joreth | Entries tagged with dance

I keep getting asked about costume storage, and I'm rewriting the same answer over and over again in costume and cosplay groups, so I decided it was past time that I made an actual blog entry about this.

I have a lot of costumes. I mean, I have A LOT of costumes. And a lot of dance clothing. And dress-up clothes. And work clothes. Let's face it ... I just have a lot of clothing in general. When I still lived in an actual dwelling, I had a 2 bedroom apartment so that I could use my entire second bedroom as a walk-in closet. I don't mean that I wanted 2 bedrooms so that I could use both closets, I mean that the whole bedroom was one giant fucking wardrobe.

After moving into an RV, I needed some kind of long-term storage option for all my clothes. After a handful of years and some trial and error, I finally came up with a system that I really like. I'm very excited about my new storage system.

I found that 28 quart "under bed storage" bins have roughly the same volume as cardboard file boxes (also called "letter boxes" and "banker boxes"), which is what I was using to store everything in before (because they were uniform in size and shape and both big enough to be useful but small enough to carry and limit the contents for weight control).

Plus, because they're longer and flatter, I can put clothing in it with fewer folds, leaving them on hangers and in garment bags and just sort of "accordion-folding" them into the plastic bin. And the plastic holds up better than the cardboard. Also, I color-coded the bin lids. My costumes are all in white bins, my regular clothing is in silver lids, and my "not one costume, but a bunch of the same item" stuff like petticoats and corsets are in green bins.

The picture is a little bit outdated - this was taken before I added several more costumes and before I really nailed down the color coding, so it's not very consistent in this picture, but it got more consistent later on.

I have one bin per costume (or one costume per bin) with all of its bits including accessories and shoes (other than those costume elements I reuse in multiple costumes, like my petticoats). Each costume gets a checklist for all the items that belong to the costume, with the line items that are stored in that bin checked off and the "shared" items not checked off so that I know to look for them in another bin.

These checkists are in a plastic sheet protector and I use wipe-off markers to write on the plastic over the paper when I check something off for an event or to make notes, so I can just wipe it all off afterwards and still have a clean checklist.

And THEN, I have every single individual clothing item and element recorded in a free, online database that includes its location.

When I go to a con, I can just pick up the bin for the costume I want to take, check the checklist to see if there are bits located elsewhere, and I take the whole bin. If I am flying instead of driving, I take the garment bag containing the costume out of the bin and pack just the garment bag with the costume.

I made a template version of my database so that anyone else can use it. All you have to do is create a free Airtable profile, then click the link that takes you to my template, and "copy" that database into your own profile. From your profile, you can edit the database however you want.

I highly recommend this method or something similar. For my non-costume clothing that needs to be stored, I put all clothing items of similar type (i.e. "club tops", "work shirts", "suits & slacks", "pants", etc.) into these bins, tight-rolling them the way that flight attendants pack their clothing (tutorials can be found on YouTube for this very efficient and compact folding method). These items are similarly catalogued into my database so I can find them later. It's truly a space-saver that also protects my clothing from pests and the elements. It's also super useful for moving.

If you're looking for a better storage method of clothing and soft-goods, I recommend buying a bunch of under-bed storage bins and if you want to get really organized about it, some sheet protectors for checklists, some chalkboard labels for the outside of the bin, and some different color lids to color code. Then check out my wardrobe database template for boss-level organization.

I was given a compliment that was definitely intended as a compliment and that I'm taking as a compliment and that, even though it includes a comparison, was definitely not intended to insult the person it was comparing, but nevertheless the compliment shouldn't actually need to exist and I'm using as a metaphor for a larger conversation on gender.

I have decided that there is actually a partner dance that I don't like: country swing. There are no patterns for the feet, it's literally a dance all about how fast and how frequently the lead can spin his partner (because gender norms). Now, dance involves the body so a dance style that doesn't focus on memorized step patterns can still be a legitimate dance style. But this is a dance style that is all about sequences of tricks with no concern for steps or musicality and relies on the strength of the lead to make the follow go where she is supposed to go.

And don't get me wrong but the really good country swing dancers do use step patterns and have musicality and the follows do as much work as the leads. But that's not the social dance experience. Usually it's a dude spinning the fuck out of some thin, young woman with no regard to how well it matches the music that's playing or whether she even knows how to do what he's making her do. Brute force will spin her and stop her without dropping her whether she knows what to do or not.

So, there was a guy at the wedding I went to recently who claimed to be able to two-step and swing dance. My sister grabbed him for a two-step and he was all over the place with her - no control, no musicality, just "slow-slow-quick-quick-spin-slow-slow-quick-quick-spin-spin-another spin-slow-slow-quick-quick".

When they sat down, he said that he was really rusty with the two-step and that he was better with swing. I would rather have danced a two-step with him, but since he said he was better at swing, I asked him to swing dance with me. So we got up and did a country swing exactly as described above - spin, spin, spin, who the fuck cares about beats and music?

I was told later that the dance with my sister looked pretty out of control and my mom was worried that he was actually going to hurt my sister, but she was amazed at how well I kept up with him. And I kind of downplayed it because 1) my sister was never as into partner dancing as she was into line dancing; 2) she hasn't danced in a while and I try to keep up with my dancing; and 3) I know exactly what "country swing" is and I know how to handle guys who dance like that.

So I've been feeling a little pleased that I impressed people by dancing with someone who had very little control and making it look like we were less out-of-control than we really were, mainly because *I* kept control of *me*. And it's legitimately not an insult to my sister, because he was the lead, so all problems were his fault. She's not even a poorer dancer than I am, necessarily, he was just that bad of a lead. I am, after all, a better follow than a dancer.

Here's the metaphor part: Too many cishet dudes are allowed to move through life like these country boys move across the dance floor - full tilt, without regard for their surroundings, who is around them, how they impact others on the floor, how out of control they are, dominating their partner, and with no regard to the mood of the music. And I have spent a lifetime developing the coping skills for how to keep my own feet underneath me when one of these guys swoops by and spins me around. And that's a compliment because it is, indeed, a skill that I've worked hard at and I am a good dancer (and "dancer") because of it.

BUT I SHOULD NEVER HAVE NEEDED THAT SKILL IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I should not ever be complimented for how well I can compensate for men's failings and flailings. Because men should not be allowed to stomp all over the floor and through life the way they do. But so many of them do so, that we just gave it its own dance style name and genre and said "yep, that's legit, that's how you do that!"

And we have done the social equivalent of tolerating and accepting men who do that in life.

Country swing is actually a really fun style to both watch and dance, *when done well*. But what *I* (and competition judges) think counts as "done well" and what social dancers think counts as "done well" are two very different things. It is, and should be, a legitimate style. But the way it's executed on a social floor is just fucking dangerous. It may be athletic, but it's not artistic, and it's not considerate. It's performative without being connective.

So don't be one of these country swing dudes. Pay attention to how you move through life, how you impact those around you, the space you take up, whether your partner is (or is able to) contribute equally to your partnership or are you just flinging them around with you, and for fuck's sake at least try to learn something about musicality because musicality is just emotional connection manifest physically. With a little math.

Bringing me back to my high school theatre days, where I learned tap as a drama geek. Tap is intricately linked to the history and evolution of jazz music, which means that it's also intertwined with the history of swing dancing, a current love of mine. All dance is related in a twisty, convoluted, branchy evolutionary web much like actual evolutionary biology (although with multiple root points rather than one-ish), and all dance is related to music.

Because tap and jazz were the very first styles of dance that I learned, this is why I say that being a dancer is to be a musician. We are part of the music, making music, affecting the music. We weave in and out of the music like any other instrument.

And tap dancing is a study in racism and privilege that parallels the same study in jazz music - first the development by discriminated peoples and the blending of cultures, then cultural appropriation, then being discarded when no longer novel or when too "pure" for the white middle and upper classes to connect to.

Watch on YouTube

*sigh* Met a really cute NASA engineer who is also a very good swing dancer, and who has taken it upon himself to learn other styles of partner dance. I knew it would be too much to hope for that he was poly, but he *does* come from an area where another dancer recently came out as poly, so it might not have been *that* big of a fantasy.

Except he's ULTRA Christian.

Reason #46 why I hate living in Florida - unlike other similarly-sized metropolitan areas, the partner dance scene is conservative and religious so I can never hope to find potential dating partners who also know how to dance. At best, I might meet guys who are open to me teaching them some basic dance steps. Which is fine, I enjoy teaching and I enjoy sharing my passion.

But what it usually means in practice is that we end up breaking up before they ever get proficient at dancing and I don't have anyone to challenge *me* to get better; I never get to play the student so I never progress above my current level, which is advanced-beginner or maybe beginning-intermediate.

I have only ever dated one person who is as good (technically, he was better) of a dancer as I am, and we only danced maybe 3 times while dating.

Dancing is such a strong passion of mine that I feel a distinct black hole in my life that I don't have a romantic partner to share it with. I *did* have a couple of partners who were actively working on learning how to dance while we were dating, but for logistical reasons like distance, I never actually got to dance with them and, as I said, I don't have the opportunity to challenge myself.

