would be someone saying publicly “Hey, I am upset about your lateness to our group meetings”.

I may say:
“But, I have never been late to our meeting”.

They might then say:
“The question is, is Kathleen’s lateness part of her character that can’t be changed or is it related to her current stress which, we may be able to help with by reducing her workload?”

If I start arguing that I am not under undue stress then I have fallen for the technique because in responding to the second set of statements I have inadvertently agreed that the first point is true.

In, the story from my community’s past instigating debate about the best way to address the training issue would be an example of this technique because it pulls people away from the question of whether our training and skill level is as catastrophically horrible as was suggested.

When a safety concern is partially true and partially a straw-person
The above situation I describe was tricky because there was some truth to his belief that my dance jam community had “bad” training. There will always be some bad training in all of us. We all have things and habits we can work on in our dancing. Every CI teacher can teach some things well and other things less well. This often creates gaps in training or rather things a community focuses on and things that are given less focus. Because there was a small part of the truth in his arguments it was harder to piece it apart from the exaggerations. The real question my community needed to stay focused on was if our training and skill level was as catastrophically horrible as was being suggested.

So back to my current experience of my recent public shaming on social media. The question is, is the jam that I run one of the worst in terms of physical safety in the world? The work of creating safe places at CI dance jams for me never ends and will be ongoing regardless of the answer to this question.

Author
Kathleen Rea danced with Canada’s Ballet Jorgen, National Ballet of Canada & Tiroler Landestheater (Austria). She fell in love with contact improvisation 25 years ago & has been involved in the community ever since. She has choreographed over 40 dance works and has been nominated for 5 DORA awards. Kathleen has a learning disability which means writing takes 6 times longer than average. It is one of life’s mysteries that despite this struggle she loves writing and is a published author (The Healing Dance). She has a Master’s in Expressive Arts with a minor in Psychology. She is a certified teacher of the Axis Syllabus and Buteyko Breathing. She is the director of REAson d’etre dance, a Toronto not-for-profit dance company that is contact improvisation based and produces a weekly jam, a Film Fest, and dance theatre productions. She has autism & works to educate the world about neurodiversity. She developed the well-read REAson d’etre dance Dance Jam Guidelines (download here) which over the past 20 years have influenced the contact improvisation worldwide community. She also is the founder of the Contact Improv Consent Culture Blog. Kathleen Rea’s Demo Reel