Obligation and Honesty

The great lindy hop blog Swungover just posted a primer on etiquette and floorcraft. Most of it is basic stuff we've learned over the years. (Don't be smelly, be careful on crowded dance floors.) There's a section on rejecting dances I want to call out, because it's brilliant.

"If you do not wish to dance with a person who asks you, then you should reject that dance, and no further explanation is necessary. (Unless you desire to elaborate, of course.)"

Swungover adds that many dancers add "I’m sitting this one out" after saying no. This is a problem because:

"First off, they will probably ask again, later, and so you are simply prolonging the problem rather than solving it. Secondly, your personal safety — whether physical or mental — is much more important than social graces. The rejected partner may ask why, in which case you have the opportunity to give them honest feedback on their behavior. “Well, to be honest, in the past…” (Depending on the behavior, you may want to give them feedback on it regardless of whether they ask for it or not.)"

There are two important ideas here. First, your mental and physical well being is far more important than being nice. You have no obligation to be polite when someone is making you feel unsafe.

Second, being honest gives you a chance to improve the situation. "To be honest, last time we danced my shoulder was really sore afterwards. Can we do a gentler dance this time?"

Being able to give (and receive) this kind of feedback is very important to improving the overall safety of a dance scene. I'll cover it in detail in a future post. For now, here's one of my favorite dance videos:

Why Beginning Dancers Need to Learn Both Roles

Years ago I taught the drop-in East Coast class for a college swing dance club. I started every class with a two sentence introduction to leading and following, then asked the class to split into leads and follows. I would add something short like, "Traditionally, men lead and women follow, but you can pick whichever role you feel like."

I thought I was being so progressive. 

About once a month a woman would decide to lead. Even less frequently a man would choose to follow. Without meaning to I was reinforcing traditional gender roles in partner dancing. Three things were going on here.

First, my wording was terrible. I set up the expectation that we would follow traditional gender roles, while giving lip service to freedom of choice. It takes more that a simple statement to upset the status quo. Actual action is needed and that was obviously missing from my classroom.

Second, I was asking my students to make an uninformed decision. An instructor can easily explain the differences between leading and following. However, it takes actually dancing both roles to understand the physical and psychological difference between the two. It's impossible for someone with no partner dance experience to make a make an informed decision about which role they prefer.

Third, I was setting up a situation in which you had to cross a metaphorical picket line to dance a nontraditional role. For a man to follow he has to be comfortable with being the only guy in the follow's section of the class. That's a situation which will last for the entire class. You had to be brave enough to stand out and be obviously different if you wanted to dance a nontraditional role in my swing class. That's hard to do.

Teaching the whole class to lead and follow neatly solves all three problems.

1) Traditional gender roles in partner dance simply aren't mentioned. There are no assumptions regarding who will dance which roles.

2) Everyone has a basic understanding of both roles, so they can make an educated decision every time they step onto the dance floor.

3) Finally, everyone in the class is simultaneously learning both roles so there is no pressure to conform to a specific gender role. Everyone is free to dance the role they want to.

Curious how to run this style of class? Ambidancetrous has a wonderful how-to guide.

Five Questions to Start a Dance (or, Assuming Things Makes an "Ass" Out of "U" and "Me")

In a wonderful blog post, Ambidancetrous suggests that all dances begin with the question "Would you like to lead or follow?" This is a great place to start, and as Ambidancetrous says, the revolution will be polite.

However, this specific question is not always the best one to ask. Dancers are not all the same and there's a range of questions you can start a dance with. These five should cover the most common situations.

First of all, if you don't know how to lead, or how to follow, don't offer to do so. It's not honest to offer to dance a role you don't know. Worse, trying to dance a role you've never danced before can be painful for your partner.

Sometimes, the question to ask is, "I'm learning to lead, may I lead you?" or "I'm learning to follow, will you lead me?" (Even better, follow that up with a request for feedback.)

On the other hand, sometimes you really want to dance as a lead, or as a follow. I know some people who are amazing and unique in how they lead or follow. I often want to dance with them in a specific role. Or, I'm at a point during the night when I really want to lead. (Or follow, especially if it's 4am and I've been dancing for six hours straight. My brain gets tired.)

Sometimes, the question to ask is, "May I lead you?" or "Will you lead me?"

Finally, we usually dance with people we've never met. We know nothing about them, except for their physical attributes. If I assume they lead or follow based on those physical attributes, I'm making a sexist assumption. We simply can't tell just by looking if a person prefers to lead or follow. That's when the question is "Would you like to lead or follow?"

My point is simple: Don't make assumptions. 

The most common way for a male-who-leads to start a dance is to ask "Would you like to dance?". Then he immediately raises his left hand and curves his right arm out, the closed blues position. Or, he puts out his hands in a "cup" and waits for his follow to put their in the follow's position. Regardless of the specifics, both of these maneuvers assume that the male bodied person will be leading and the female bodied person will be following.

That assumption makes no sense to me. Yes, we currently dance in a world where the vast number of women follow and the vast number of men lead. That's changing. Leading and following are roles within a dance, not gender roles you're required to follow. Why do we look at someone's body and assume we know anything about how they dance?

Don't make assumptions. Specify the dance roles you're interested in dancing with that partner before the dance starts. It's as easy as clapping on the 2 and 4.