Of all the things that white men could have decided wasn't "masculine" enough, they had to choose dancing. Y'know, that hobby that has strict gender roles where the man is in control and athletic and gets to hold women in his arms, and requires a good sense of rhythm and is guaranteed to attract the attention of just about every woman in the room? Yeah, that's not "masculine" enough for white dudes, so for generations, we dumped dancing as a culture until most white men are convinced that they can't dance and never developed an interest in it.

Yay fragile white masculinity.

However, in some religious circles, partner dancing is still encouraged. Mormons and that weird "progressive-conservative" southern Christian type still partner dance, so in this backwards superficially-progressive state if I want to dance, it's with people who have a strong religious faith. Which is fine for dancing, but pretty much rules them out as a potential dating pool.

"Orlando is really just a small southern town with delusions of grandeur." ~Joreth Innkeeper

Dance Studios: We want more people to learn how to dance! And come to our dance parties!

Non-dancers: OK, well, we don't know how to dance and we're not really passionate about it, otherwise we would already be learning how to dance. So, how do we get into this dance thing?

Studios: Well, first spend hundreds of dollars on private lessons, and a couple of hundred on special shoes, spend several weeks in lessons and practice every moment at home, and then you can come to our dance parties where everyone there already knows how to dance!

Non-dancers: Uh, that sounds kind of intimidating. Don't you have, like, a group class somewhere that we can just drop in to see if we like it before we start spending all that money and committing every week?

Studios: NO YOU MUST COMMIT IF YOU ARE TO BECOME A *DANCER*!

Non-dancers: OK, well, we weren't really interested in becoming a Dancer, we just thought learning a couple of dance moves might be fun. You're the one asking for people to show up to your events.

Studios: *Fine*, we'll add a lesson at the beginning of our dance parties. We'll teach the same 3 steps over and over again for every dance party that we throw, and then we'll immediately open the dance floor to people who have been dancing for years and just throw you into the mix where you have to ask experts to dance with you and try to keep up with other experts moving around the floor. How's that?

Non-dancers: Yeah, didn't solve the whole "intimidating" problem. We'll just stick to asking our token dancer friend to show us a few moves, and then never practice them again.

#IfYouWantPeopleToDoYourActivityYouHaveToMakeItAccessible

Non-Dance Friends: Ooh, We've always wanted to dance! Will you teach us?

Dancers: Well, there are lessons available, and for safety you'll need suitable dance shoes.

Friends: We don't want to spend any money, so can you just show us some things?

Dancers: Well, you also need the space to do it, and that's my personal time that I'm giving up. Renting space costs money, and if I teach for a living, you're asking me to do my job for free. Plus, we already know that you need repetition to actually *learn* things. If you really want to learn how to dance, you need to practice regularly.

Friends: Nah, that's too much work and we're too busy with things that we prioritize higher.

[some time later]

Friends: Ooh, we've always wanted to learn how to dance!

Dancers: Well, there are lessons and dance events available...

#FromTheOtherSide #WeLoveToShareOurPassionButItTakesReciprocalEffort

www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-inappropriate-interaction-you-have-had-at-a-club/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What is the most inappropriate interaction you have had at a club?

A. I've had 2 that I can come up with off the top of my head and they happened on the same night.

I was at a regular nightclub with some swing dancers, and towards the end of the night, everyone had left except for 2 guys I know. They were off dancing with some non-dancers they had met. I was approached by a guy who is not a dancer, but who was clearly drunk. He asked me to dance. He said that he saw me dancing earlier and knew that I was with a group of actual dancers, not your typical drunk club girl.

Now, partner dance etiquette is to accept dance requests, dance one song, thank your partner for the dance, and return to your place to dance with someone else. You can dance with them again later, but you don't dance multiple songs in a row because you don't want to monopolize anyone's time. I get that non-dancers are not aware of this, but I still do this even at nightclubs.

We danced one song and he was terrible. He was sloppy drunk and unable to tell that his clumsy manhandling of me was wrenching my shoulder. So I thanked him for the dance as soon as the song ended and I turned and went back to my spot. He followed me, demanding to know why I had left him on the dance floor. I told him about proper dance etiquette, and that he got his dance with me, now I was done. He backed me into a corner to prevent me from leaving and started arguing with me about dancing more with him.

Right about when I was getting ready to pull out my knife to get him to back off, one of my 2 dancer friends left saw what was happening and rushed over to grab my hand and pull me on the floor. The asshole shouted after me something about being a bitch for going to dance with someone else.

A couple of songs later, I got asked to dance by some other drunk guy. I accepted, and he attempted to hold me like he had seen the real dancers holding me, but as usual, he had no clue how to do it right. He held me way too close and his hands were way too low on my back. I started leaning away from him and he started holding me tighter. He tried to spin me in a clumsy spin, and when I came back from the spin, he grabbed me in a full-body embrace and kissed my neck.

I pushed him away and walked off the floor. He grabbed my arm to pull me back, but the other dance guy who was still there saw me and dove between us, putting me into a proper dance hold and whisked me away.

This second asshole tried to cut in, but my dance friend yelled back at him that I was "his" and he wasn't letting me go again. He quietly asked me how "friendly" he could be to make his point, and I gave him permission to be *very* friendly. So he put his hands on my butt and kissed me. Finally the asshole left.

I hate displays of possession, but the behaviour of these two jerks left us only 2 options - allow someone else to "claim" me so that they would respect my rejection, or escalate to violence. I chose the non-violent response first, and fortunately I did not have to fall back on the violent one.

A few years ago I wrote about a dance situation where I was sliding into a depressive state but putting on my best pretend-happy face (https://joreth.dreamwidth.org/387838.html). I went out dancing and met up with 2 friends that night - one dancer and one non-dancer.

The non-dancer and I had been having some incredibly intimate conversations recently and we were getting to know each other *really* well. He saw the effect that the endorphins had on me and thought I looked happy. I was smiling, outgoing, and having one of my best dance-skill nights where I was totally killing it on the floor. The non-dancer saw all of that and remarked on how happy I looked.

The dancer friend and I had not had that same level of intimacy and we only knew each other marginally well. But after one 3 minute song of full-body contact, he could see the depression behind the smile and the dance endorphins.

So now I want to give another example of how partner dancing gives people amazingly good non-verbal communication skills.

In 2019, I started a casual relationship with another dancer. We were becoming pretty good friends, but we still had some barriers up in the emotional intimacy department. We were having fun, but that's about it. But he's a fantastic lead and can build very good partnerships with his follows on the floor. I'll call him Michael.

We had not told anyone in our dance communities that we had been sleeping together. First of all, we weren't *dating*, so it felt weird to be making announcements about a casual relationship, but second, we are both community leaders and we didn't want to make things weird with overlapping our private and public lives.

Plus, he's ultimately monogamous and available for a dating relationship, so eventually he would want to find a romantic partner (probably from within the dance community) and having everyone already know that he's hooking up with someone else tends to make potential monogamous dating partners keep their distance. He would, of course, disclose to anyone to whom that information is relevant, but it didn't need to be public knowledge. Ah, the complex, twisty rules of mono culture.

I have another friend, who I'll call Anne, who is also a dancer. She and I have a similar level of platonic emotional intimacy - decent friends but still getting to know each other. Anne and Michael have their own friendship with each other, and it's possibly a closer emotional relationship than I had with either of them.

So, on this particular Wednesday night, I went to my usual dance event, and I met a guy there who was interested in using the venue. The manager wasn't there that night, so he wandered over to my event to make connections. So we chatted and I let him in on how our event was arranged and stuff. I'll call him Nick. I was feeling some chemistry between us, but I wasn't sure how much of that was real and how much was just because I had really good sex earlier in the day and I was still all after-glowey.

I found out that, in addition to Nick being a promoter, he's also a Latin dancer. So I invited him up to my DJ booth to pick whatever song he wanted and to dance with me. So we did and he's a fucking amazing dancer - one of the best I've ever danced with.

Earlier, he had given me his business card, offering to help me with promotion of our event. It felt like a pretty typical networking type of exchange. Later, while bent over my laptop looking at music (he also gave me a ton of his own music, so we were talking and exchanging files), he suggested I call him to get together and do more music exchange when we had time and more drive space, and he gave me his personal number.

Now, this could have gone either way. It could have been more networking, or it could have been a soft flirt to see if there was interest. I enthusiastically accepted his number, y'know, to exchange music. Then we danced. He said several times that he was impressed, given that I'm not a Latin dancer, I'm a Ballroom Latin dancer (which is different) and a beginner at that.

So I put on a bachata, which I like better than salsa, and we danced again. Then he mentioned another style of dance that I might like and when I asked him what it was like, we danced again. I was definitely feeling the chemistry. After the 3rd dance, the conversation lulled, and I excused myself to mingle with my other guests and friends. Here's the relevant part...

