Did you know that bees talk to each other by shaking their rear?
In the wake of the Bubbling or Daggering ban in Rotterdam, I was made aware that one of my birds, a Sun Conure, shakes his rear, and practically his entire body, wings and all, as he hovers over his food bowl when I serve apples and blueberries. He is happy.
So, bird bubble. I knew they danced as part of the courting-ritual, but I didn’t know the extent. I made a short internet search, and disappeared into the blackhole, YouTube, where I found hundreds of exotic bird videos in which they tap dance, swing, stomp, strut and patter, displaying their feathers and their fantastic moves, in lure of a female, a mate.
While female birds remain cool and unmoved, males bird dance till they drop of exhaustion, but they are rewarded with a chance to win a willing partner, delivering the opportunity to spread their seed, and continue the trajectory of their species. For birds, that dance style translates into pre-copulatory display, and if they don’t dance, they don’t score.
In Rotterdam the Mayor banned Bubbling, or Daggering, as a vulgar form of public display. My friends tell me that revelers there, crossed the line of good taste, almost copulating openly in the street. The mayor was 100% right, protecting the rights of others.
Did you see the videos? They asked, this is not culture, this is vulgarity.
But after discussion we all agreed that banning is useless, and revelers should be asked to tone down their enthusiasm, in respect of a mixed audience.
It is a fact that bans don’t really work. Lambada was once a forbidden dance because of its sexual connotation. In the early 19th century Walz was considered morally compromising in many places. The Tango back then, was deemed offensive, so our consensus of what is offensive or not, what is modest or not, changes over time.
What was obscene yesterday, is acceptable today.
My ancient Uncle Max used to tell me, when I was a little girl, how he allowed his girlfriend Trudy to always walk up the strains ahead of him, so he could admire her shapely ankles. The rest of Trudy was covered demurely from tip to toe, and Max ended up happily marrying her, his passion triggered by her lovely ankles.
The Mayor of Rotterdam, of many years, is a Dutch politician of Moroccan origin and I totally get that Bubbling is foreign to his culture. It is foreign to my culture too. Good luck to him with banning of the practice.
Will he be more successful if her asks his constituents to conform to acceptable forms of behavior in public spaces, and reserve unlimited Bubbling, Daggering, Twerking or Pretzeling, to private nightclub and off the street.
By the way, Wikipedia traces the beginning of male/female grinding to the movie Dirty Dancing, 1987, though it would be considered quite sanitized today. Reggaeton took bubbling to a more distasteful place. More degrading to woman, I find, than the original restrained pelvic rub. Wikipedia reports that, this new form of dance was introduced in Rotterdam at the Imperium Discotheque, immediately following the movie, in 1988
In Aruba, in Carnival, people ‘carry on,’ they ‘spoon’ they ‘sandwich,’ but in all my years in Carnival I never encountered outright offensive vulgarity. Let’s keep it this way.
Bird of Paradise Dance:
