From a purely practical side, fostering an environment in which people who are not comfortable dancing will feel comfortable is not an easy thing to do, especially for one who has no experience fostering such an environment.
I base this on eight years of personal experience as an active member in a dance community. It is hard enough to make people who showed up to dance feel comfortable let alone people who showed up to discuss Bayes’ Theorem :)
Though as someone who went social dancing up to 5 times a week and a least once a week for the better part of a decade, I could get behind a LW+dancing event.
I should state that none of this is based on per reviewed research, just personal experience and practices learned from others with more experience than myself, which apparently have merit.
I should also state that some of these may be specific to partner dancing activities (I do Lindy Hop, which is a type of swing dance)
There are, IMO, two incredibly important aspects of a good dance activity:
1) Whoever is teaching the step/lesson/whatever avoids, at all cost, adopting an “I’m a dance teacher” air. How precisely to do this is probably specific to individual personalities.
2) Rule number 1 is to have fun. That has to be the primary and perhaps sole purpose for dancing. In the right crowd I often word it as “If you are not having fun, then you are doing it wrong.” Much more laughs and smiles come from non-catastrophic errors than from business as usual “doing it right”.
Some other practices for making people comfortable dancing:
-If there is an existing core of experienced dancers, have it be part of the culture to engage newcomers (ie ask new, inexperienced people to dance. I’m not sure what this would look like for line type dances)
-The converse, build a culture where newcomers will self-engage (ie ask experienced people to dance). This can be done by saying “feel free to ask anyone to dance” as often as possible and by having a culture where saying “no” without good reason is taboo. It is general etiquette in my circle that if you say no to someone, you are either injured, tired, need a drink/breather, or don’t like this song, as such if your favorite partner comes up and asks you to dance right after you said no to someone else, you are still injured, tired, need a drink, etc and should sit out the song.
-When giving a lesson or teaching the step, avoid “[Random Learner], you are doing this wrong” instead, say “I am seeing a few people doing this wrong.” Even though I (and others like me) like it when given direct correction, I don’t have issues with feeling comfortable in these situation, but people who get embarrassed easily will be by “Hey you shy girl blushing, you the one blushing even more now, don’t do it that way.”
-As with any teaching/learning, everyone is different. Some like to count, some need music, music makes it harder for some, counting confuses some, some don’t need to see the move from multiple angles, some will never get it without seeing it from multiple angles, some will get confused if they see it multiple angles. You have to constantly update your model of the group and encourage feedback.
I hope this is helpful, I’ll update if I think of anything else useful.
One of the reasons I have not tried social dancing is because I think I would be expected to touch strangers. I would like to go with someone I know and just dance with them, to see if I like the dancing itself, and I might or might not become more comfortable later; but I’m pretty sure I would be subjected to smarmy encouragement, cannot-take-a-hint repeated inquiries, or stern norm-announcing about that. So I don’t go at all.
Expected to touch strangers, probably. But it is not uncommon for couples to go dancing and not dance with anyone else (if my wife and I had our way, thats probably what we would do). Though in the application of a lesson, not practicing with other people makes it more difficult to learn, however I have been to lessons where half the room rotates partners and the other half does not. However know that “not comfortable touching strangers” is a good reason to say “no”.
In practice, if you went dancing with a friend (who presumably would not only dance with you) you can always say, “I’m sitting out this song” if asked and if they “say what about the next?”, you can say “I’ve already said I would dance the next one with my friend.”(probably not really a lie if you plan on only dancing with them) The vast majority of the dancers that I know are really nice and understanding, the vast majority of the minor that are not are “superstars”, at least in their mind, and would not ask a newbie in a million songs, so the fraction of people who would ask a newbie to dance that are not nice and understanding is really small.
Besides, if you are new, everyone will know(it is usually pretty obvious) and not expect you to know the taboo. It is more of a taboo of saying “no” because “you are not good enough to dance with me”. And it is definitely not an announced policy, just part of the culture you absorb via osmosis that I have discuss a handful of times with (for lack of a better term) “high-level” members of the scene.
As for smarmy encouragement: smarmy is subjective but there will be coddling in any scene that values new comers, I say soak it up, because when you get good enough to not need it anymore, it goes away.
A solution? Go out dancing, after a short period of time it will all be moot. Either you like dancing enough to touch strangers, they will quickly cease to be strangers, or you will be known as the couple that doesn’t dance with anyone else (those do exist) and no one will ask you anymore. Or I guess you could also find out that you don’t like dancing, in which case it is also moot.
Admittedly, I am biased on the subject of the merits of dancing, but I encourage almost everyone to get into it, I know many people whose lives were changed for the better by dancing and none that I can says whose lives were destroyed by it.