As I was walking across the rather large dance floor, apparently I was smiling. Anne and Michael were standing next to each other, both watching me (everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch me dance with Nick just a moment before). Michael remarked to Anne that I looked happy.

Anne, knowing that I often get trapped by men in uncomfortable conversations because a) I'm a woman at a nightclub and b) I'm the event host who has to make the rounds and talk to everyone, suggested the possibility that it might have been a tense smile. Keep in mind that I'm still a good 50-60 feet away and it's dark with flashing, disorienting lights.

Michael, without taking his eyes off me, said "no, that's a happy look". Apparently Anne glanced sharply at Michael as she realized that he was able to tell the difference between my happy smile and my pasted, polite but tense smile. She looked at him, looked back at me, back at him, back at me, and on the third glance back at him (all of which I could see as I walked towards them), she asked him if we were sleeping together.

Surprised, he looked at her, admitted it, and then asked how she knew. She said that the first clue was his knowing the difference between my smiles, and what confirmed it was the expression on his face as he watched me walk over to them and his relaxed posture, as well as my own body language while I walked towards them.

All of this happened in the span of time it took me to walk across the dance floor. When I arrived, I told them all about who the guy was and mentioned that I got his number. Michael said "see? Happy smile!"

So, here is someone I have been dancing with for months able to tell at a glance from across a *dark* room the difference between genuinely being excited about something and being polite to a new person and my general enthusiasm for the activity. Because he is getting to know me very intimately through dancing. The sex helps, but that's relatively new compared to how long we've been dancing together, and also sex is very contextual. Dancing expresses a lot of different emotions, and we can feel that with the music and the body contact. And here is someone else who I have *not* been dancing with but who has general non-verbal communication skills, and who *has* been dancing with the other person in this scenario so she knows *his* body language almost as intimately as I do.

He can read me, she can read him, and through our mutual connection with him and our general skills, she can infer my mental state too. Kind of like the dance version of metamours.

I know that a lot of people don't like dancing or think they're bad at it. But I can't stress enough just how valuable those skills can be in interpersonal relationships. I've known some people who are just naturally that intuitive, but I don't know of any other activity that people can practice that develops this level of intuitiveness and awareness of other people. This is an activity that can *teach* and *improve* exactly this kind of non-verbal communication and intuitiveness regardless of one's starting point in intuiting non-verbal communication.

I would like to encourage more people to try partner dancing, or at least to learn lead / follow exercises, to add one more *incredibly* powerful tool to their relationship toolkit.

I originally posted this on Facebook on April 24, 2019. I'm archiving it here so that I can look back over my progress in my dancing skills in the future.

LONG post about dancing -

I am not a blues dancer. I have never really enjoyed blues, compared to the other dances, because it's very spontaneous and there are very few rules to it. I don't improv well. I like ballroom because there is so much structure.

Even though they are also spontaneous in that, when you get out on the floor, the lead has to come up with the next pattern off the top of his head, and a good lead will match the pattern to the specific part of the music so that a good dance becomes a visual representation of the music itself, where the dancers ARE the music, the patterns are all existing patterns that we learn.

They have a vocabulary of patterns to choose from and I can learn and memorize those patterns so that when they throw one at me spontaneously, I already know what to do. And even if I haven't learned that particular pattern, the structure of the style of dance we're doing gives me guidelines to infer what my lead wants me to do.

Blues isn't like that. Blues just takes everything that the dancer knows from lindy hop, jazz, tap, Argentine tango, Charleston, and whatever else that particular dancer happens to know, and throws it all together with no *real* basic step (there kinda is one, but it's not helpful once you leave the basic and start improvising, whereas with ballroom, as long as you keep your feet moving to the basic, everything else will follow from there) and the follow dancer (me) not only has to interpret what the lead is trying to get them to do, but also has a lot of freedom to make up whatever shit the follow wants to do in the spaces between.

This is not my strong suit.

But then I got introduced to Bachata. Bachata is basically the Latin version of blues dancing. It's all that improv but arranged around an actual basic step, so there is my structure. And I got introduced to it first in a nightclub and then again at social events.

Learning how to do a street dance actually in the "streets", as opposed to taking lessons, is a different thing. It's a more organic feel. That makes it harder, for me, actually. But it's how I've learned almost all of my dancing once I took that first basic "social dance" course in college where the instructor taught a different ballroom dance every week. With that format, I didn't get a very deep introduction to anything, but I learned how to follow and I learned how to apply things I learned from one style to another, and I learned how to connect - how to connect with a partner and how to connect all the different dances together.

So I learned bachata, and in nightclubs, it's a very sensual, flirty dance. As opposed to in the classroom where it's very formal and stiff. And I fell in love with it. Through bachata, I get all the touch that I'm missing in my personal life with no local partners. After I learned how to just let go and lean into the bachata, blues suddenly got easier for me to connect with. It's still my least favorite of the dances, but I realized something last night.

My local FWB is a fantastic lindy hopper. He's also an instructor. We were talking last week about how we both feel stuck in this intermediate level because we both spend all of our time teaching newbies and never getting to dance with people who are better than ourselves, so we don't have much opportunity to advance further.

I want to be a better, more advanced dancer in general, and he wants to become a better teacher of advanced patterns (he is a better lindy hopper than I am, but I am proficient in more than a dozen different dances and he only really knows lindy and ballet, while he can fake it at a small handful of other lindy-adjacent dances).

So we got a little bit excited at the thought that he could practice teaching me more advanced moves which would help him improve his teaching style (since he usually teaches beginners and doesn't really know how to break down the more advanced stuff that he knows how to *do*, just not teach) and I could dance with someone better than me who could take the time to help me actually improve, not just throw something at me on the floor and hope that I grasp the concept in a 3 minute song well "enough".

With my love of bachata and not actually knowing any bachata dancers to dance with regularly (and not having the time to go to bachata clubs regularly), with my recent regular exposure to lindy hoppers who also do blues dancing, with now having made a dance friend who explicitly wants to learn how to teach better, and with starting up a sexual relationship with said dancer so I feel more comfortable being physically affectionate with him in general, I've been seeking him out for blues dances when I would have avoided blues songs in the past.
And although I am still not as improv-y and as fluid as people who connect with blues dancing, I am feeling more ... loose and experimental in my blues dancing.

One of my limitations is that I can do a lot of patterns, but I don't feel comfortable doing "flare". That takes a degree of confidence in one's dance knowledge and skill that I just don't feel. I don't know when is the right time to wrap my hand around my head and shoot it out and pose, for instance, because I don't feel very confident and I don't want people to see me doing something that screams "I know what I am doing!" when I clearly don't.

This has held me back in acting too - I keep not wanting people tho think that I really believe what I'm saying or doing. Like, I want them to know that *I* know that it's all make-believe. Which completely defeats the purpose of acting. So I am not a good actor.

Flare is something I could learn, I just haven't had the time to take any flare lessons and I haven't had any dance partners that were in a teaching sort of role (it's not generally considered appropriate to "teach" people in a social setting, especially if they don't ask for it first). But I did notice last night that I am relying less on maintaining the basic pattern as a "filler" when my partner throws something improv-y at me, and I'm allowing myself to "feel" the music the way that I always did when I danced solo in goth and industrial clubs.

My FWB dance partner says that he wants to learn how to break down the moves he does so he can teach other people, because he doesn't really know how he does them. He just connects to the music and he just *feels* it. That's also how I experience music, and dances like blues and bachata are the sorts of partner dances where you can really bring that connection into the partnership of the dance. You can in literally any style of dance, but the more fluid and improv-y the style is, the more connection you can bring, IMO.

He often dances with his eyes closed, so he can feel the music better. So our interpersonal connection has to be strong since he's not relying on visual cues but all physical touch and "energy" to communicate. And the event that I host is longer than normal events, so by the end of the night everyone is pretty fucking exhausted. I play more slow lindy and blues at the end of the night because it's all we have the energy to do, and everyone seems to appreciate being able to dance while also just kind of leaning on each other.

Wanting to be close to him because of our newish sexual connection, wanting to dance with him because he's just a good dancer, wanting to do the sensual street dances like bachata and blues because I'm a little bit touch-starved, wanting to improve my dancing skill, and being so energized by the music but so tired from the long hours that I really want to keep moving but can't quite keep up the same level of dancing as earlier in the evening, has all led to me doing a lot more blues dancing and seeing improvement.

So I told him last night that he was making me a better blues dancer, even though we haven't even started any explicit teaching sessions yet. Words of Affirmation is one of my Love Languages, and since that's a thing he wants to improve at, that compliment seemed to mean a lot to him.

The reason why I realized that I was becoming a better blues dancer is because of the new guy I met last night. He's one of the best Latin dancers I've ever danced with, and he threw all sorts of patterns at me that I had never even seen before, let alone done. I managed to keep up well enough to impress him, seeing as how I'm not technically a Latin dancer (I know mostly Ballroom Latin, which is kind of a stuffy version of Latin dances).

