The Dancers

One might say I stole this art project. But I didn’t really. At first, years ago I saw a picture of two women dancing together in beautiful long gowns. I copied (by drawing, and not tracing) the picture. If anyone knows how I draw, I can’t copy anything to look how it really it looks. It becomes my own, and therefore, not a copy anymore.

This image was so calming, so simple. It was either love, or just a simple dance two women were having in a world of their own in which it didn’t matter they were dancing together. It’s both political and artistic at the same time. And its political aspect is so subtle and nuanced that it doesn’t shout at you (even though I do believe there is a time for shouting political messages; especially in art), almost to make it not political. Yes, “the personal is political”, as the old feminist saying, that’s still very valid, goes and I hold that up as a personal motto. But my women dancing are done marching in the streets for the day. They just want to hold each other and dance. I imagine them dancing to a slow hauntingly romantic Billy Holiday song. They could be young women who aren’t ready for activism yet, and one simply gets the nerve to ask the other girl to dance and she says yes. Or maybe they aren’t lesbian. Maybe one is bi. Maybe they both are straight, but good friends, and our society accepts women’s affections towards each other more than it does men’s. Yes, I know I have benefitted from this.

Yes, these women are both representations of what femininity is “supposed to be”, but it could be any two women. Yes, it could have so much political power and stand for so much, and it should for those who want it. I want it to sometimes. But when I copied this picture and made these collages out of scrapbook paper, it was simply a quiet a moment, and two people, doing something so simple. When I was playing footsies and kissed the first girl I ever kissed when I was 20, I wasn’t thinking about politics. And when at a college LGBT party when the first girl who I slow danced with asked me to dance, I was already political, but I wasn’t thinking about that then. She was a pretty younger biracial girl (and there weren’t many of us back then), who was a bit taller than me with straight hair. It might have been political, but I just felt special that this lovely young woman, whose name happened to be Heaven, asked me to dance, and so possibly one of the images of the dancers is a representation of me, in my short moment in that present time, but long moment that reverberated to this point in history, reminding me when I get enraged at homophobia, that we can theorize and intellectualize it, which I love to do, and it needs to be done, but sometimes it can simply be about two nervous college kids in a safe place, relaxing and enjoying the dance.

How to turn a picture you draw into a collage. I am sure there are other ways. They may be easier, but this is what I did. I made a copy of my picture first and labeled each section with a number. Then I took the original and wrote the same corresponding numbers. Then I cut the original into pieces. I then traced the different pieces onto various interesting pieces of scrapbook paper. I only needed six colors for this project. Two hairs, two skin colors, and two dress patterns.

Sometimes it’s a good idea to trace the pieces onto cardstock because that makes them easier to deal with. In future (I am playing around with British affectations in language such as “in future”, saying “fortnight” because it’s a nice to have a shorter way of saying “two weeks”, and spelling things colour and neighbour with the extra “u”- just cuz I’m quirky and weird) I would like to make larger paper collages and I have drawn a larger picture of my “The Dancers” and have cut out fabric to make fabric wall hanging eventually. Stayed tuned for my other activism wall-hangings, other art, and crafts. And arts and crafts that have no ulterior motive, if that is such a thing for me.