From a purely practical side, fostering an environment in which people who are not comfortable dancing will feel comfortable is not an easy thing to do, especially for one who has no experience fostering such an environment.
I base this on eight years of personal experience as an active member in a dance community. It is hard enough to make people who showed up to dance feel comfortable let alone people who showed up to discuss Bayes’ Theorem :)
Though as someone who went social dancing up to 5 times a week and a least once a week for the better part of a decade, I could get behind a LW+dancing event.
What methods do you use to get people more comfortable with dancing?
I should state that none of this is based on per reviewed research, just personal experience and practices learned from others with more experience than myself, which apparently have merit.
I should also state that some of these may be specific to partner dancing activities (I do Lindy Hop, which is a type of swing dance)
There are, IMO, two incredibly important aspects of a good dance activity: 1) Whoever is teaching the step/lesson/whatever avoids, at all cost, adopting an “I’m a dance teacher” air. How precisely to do this is probably specific to individual personalities. 2) Rule number 1 is to have fun. That has to be the primary and perhaps sole purpose for dancing. In the right crowd I often word it as “If you are not having fun, then you are doing it wrong.” Much more laughs and smiles come from non-catastrophic errors than from business as usual “doing it right”.
Some other practices for making people comfortable dancing:
-If there is an existing core of experienced dancers, have it be part of the culture to engage newcomers (ie ask new, inexperienced people to dance. I’m not sure what this would look like for line type dances) -The converse, build a culture where newcomers will self-engage (ie ask experienced people to dance). This can be done by saying “feel free to ask anyone to dance” as often as possible and by having a culture where saying “no” without good reason is taboo. It is general etiquette in my circle that if you say no to someone, you are either injured, tired, need a drink/breather, or don’t like this song, as such if your favorite partner comes up and asks you to dance right after you said no to someone else, you are still injured, tired, need a drink, etc and should sit out the song. -When giving a lesson or teaching the step, avoid “[Random Learner], you are doing this wrong” instead, say “I am seeing a few people doing this wrong.” Even though I (and others like me) like it when given direct correction, I don’t have issues with feeling comfortable in these situation, but people who get embarrassed easily will be by “Hey you shy girl blushing, you the one blushing even more now, don’t do it that way.” -As with any teaching/learning, everyone is different. Some like to count, some need music, music makes it harder for some, counting confuses some, some don’t need to see the move from multiple angles, some will never get it without seeing it from multiple angles, some will get confused if they see it multiple angles. You have to constantly update your model of the group and encourage feedback.
I hope this is helpful, I’ll update if I think of anything else useful.
One of the reasons I have not tried social dancing is because I think I would be expected to touch strangers. I would like to go with someone I know and just dance with them, to see if I like the dancing itself, and I might or might not become more comfortable later; but I’m pretty sure I would be subjected to smarmy encouragement, cannot-take-a-hint repeated inquiries, or stern norm-announcing about that. So I don’t go at all.
Is there a solution to this problem?
Expected to touch strangers, probably. But it is not uncommon for couples to go dancing and not dance with anyone else (if my wife and I had our way, thats probably what we would do). Though in the application of a lesson, not practicing with other people makes it more difficult to learn, however I have been to lessons where half the room rotates partners and the other half does not. However know that “not comfortable touching strangers” is a good reason to say “no”.
In practice, if you went dancing with a friend (who presumably would not only dance with you) you can always say, “I’m sitting out this song” if asked and if they “say what about the next?”, you can say “I’ve already said I would dance the next one with my friend.”(probably not really a lie if you plan on only dancing with them) The vast majority of the dancers that I know are really nice and understanding, the vast majority of the minor that are not are “superstars”, at least in their mind, and would not ask a newbie in a million songs, so the fraction of people who would ask a newbie to dance that are not nice and understanding is really small.
Besides, if you are new, everyone will know(it is usually pretty obvious) and not expect you to know the taboo. It is more of a taboo of saying “no” because “you are not good enough to dance with me”. And it is definitely not an announced policy, just part of the culture you absorb via osmosis that I have discuss a handful of times with (for lack of a better term) “high-level” members of the scene.
As for smarmy encouragement: smarmy is subjective but there will be coddling in any scene that values new comers, I say soak it up, because when you get good enough to not need it anymore, it goes away.
A solution? Go out dancing, after a short period of time it will all be moot. Either you like dancing enough to touch strangers, they will quickly cease to be strangers, or you will be known as the couple that doesn’t dance with anyone else (those do exist) and no one will ask you anymore. Or I guess you could also find out that you don’t like dancing, in which case it is also moot.
Admittedly, I am biased on the subject of the merits of dancing, but I encourage almost everyone to get into it, I know many people whose lives were changed for the better by dancing and none that I can says whose lives were destroyed by it.