I threw in a bachata after we salsa'd, because I like bachata better than salsa, and afterwards he said that I should try Dominican Bachata if I like the slow bachata we did. I asked him why, what's the difference, and he said that Dominican Bachata is more ... just more. He couldn't quite explain it in the moment (I was expecting, like, an explanation of the basic pattern being different or something), so he just started doing it solo.

The music was not Latin at all, it was a lindy jump blues song. But he said that Dominican Bachata could be done to anything and somehow managed to make a Latin dance fit jump blues music without losing the Latin flavor but also looking like it went with the song.

So I watched him for a few bars, to see if I could pick up the basic pattern out of his fancy steps. And I couldn't, really, but bachata (the regular one I'm used to) is kind of a marching step and merengue is definitely a marching step, so I figured I could fake it, I screwed up the courage, held out my hand, and yelled "lead me!"

And he did.

I had no fucking clue what I was doing, but I blended lindy moves with merengue patterns and Latin hips while following his lead, and by the end of it, we were alone on the floor and everyone else was applauding.

And I credit my ability to do that to my increasing familiarity with blues dancing, thanks to my new FWB.

My challenge to all the men out there: Take this workout course:

Watch on YouTube

I am not affiliated with this course or this company in any way. But as a dancer, I can recognize the value of an exercise routine built around the core strengthening exercise that's being used as the base exercise in this course. Here's the thing - men in general don't do a lot of exercises unless they are motivated to build muscle; men in general do not dance; men in general do not know how to do isolation movements; men in general do not work on their flexibility; men in general do not know how to loosen their hip muscles and end up being very rigid, causing joint pain later in life.

The reason why men in general don't do these things is because they have become associated with women and femininity. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where men think that they all walk differently than women because of biology. While it's true that there are some "average" differences between the genders such as pelvic size and placement, our walks are largely learned, not inherited.

Here's something that a lot of my partners have been shocked to learn when the subject came up - you know that walk, the one on the runways and the one that women just do that men supposedly find so sexy? That walk was learned. We *learned* how to do it. We practiced it. Which is why some of us women do that walk and others don't - they didn't practice it. That is not a "natural" walk. It's what we learned how to do because it was prioritized. When I was a child, I wanted to be a model, so I spent hours walking up and down the hall practicing this walk. Men can do that walk too. But, like us, men have to *learn* how to do it.

A friend posted a male belly dancer video to my timeline - that's another thing that "men" seem to think that they just can't do, that it's inherently a female thing, that their bodies are just not meant to do that. And, like the walk, that's bullshit - people who practice it can do it and people who don't practice it can't. Your individual ability to do those movements is a combination of your *individual* biology (not your gender biology) and all the physical choices you have made over your entire life, conscious or otherwise, that led to today. If you did not spend your life practicing isolation movements, you will have difficulty moving like a belly dancer.

But it's never too late to start trying.

Watch on YouTube

Learning this particular motion, learning how to isolate your muscle groups, building core strength, improving your cardio, and improving rhythm are also all incredibly helpful techniques for improving your skill in sex. Just FYI. I don't care how good you think you are in bed, you can always get better. And as a straight woman who has sex with men, let me tell you - your lack of ability to isolate your core muscle groups have been noticed and is holding you back.

So, I challenge every man on my friend's list to take this course. Not for weight loss, although you will probably experience some of that. But because you have all been told a pack of lies about who you are as people that has led to a physiology that is less flexible, less strong, with less mobility and poorer health FOR NO FUCKING GOOD REASON.

Dance, core strength, muscle isolation, flexibility, and a robust cardiovascular system are about as masculine as it gets. They're about strength. They're about confidence. They're about control. They're about power. And they're attractive to a lot of straight women. That's everything that you've been told that heteromasculinity is about, and yet y'all avoid doing the very things that would accomplish these goals.

I don't even care if you "don't like dancing" or "have two left feet". You never have to get good at this, and you don't have to come to love it. I challenge everyone to complete one month-long challenge using this core exercise as its base. If you like it, great, stick with it and see what else they have to offer. If you don't, find another exercise to challenge yourself with at the end of the month.

www.quora.com/Why-should-you-learn-ballroom-dance-or-any-dance-and-is-there-any-benefit/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Why should you learn ballroom dance or any dance and is there any benefit?

A.

Dance is a great form of exercise that includes both cardio and flexibility work.
Dance is a great form of social activity to meet new people and build friendships and community.
Social partner dancing has been shown to decrease or relieve the symptoms of some forms of dementia and to also reduce the onset of dementia (https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcseriesblog/2016/04/04/keep-dancing-turns-good-brain/).
Partner dancing increases your awareness of the space you take up and your effect on those around you, so it can help build empathy skills.
Partner dancing improves non-verbal communication skills, which help in other areas of life such as romantic relationships, work relationships, familial relationships, customer service, etc. (I teach a workshop where I teach non-dancers certain dance exercises that will teach them non-verbal communication skills to improve relationship communication with no dancing even required!)
Social dancing offers clear guidelines for social etiquette, that can help improve self-confidence or relieve social anxiety, and can offer a framework for social etiquette in other contexts.
Social dancing builds self-esteem as skill improves and as the dancer practices the social etiquette of asking for dances and dealing with rejection. It builds emotional resiliency.
Dance brings awareness to the physical body, which can help with self-esteem, and with awareness of the body that can lead to better detection of problems and better self-care.
Dancing can be a safe outlet for physically expressing and processing strong emotion.
A regular dance regime or schedule can provide a sense of structure while combining physical activity and artistic or creative expression, all of which are extremely valuable tools for children and young adults for building and maintaining healthy self-esteem and productive patterns that can be applied in other areas of life, and for people in any life stage who may be experiencing emotional upheaval, loss, change, or feeling unsettled or adrift through changing life circumstances, or who just might need or want an anchor or a steady point in their life.
Partner dance is also great for mitigating the effects of touch-starvation, which a lot of people, straight men in particular, are brought up with very few outlets for non-sexual touch once we reach adulthood. This is a wonderful way to get some of the physical touch that we seem to need as human beings.

www.quora.com/What-are-some-unspoken-rules-of-the-dance-floor/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What are some unspoken rules of the dance floor?

A. There aren’t really any “unspoken” rules, there are etiquette guidelines that most people are willing to talk about if anyone brings it up, and some guidelines that are explicitly talked about in classes. Which are which, however, depends on where you are. Some instructors remember to talk about floor etiquette and some don’t.

Basic etiquette includes things like:

paying attention to the amount of space you’re taking up and how your presence affects other people,

yielding the floor to avoid collisions,

inviting people to dance with you without pressuring them,

accepting rejection gracefully,

offering rejection gracefully,

not hogging anyone’s attention by dancing several songs in a row with them and allowing them to dance with others or not dance if they choose not to,

no food or drinks on the dance floor,

not smoking near the floor (or indoors, depending on local laws),

good hygiene,

proper shoes and attire to protect the floor, yourself, and other dancers,

matching dance style and skill to your partner, particularly the more advanced dancers simplifying down to match less advanced partners and paying attention to differences in body size and shape and ability,

thanking your partner for the dance at the end of the song and the person who did the asking ought to escort the other back to where you found them, or if partner-changing is happening quickly, at least acknowledge the goodbye with a nod, handshake, hug, high five, etc.

Follow the line-of-dance and/or spot dancing rules, especially when there are a mix of dance styles happening at the same time.

There may be others, but they all boil down to courtesy and accountability. Be courteous to those around you and be accountable for your actions.

www.quora.com/How-can-you-describe-the-different-types-of-ballroom-dances/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. Which dances are considered "ballroom dancing"?

A. That depends on who you ask. You have to clarify if you mean dances that are accepted under the International Ballroom Dancing competition standards, or the American Smooth / Rhythm Dance competition standards, or the kinds of dances are taught in ballroom studios, or any social partner dancing?

Very generally speaking, “ballroom” refers to a collection of partner dances that include smooth style European dances, Latin dances, and rhythm dances, some of which can be danced socially, and some of which really are only danced in choreography because there are too many times when the contact necessary for communication of the next step does not exist (such as side-by-side moves, or moves at a distance).

In addition to this, there are often several distinct dance communities in any given region in the US. The “ballroom” community might do all (or a large number of) the dances, but there is also a separate community for each of the swing dances (usually lindy hop, which sometimes includes balboa and blues, west coast swing, and shag as their own communities), a separate community for Argentine Tango, and a separate community for salsa (which sometimes includes bachata and occasionally kizomba), and the country western dances (which can include two-step and one-step, as well as country-swing, country cha cha, square dancing, and line dancing, although sometimes square dancing is its own community all by itself) - all of which might do a slightly different version of those dances from the same styles danced in the ballroom community.

