Liberation on the Dance Floor: Collective Dance and Queer Politics in Canada

Abstract

In this article, I consider Black Lives Matter—Toronto’s (BLM-TO) protest at the 2016 Toronto Pride Parade and reflect on the demands—the majority of which relate to the (re-)establishment and support of spaces for collective music participation. Following BLM-TO’s lead, I contend that music participation is vital for forging a sense of community and collective agency for queer individuals in Canada. I read BLM-TO’s protest alongside two specific examples of community organizing in Canadian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirited + history that privilege the dance floor as an integral space of politics: the Gay Alliance for Equality (GAE) in Halifax and the Gay Community Dance Committee (GCDC) in Toronto. I claim that the dance spaces of the GAE and the GCDC were transformative for Canadian gay and lesbian liberation politics in the 1970s and 1980s. Ultimately, by reading the historical efforts of the GAE and the GCDC alongside the contemporary demands of BLM-TO, I argue that music and dance spaces in which queer individuals can come together—spaces animated by the musical and collective dance traditions of communities of colour—have long been integral to queer formation in this country.