I recently started keeping a running tally of all the partner dances that are currently danced somewhere in the US, and so far I’ve come up with 34 specific styles (if I lump the 3 main Shags under one heading), but this is a work in progress as I keep adding dances as I am made aware of them:

www.facebook.com/notes/joreth-innkeeper/all-the-partner-dances/1612515565470846/

For more info, you can read about different kinds of dances here:

Music & Videos - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal - https://sites.google.com/site/orlandoballroomdance/resources/music-videos

Ballroom dance - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballroom_dance

www.quora.com/What-dance-steps-can-you-name-off-the-top-of-your-head-How-many-of-them-can-you-actually-do/answer/Joreth-Innkeeper

Q. What dance steps can you name off the top of your head? How many of them can you actually do?

A. This reminds me of that scene in My Cousin Vinny where Marisa Tomei is on the stand and the prosecuting attorney is challenging her to tell him the correct ignition timing for a particular car and she keeps saying that she can’t answer the question and the attorney reacts as though he caught her in a lie, that she doesn’t actually know enough about cars to be an expert witness. So the judge finally interrupts and says “WHY is it a trick question?” and she goes on to explain that the car he’s demanding to know about doesn’t exist so she can’t give the correct ignition timing for it.

What do you mean by “dance steps”? And in what style of dance? This question isn’t really asking for a thing that exists without some kind of clarification.

At last count, I could name 34 specific partner dance styles,

I have at least tried 23 partner dance styles and 3 choreographed dance styles, not counting line dances (I haven’t the foggiest how many of those I have tried) and I can do 15 of them with some proficiency. Each of those partner dances has a “basic” step, but each of those “basic” steps are totally different from each other. So, do I know 1 step or 23 steps if we’re just counting the basic step?

In all of the partner dances, they have so many steps that I don’t think all of them have been categorized. You may be able to find a list of specific patterns allowed in competition for each of those partner dances, maybe, but a lot of patterns are not allowed in competition, are “street” variations, or are made up on the spot by individual dancers. And most of those don’t have names to them. Or have different names from different people.

Now, even if we just take the 15 partner dances I can do with some proficiency, I couldn’t possibly be able to list off all the individual patterns I can do in each of those 15 styles. I have no idea how many patterns (or steps) I know. I’m a follow, which means that my dance partner comes up with the step that we’re about to do and non-verbally communicates to me what I’m supposed to do. So, basically, I know as many patterns in each partner dance style as all of my dance partners ever in my history of dancing and in my future know how to communicate to me how to do.

That’s a lot of steps.

Then we move to the 3 choreographed dance styles that I know - Bollywood, Jazz, and Tap. Each of those styles also has their own repertoire of steps, some of which are catalogued and some of which are made up on the spot or are regional variations.

Again, I couldn’t even begin to list how many of those steps I know. I have probably forgotten more steps than I could remember just sitting here thinking of them (and I probably never learned their names), but if someone does one of the steps and I try to copy it, I’ll probably remember it.

Next we get to the types of “steps” that get randomly thrown into social freestyle dancing where a dancer could dance the entire song just doing that one step (twist, mashed potato, the jerk, etc.) or they could be mixed and matched in a collaboration of freestyle dance moves at a nightclub or dance event. I currently specialize in 1950s-1960s dances and solo charleston, and I spent many years as a goth dancer in goth and industrial nightclubs. Once again, there are so many steps for each style of dance, many of which were never categorized officially or named and some of which are just made up on the spot, and most of which were borrowed from and built on other dance styles, that I couldn’t even start counting them all.

(Goth dance “steps” are particularly fun and are often given satirical names like “Kick The Smurf” and “Change The Lightbulb” and “Start The Lawnmower” and “Pick Up The Dollar Bill On The Ground” and “Pluck The Apple From The Tree And Admire It” and “Stuck In My Coffin”.)

And then there are the line dances! Most country and urban line dances have a tendency to reuse the same handful of steps just in different combinations - things like the grapevine, the jazz square, the charleston, stomps, kicks, heel-toes, ball changes, etc. Pretty much all of these steps exist in one or more of the other styles of dance, such as jazz, ballet, tap, and even some partner dances like cha cha, country two-step, and more. So there is probably a heavy overlap between what steps I know in line dancing and what steps I know in other dances.

But since there is no over-reaching Catalogue Of All Dance Steps somewhere, and many steps are made up on the spot, there’s no way for me to know all of the steps that I know. For a lot of steps, I don’t know that I know it until I do it, and then I can think “oh, right, this is THAT step!” Most of the steps or patterns that I have learned, I was not taught the name of that step, just how to do it.

So the closest I can come to answering this question is by saying that I know 24 partner dance *styles*, 15 of which I know with some degree of proficiency, 3 choreographed styles, 1 of which I know with some degree of proficiency, and so many line dances that I never even bothered to keep track.

If I had to guess, I probably know at least a dozen specific patterns or variations (dance “steps”) for each of the dances I know with some degree of proficiency and at least 3 patterns or “steps” for each of the dances I have at least tried. There is some overlap. Add that to the freestyle dance “steps” and the line dance steps, if I just estimate or round my numbers and say, maybe that I know about 10 specific steps for every style of dance I know (partner and choreographed) with about 1/3 overlap plus the freestyle solo dance steps, I would hazard a guess that I probably know more than 2 or 3 hundred individual patterns or “steps”.

Now, if I was a choreographer or a Gold level competition dancer, I would probably know an order of magnitude more.

I've had enough people ask me now how to make my adhesive masks that I'm making a tutorial. At the moment, I don't have pictures of me constructing the mask, so I will add those later, perhaps the next time I make one. But I can write out the instructions. I have been putting it off because I want to make a video, so I'll add that later too, when I get around to it.

I have chosen an adhesive mask that creates a full and complete seal all the way around for better control of the air leaving my mouth (no air leak up into my eyes or glasses!), and a "beak" shape that creates a pocket in front of my mouth that makes it feel easier to breath. I wear this mask while dancing for several hours and I can breathe fine in it. If Disney employees can dance around in a full fur suit, I can certainly handle social dancing and grocery shopping in a cloth mask.

The adhesive is intended for use on human skin and during athletic activity, so it stays on even while sweating and heavy breathing and I have no reaction to the adhesive. I do tend to wash my face around my nose and mouth afterwards, though, because the moisture from my breath being trapped around my face makes me feel like my skin is getting oily, but I have not seen any irritation or abrasion or even acne or skin blemishes from wearing this mask regularly.

Items you will need:

Kinesiology Athletic Tape
Some kind of filter material
- coffee filter
- tissues
- toilet paper
- air filter for your air conditioning unit
Scissors

If you're feeling particularly crafty, you can also get a hot glue gun and some hot glue, and some other decoration. I'll include a picture at the end of a red mask I made with some black lace over the top.

The first thing you'll want to do is choose your filter material. This mask is not rated for anything, even if you use some kind of rated filter material, so you need to think of it as being approximately as safe for the people around you as a standard cloth or surgical mask. It is probably safer because of the seal around the mouth and the filter material, but because it has not been tested and approved for anything, you ought to treat it as if it's only as effective as the standard masks.

So you can choose your filter material to be out of anything you want. I mainly decided to create a filtered mask because I needed something in the middle of the adhesive to keep it from sticking to itself. It turns out that air filters for home air conditioning units are often the same price regardless of size - the price is determined by the level of filtration.

So I bought the highest HEPA-rated filter I could find, which included anti-viral filtration, in the largest size available. This may or may not still be effective once it's applied in the mask, so this is why you should treat the mask as if it's a standard mask.

Anyway, you can buy an air filter and get a TON of usable material. Combined with the cost of a package of athletic tape, I estimate my masks to cost me roughly 50 cents per mask. If you are using an air filter, you will need to separate the filter material from the frame. This can take some work, and there are YouTube videos out there showing how to do this.

Basically, you need to cut the chicken wire off of the face of the frame (on both sides) and then cut the filter around the edge to separate it from the cardboard frame. It's simple to do and regular scissors will cut the wire, but the wire is sharp and can poke or cut you while you're working, so take care with this step.

Once your filter material is free of any packaging, you can work with it to make masks and you can store the excess (if any) in a plastic bag for the next mask. If you choose to use coffee filters or tissue or any other filter material, this preparation step should be significantly less work.

So, now that you have your filter material and it's ready to be worked, you can start constructing your mask. Next you will need to prepare your athletic tape.

Kinesiology tape tends to come in 2-inch strips or rolls. Some brands of the tape come pre-cut into roughly 10-inch lengths. Most of them include a grid on the back to use as a cutting guide. I found that the pre-cut strips fit me well if I shortened them by about 4 squares (approximately 7-8 inches). This will take some experimentation on your part.

I can wear a mask with a pre-cut strip that has not been shortened at all, but I like it better at around 7-8 inches in length. I have a very small face and I fit most large children's size things. Average people will probably fit fine into 2 10-inch strips "standard" version. Larger people may need to to use the un-cut rolls and make it longer and/or with 2 1/2 or 3 strips instead of 2.

So choose your tape color and determine the length you need.

Now that you have your tape and your filter material, we can begin the instructions:

Take 2 strips of tape of the appropriate length. Peel back the adhesive backing along the length of one of the strips by about 1 square (1/4 inch). Place the other strip face down onto the now-exposed adhesive, overlapping the two strips and creating a double-width band of tape just shy of 4 inches wide.
Remove the backing from both strips and place face down on a surface with the adhesive face up.
Cut 2 strips of the filter material, one smaller than the other. The larger strip should be approximately the dimensions of your double-wide mask, minus about a quarter inch all the way around (so, if your mask is 4" x 10", you'll want a piece of filter material approximately 3.5" x 9.5" - this does not need to be exact and it can be a rough cut. The important part is that one piece is bigger than the other and the bigger piece is smaller than the whole mask). You can also choose to have only 1 layer of filter. In this case, make your filter to the "larger filter" dimensions.
Place the smaller filter in the center of the double-wide strip, right on the adhesive. Place the bigger filter over it and press down around the edges that are touching the exposed adhesive. If you go with only 1 layer of filter, you only need to do this step once - place the filter in the center of the adhesive, leaving about 1/4" of adhesive exposed all the way around.
Now you should have a rectangle of athletic tape with a patch of filter in the middle and a strip of exposed adhesive all the way around.
Carefully fold the mask in half, so that the short ends meet each other (but don't touch!). Along one long side only, press the exposed 1/4" inch of adhesive edges together to create a seam. This forms your "beak" shape. It looks kind of like one of those simple leather or duct tape wallets kids make at summer camp.
Now, with that seam on the bottom / front, going from your chin to your beak's "nose", place the beak over your mouth and nose and press the rest of the exposed adhesive over the bridge of your nose and smooth down your cheeks.
You can choose to leave your chin free of adhesive, so that air escapes out the bottom if you want to get a straw inside to drink (this basically makes it about as protective for others as a surgical mask with its gapping around the face) or you can seal the adhesive all the way around your face.

Leaving a gap at the bottom will also make it cooler, so I tend to do this after I've finished dancing, when I'm back at my table, to cool off and to drink water, but I close up the seal at my chin when I'm interacting with other people.

So that's it! Once you get the hang of it, it's really simple and only takes a few minutes.

Current recommendations are that disposable masks should be replaced about once a day or if it gets wet while reusable masks should be washed at least once a week - for those not in the medical field and only using them in moderate settings.

I tend to wear mine for about a week, using the reusable washing guidelines, because these are so much heavier duty than typical disposable masks and I generally only go to the grocery store and to my office. I tend to make a brand new one on the very rare occasions that I go dancing with my established dance partner. I do not recommend making these ahead of time because you expose the adhesive during the process, which will decrease the length of time you can wear one.

To reuse it, I keep the strip backings. Then, when I take my mask off, I fold the backing strips in half, and I insert them into the mask, with the fold of the backing tucked into the fold of the mask. They end up crossing each other like an L or a V.

Then I press the mask flat with the backings between the layers to keep the adhesive from sticking to itself, and store it until I need it again.

After about a week of wear, the adhesive stops sticking consistently. My record so far was 6 days of 8-hour use with 1 evening of dancing (and sweating) in the middle of that run. It now takes me about 10 minutes or less to make a mask (depending on if I have to cut off more filter from the pack or if I have some strips already pre-cut). I was also able to wear a mask that I had made probably 3 or 4 days prior so it was sitting open for several days. I did this for testing purposes, so I recommend changing your mask more frequently.

Here are some pictures of me in the mask:

And here is a picture of my red and black lace version:

Red Flapper Mask

This was made the same way, but before I removed the backing to add the filter, I added the lace. I found a 2-inch black lace ribbon that I liked. I cut 2 strips the same length as the athletic tape and placed it over the top of the tape. Using my hot glue gun, I glued the lace around the edges and along the center seam.

To hide the glue, I also took some strips of black sequins and hot glued that all the way around the edge and along the center seam. This held up during several hours of dancing and in a combination of temperatures, which can stress hot glue. If you use a fabric or material that is at least 4 inches (or wider than the mask), then you only need to glue around the edges, not along the center overlap seam.

Once the glue was dry, I completed the steps starting with step #3, adding the filter and folding the mask into shape.

Adding the lace and sequins really classed up the mask. I could see doing this with a variety of colors of lace, or just sequins, even individual sequins in a pattern all over instead of a ribbon strip. But the bare tape in a variety of colors is pretty festive all on its own too.

And here is a short video of me dancing in the first mask I made:

Watch on YouTube

Q. Is it necessary that the dance lift was performed by a male partner? My girlfriend offers me to dance too, but I never played sports, unlike her.

A. First of all, partner dancing has nothing to do with lifts. People go their entire lives as partner dancers without ever doing a single lift, especially if they are social dancers. If your girlfriend wants to dance with you, you don’t have to know lifts to do it.

In fact, you **won’t** learn lifts for a very long time, because they’re dangerous and require skill. Lifts are not for beginners. The first thing you’re going to learn is just where to put your feet on which beat and where to put your hands. And you’re going to do a LOT of that, for a very long time, even if you want to eventually learn lifts.

Partner dancing does have a history of very strict gender roles. But fortunately, we live in an era where we can challenge those roles, and the dance world has been challenging them for ages now.

Anyone can lift anyone in dancing, just like anyone can take either the lead or follow role. Do the roles that you want to do.

Although I will point out that having once played sports is not relevant to who does the lifts. Proper lifts are all about leverage, momentum, and balance, not necessarily brute strength and definitely not about the kinds of movements that other sports use. There are a few moves that require brute strength, but most lifts use leverage more than anything else.

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfUcmYcZ4pw

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOe9r2RlE4c

A lift is not about a strong person throwing a small person around. Both people are using core strength to do a lift. The lifted person is engaging all of their own strength and flexibility too.

Watch on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3AH7W1YFTY

Dance is a partnership between two equal and complimentary partners, even when staying within traditional gender roles. The follow still has to come to this partnership as an equal and perform their role. In lifts, that’s as much athleticism as the person being their base, sometimes more.
If you want to be the person being lifted because you think your girlfriend is more athletic than you, you’re in for a big surprise. As the person being lifted, you have to have musicality, timing, flexibility, and strength in the legs, arms, and core.

Being lifted isn’t just about being small, and it’s definitely not about being weak. Check out YouTube videos on core exercises for dance lifts - you’ll see nothing but workouts for 6-pack abs because being lifted requires an enormous amount of core strength. Honestly, the leads (or bases) have the easier part of the job in lifts.

So, by all means, go out there and learn lifts! Be the person who is lifted if you want! Just know that A) once you start taking lessons, you will not get to the lifts for a very long time and B) if you still choose to be the person being lifted, that will require a great deal of athleticism that C) has nothing at all to do with other sports so skills in other sports will not help you here.

I just hosted a Brat Pack drama marathon. It was 3 of the movies that literally define the Brat Pack. David Blum, a reporter for the New Yorker, started out writing an article about Emilio Estevez shortly after St. Elmo's Fire. One night, Estevez invited Blum out to hang out with most of the cast, as they often did. Blum changed the focus of the article to the whole group and called it Hollywood's Brat Pack.

I grew up in the '80s with the Brat Pack as my role models. I watched a lot of movies in the '80s. If it hadn't been for my love of books and music, I very much could have been Xavier Cross from Scrooged with how much television I watched as a kid. Those Brat Pack movies, though ... Most of what I enjoyed in the '80s did not age well. I go back to watch the classics now as an adult and I'm really kind of horrified, if I'm being honest. I still love my old movies, though, because nostalgia is one helluva drug - forget about beer goggles, you oughta try on rosy nostalgia glasses sometime!

Anyway, the media I consumed as a kid was ... well ... rough. It was hard. It was deep. Frankly, it's no wonder that GenXers are pretty fucked up. The Outsiders, Stand By Me, Old Yeller, Neverending Story ... I'm still not over Artax's death. We grappled with some shit back then.

I also read a lot, as I mentioned. One of my favorite authors back then was one of the most popular authors of the time - Judy Blum. She tackled some pretty hard stuff too. Her coming of age novels were grounding. I remember the controversy over her 1975 novel, Forever. That book examined both suicidal depression and teen sex. Talk about heavy topics. In the story, the main character has premarital sex at the end of high school, believing she will be with her partner "forever", but in the end [spoiler alert] discovers that one's first love rarely lasts forever and she will move on from him.

The fact that the characters have sex as teenagers and do not end up married, and the main character uses birth control, makes this book come in a whopping #7 out of the top 100 "most challenged books" in the US, for how often it gets censored and banned.

I bring all of this up to talk about Cuties.

I finally watched the movie Cuties. I've been defending it and haven't even watched it yet. So I decided that if I must watch something before I criticize it, then I must also watch something in order to defend it. So I did. To be totally honest, absolutely nothing I have read, both pro and con, accurately explained to me what Cuties was about.

[SPOILER ALERT - The entire plot of the film follows]

Amy is an 11 year old Muslim girl growing up in France. Her family is, by my standards, extremely repressive. She is required to cover her body and hair, and pray for piety and modesty. She is moved into a new apartment and, presumably, a new school, where she meets the Cuties - 4 girls who have formed a dance team of that name.

These girls show their skin and defy authority. They are rebellious and obnoxious, but really not any worse than all the kids I knew at that age. Their first act of rebellion is to convince the entire schoolyard to pose and freeze one day when the bell rings to summon them back to class. I mean, that's hardly dangerous or scandalous. Just irritating to the authority figures.

After some routine bullying, Amy eventually gets accepted by their group and starts hanging out with them. She starts wearing less modest clothing, but again, nothing worse than anything I did at her age. She shows her legs and her midriff. I probably still have some of my old crop tops from the '80s. I have always been proud of my stomach and I liked showing it off.

As for legs ... well, I grew up in an era of knee-length shorts and I am still uncomfortable in anything shorter (although I have no problem with *skirts* that short, but shorts have to be to my knees). So let me tell you sometime of the nearly impossible task of finding shorts for women or girls that don't have half my ass hanging out. I literally have to wear men's shorts in order to find any long enough to make me comfortable. Girls wear short shorts because that's what's readily available.

Anyway, so the girls are dressing less modestly than Amy's Muslim family would like. But not any less modestly than any tweens I have seen since ... oh, probably the '60s. In fact, the tight mini skirts we see the Cuties in when we are introduced to them look suspiciously like the skirts I had back in the '80s. In the '90s, one of those mini skirts literally got me my first mall job when I was 16 - my boss liked my ass in that skirt and wanted to watch me reach up and straighten the suit jackets in that skirt all shift.

So, the Cuties have heard of some dance competition and they want to enter. So they rehearse all the time. All of their routines that we see are pretty standard hip hop routines - nothing particularly special or controversial. No twerking or crotch-splits or anything.

Amy wants to join their dance troupe, but she has never danced before. So she steals her older cousin's mobile phone to watch the practice videos the Cuties have uploaded so far and searches the internet for music videos to learn by. Unfortunately, she finds videos of voluptuous women in thongs twerking. So, guess what kind of moves she learns?

Here's the thing ... the right-wing propaganda of this film is totally wrong of course. It has nothing to do with pedophilia or sex trafficking or child prostitution. It is, of course, a criticism of the oversexualization of young girls, just as the producers and directors say it is.

But the defenses of the film led me to believe that it was a criticism of *the dance industry* and how *it* oversexualizes girls. But that's not true either.

The Cuties are not part of any dance studio or dance industry. They're 4 tweens (and Amy) who want to be famous dancers who emulate what they see in pop media. With, as far as I can tell, absolutely no adult supervision or guidance. Certainly no *pressure* to dance this way.

Amy's mother has no idea what she is getting up to. She has 2 small children to care for and a husband who is off somewhere courting a second wife (without telling her about it until it's a done deal). I'll get back to this in a minute. The only time we see Angelica's family is when she and her brother get into a fight and her dad yells that he's trying to sleep ... in the afternoon. We see Yasmine's mom, who seems nice enough, but clearly has no clue what the girls are getting into. None of the other girls' parents ever enter the picture.

So Amy, desperately trying to fit in, learns these very adult dance moves on her own. Then, when Yasmine gets kicked out of the group, and the group freaks out because the preliminaries for the dance competition are too soon to teach another girl the routine, Amy jumps in, proves that she's been studying their home videos and already knows the routine, and also introduces the other girls to the very adult dance moves she has also been studying.

These moves get incorporated into their routine. This routine wins the girls a spot in the competition during the primaries. When they get caught sneaking into a laser tag facility, Amy gets the girls out of trouble by explaining that they are dancers and celebrating their acceptance to the competition. To prove that they are really dancers, she starts doing the adult dance moves, making the two male employees so uncomfortable that they just let the girls go. The girls don't realize that the men were uncomfortable and trying to get out of watching tweens twerking, they think Amy just convinced the guards that they are legitimate dancers which, for some reason, gave them a free pass.

As they practice for the competition, Amy becomes more and more self-confident. She starts wearing even more revealing clothing and moves through her school with the same arrogant attitude as the other Cuties. Later, she picks a fight with a rival dance team, who manage to pants her and take pictures of her in her underwear to post on social media, mocking her for her childish undergarments.

Amy, filled with lots of really big emotions at this stage in her development and with her oppressive home life and her humiliation on behalf of her mother for her father bringing home a new wife, starts making really bad choices. She steals lots of money from her mom's purse and takes her friends and her brother on a shopping spree for more adult underwear and clothing.

Amy's mom eventually learns of the theft and freaks out, yelling and hitting Amy for getting out of hand. She even calls in a priest to do an exorcism, but the priest says there are no demons there. So Amy's mom and grandmother strip her and splash her with water, having earlier established that water washes away sins. Amy goes into a kind of trance-like convulsion partially consisting of some of her booty-shaking new dance moves.

Later, when her cousin discovers that she still has his phone and tries to take it back - her one connection to this grown-up, outside world of music videos and social media - Amy locks herself in the bathroom and takes a picture of genitals. I am unclear on if the picture includes her new adult underwear or not. The film shows her taking the picture but does not show us the picture (thankfully). She then posts this picture on social media.

Now her new friends hate her because she went too far. They call her a whore and say that they are receiving harassing messages to show off their private parts like Amy. So they kick her out of the group and bring back Yasmin. As her father's wedding day approaches and her grandmother continues to push her into being a dutiful, subservient, Muslim Senegalese young woman, and her period begins, all of Amy's really big feelings take over.

Amy sabotages Yasmine and shows up to the dance competition. With no time to wait for Yasmin, they accept Amy and run on stage. This is the one scene where we see the routine in full. And it's ... discomforting. The girls look like strippers. And I don't mean they look like some of these hip hop dancers who have some sexualized moves in their routine. I mean that I don't recall any hip hop in their new routine at all. The entire routine consisted of them humping the floor and putting their finger in their mouths and grabbing their crotches.

And the audience is having none of it. Except one dude, apparently. He seemed to think the routine was fine. But everyone else in the audience was shaking their heads, one mother covering her young daughter's eyes, some booing, lots of mumbling. The judges, however, all seemed to think it was fantastic, if their smiles and nods were anything to go by. That's disturbing.

While dancing, Amy seems to have some kind of emotional breakdown. Everything that has happened up to this point seems to have all come crashing in on her mind as she realizes what she's doing. She starts crying and flees the stage in the middle of the performance.

She runs home, where her grandmother sees her competition costume and calls her a whore, and then attacks her mother for having raised a whore daughter. Amy's mom finally stands up to her mother and tells her to back the fuck off and takes Amy into her room to comfort her. They seem to reach an understanding. Her mom tells her that she doesn't have to attend her father's wedding if she doesn't want to, which is about to start. So Amy changes out of her dance costume into a reasonably modest pair of jeans and a sweater, skips the wedding, and goes outside to play jump rope with the neighborhood kids.

And that's where it ends.

There was no "dance industry" in this film. It was mostly just 4 girls with too much unsupervised, unguided exposure to grown-up media. Had they been a part of a studio, it's quite possible that they would have been discouraged from the dance routine they choreographed.

This movie was far more like a Judy Blume novel, or a John Hughes film. It showed young kids under immense pressure with either not enough parental guidance or the wrong kind of parental oversight. Then, left to their own devices, their very large, overwhelming feelings drown the hormonal tweens and leads them to make very poor choices while they try to figure themselves out.

In the end, Amy figures out that she made some poor choices. But she can make other choices, and life will go on.

A few days ago, I just spent several hours watching teenagers kill other teenagers, get into large-scale fist fights with each other, learn how to use machine guns and grenades and kill enemy soldiers, and then barely-out-of-teens having lots of sex and snorting lots of cocaine and drinking obscene amounts of alcohol. These movies were also about young people figuring out that they made some poor choices, but that they can make other choices and life will go on (maybe not for the ones who died, but the rest will go on).

A whole bunch of years ago I read books with girls getting their periods, having sex, dealing with death, feeling lots of feelings, and also figuring out that they made some poor choices, but that they can make other choices and life will go on.

This is what it means to have a "coming of age" drama.

There is a country song that says "I believe that youth is spent well on the young / 'Cause wisdom in your teens would be a lot less fun". I don't happen to agree that youth is spent well on the young, but I definitely agree that wisdom in your teens would be a lot less "fun", for some value of "fun". I am frankly amazed some days that I lived to see adulthood. Between racing my car and rolling it down a hill and running from and waiting out a mountain lion from atop a water tower and sneaking out at night to party with kids doing way to many fucking drugs, it's really only luck that allowed me to live to see "wisdom". I'm not sure that my middle aged wisdom would have resulted in less fun, so much as different fun. I'm having lots of fun as an adult too, only with much less risk.

My point is that the teen years are a pretty fucking foolish age. It's when bodies change and emotions get really large but the brains are not yet developed enough to know what to do with with it all. Everything is confusing, everything is humongous, everything is immediate, everything is absolute.

And that's what we see in "coming of age" stories. These stories are uncomfortable. These stories are challenging. These stories are difficult. These stories are often a little bit ugly. Because that's what the teen and pre-teen years are - uncomfortable, challenging, difficult, and often a little bit ugly.

Which makes Cuties a pretty damn good representative of the "coming of age" genre.

The movie does not draw any hard conclusions, as a good "coming of age" drama ought not. But what lesson it does impart is that the oversexualization of these young girls was definitely not for their own good. Amy was caught between too repressive and far too unfettered at a time in her life when her emotions were also too big whilst her knowledge and reason was far too inexperienced.

This led her to ping-pong between extremes, both being wrong. She needs to stop bouncing back and forth off the opposite walls and find a path between them that she can walk at a more reasonable pace without banging herself up on both walls. Which is, I feel, a common dilemma for many young girls. It certainly was for me.

Telling an uncomfortable story about an uncomfortable situation does not necessarily condone or support that situation or that action. It depends on how the story is told. For instance, 50 Shades very clearly romanticizes abuse by not recognizing what the character does as abusive and perpetuating the trope that a man can be "saved" by a good woman.

Flowers In The Attic wasn't romanticizing parental abuse or incest, although both were the vehicles for the tension in that novel. It was telling a story intended to make the reader feel off-kilter because of the horrific things happening to the characters. It was definitely never defended as some sort of introduction to a world people were clamoring to get into. Not a single person read Flowers and said "sure, it's not totally accurate about incest, but at least it got people talking about it, and maybe we can guide them to the correct way to do it!" You were supposed to feel uncomfortable when you read Flowers, even if you could empathize with the characters.

Cuties told an uncomfortable story. It showed a girl chafing at her repressive upbringing, flinging the chains off and jumping head-first without the benefit of a parachute, and only then realizing that she actually just jumped out of a frying pan and into a fire. To mix my metafores, which I have a tendency to do.

The movie seemed to imply that it was the influence of the media (social media, pop media, etc.) that was responsible for Amy's decent into hypersexualization. And, yeah, there is a lot of it out there for children to stumble across. But I also think that this is the inevitable outcome when children aren't given any guidance for how to navigate that media and what it means. I saw little to no adult mentorship in this film, other than Amy's occasional lessons to pray for a life of subservience to a man and no respect for her agency in any form.

What I definitely saw absolutely none of was pedophilia, btw. Pedophilia is a mental health condition where adults are sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children. Most pedophiles do not harm children. Most are aware that they have a dangerous condition. Sexual assault tends to be perpetrated by people who are not pedophiles. I know this is difficult to understand, but assault and abuse (in all their forms) are not about *attraction*, they're about *power*.

There was absolutely no pedophilia anywhere in this film. There was nothing about adults being attracted to pre-pubescent children. In fact, everyone (but one older teen in the audience of the competition) was repulsed by the sexualization of the girls.

There was also no *system* or *industry-wide* hypersexualization of children. This was not Toddlers & Tiaras or Dance Moms, where the industry itself is so competitive that it keeps falling into more and more adult requirements of children for the sake of competition.

But there *was* children exhibiting sexualized dance moves that they learned from pop media. And the tone of the film clearly disapproved.

We can possibly have a conversation about the ethics of a director teaching children how to play these kinds of roles where their characters are doing adult dance moves, but if we're going to have that conversation, then we need to talk about children in horror movies for the last 50 years, and docudramas showing young guerrilla soldiers, and every movie from the '80s showing teen violence and bullying. There better not be a single person complaining about Cuties who also thinks Lolita or The Professional are good films.

Child actors are still actors. They are required to play roles to tell the story. Sometimes their characters are bad people and sometimes they do bad things and sometimes bad things happen to them. This is unavoidable if we are going to tell stories about the experience of children. It's challenging to protect a child from the experience of playing a role, and that's an ongoing conversation that needs to continue. But children in real life go through some shit, and if we're going to tell stories about the lives and experiences of children, we're going to have to see that shit they go through. We have to be able to share our stories as children.

And that's what this film is, by the way. It's the dramatized experience of the creator - a Black Muslim Senegalese-French woman. This is her story. She needs to be able to tell her story, and we need to be able to see it. And this story very clearly tells a tale of a young girl who lived through some shit and made some poor choices, as children do, and life went on.

Just like every good "coming of age" story ever.

Now, having watched the movie, I would not say this is a film critiquing the dance industry's use of children's bodies. I would say that this is a film telling the story of a young girl experiencing things that some young girls experience, many of which are harmful and cause hardship to the child. That makes it a "coming of age" film. And one that has an opinion of some of those experiences, and that opinion is pretty solidly against them.

BTW, there's very little that's more poly (outside of poly-specific and/or sex-centric activities) than a swing jam. I keep talking about how partner dancing is both a good analogy and good training for poly relationships, but a swing jam is about as poly as it gets on the dance floor.

A handful of dancers wait on the floor while everyone else forms a circle around them (usually they're people with birthdays that month or some other special thing that singles them out).  Then the music starts, and someone from the outer circle jumps in to dance with someone inside the circle. As they dance, another person preps and, without allowing the dancer to miss a beat, takes their partner's place.

It's kind of like a swing dance version of double-dutch jump rope, where kids have to jump in and out of the ropes while they keep spinning, and a line forms with kids who all take turns with one person jumping in as another jumps out.

Some good-natured "competition" can happen between the partners who are cutting in, with one partner cutting in very quickly so the other partner cuts back in almost immediately instead of letting a third person cut in. But it's always done in fun.  And sometimes a "tandem swing" happens, where one person dances with two partners at the same time.

The dancers in the circle have to all be aware of the other dancers around them and how they impact and affect everyone else. They are all there to have a good time.  The partners pay attention to who is there before them, so that they don't cut in too soon and cut someone out of a decent amount of dance time.

The partners also pay attention to who hasn't danced yet and they wait before taking a second turn to make sure others have a chance to dance with the person in the circle.

There is so much awareness of what people are doing that affects those around them and of what the other people are doing that could affect their own decisions on where to be and how to move, and consideration for those who came before and those who will come after, and sharing and switching out partners and joyful play and fun competition and healthy cooperation ... a swing jam is really very much like watching polyamory in motion.

I wish more poly people would get into dancing.

(I know there are more poly dancers out on the West Coast and some in the UK, but that doesn't help me here in Florida or, apparently, anywhere else in the world since only those two locations ever chime in to "correct" me when I complain about the lack of poly dancers. But my point is not that there aren't *any* dancers who are poly or polys who are dancers, but that the greater poly community would benefit from a stronger overlap with the dance community, in general, because of the lessons to be learned through dancing)

Watch on YouTube

This one, btw, is only one person on the floor, but he's someone I happen to know personally. It's his 75th birthday jam and he even has a tandem in there:

Watch on YouTube

I was actually in attendance at this dance, although I did not join the jam (I never do):

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There's a dancer in a silver fringe "flapper" dress in this video who does a fucking amazing job of switching back and forth between lead and follow roles, depending on if her partner is a lead or a follow (and not always along strict gender lines either).

There is also a man wearing shorts and a lei I think who also switches back and forth depending on his partners. In relationships and in kink, I am a switch, but in dancing, this is not a skill I possess at all let alone during the same song and I greatly admire those who can.

Watch on YouTube

I try not to do the "kids today" thing unironically very often, because, honestly, the next couple of generations are pretty amazing. But youth does mean that they've not had a lot of time to acquire as much knowledge as older folk have (whether older folk *do* or not is another story).

Lindy hop tends to be a "young folk" scene. I'm often surprised by how many 1940s jazz songs and artists they know, but that's the music that gets played for lindy hop, so they have exposure to it.

Then, I get accustomed to them knowing some of these classic songs, and I forget that they haven't had as much time to learn like all the rest of music history. They know 1940s jazz because that's what gets played every week at their dances, but most of them did not spend the last 30 years taking music lessons and music theory and playing instruments and studying the intersection of music and fashion throughout history. Mainly because many of them haven't even *seen* 30 years yet.

So I was talking with some 20-something lindy hoppers about hosting themed dance events. Some of them turned their noses up at '50s Rock N Roll, saying they didn't like "rockabilly" and it's too hard to swing dance to it.

...

::blinkblink::

0.o

Oh sweet summer child.

I don't even know where to start. Do I explain the difference between Rock N Roll and rockabilly, or do I talk about the evolution of jazz to R&B to Rock N Roll, or do I start right out with the cultural appropriation and how you can draw a direct line from the origins of lindy hop in Harlem to the creation of Rock N Roll a generation later, or or do I pull out my rant on how interrelated musical genres are so that it's not even that easy to see a delineation between jazz and Rock N Roll, or perhaps I can talk about the ground-breaking socoipolitical impact of Rock N Roll that, again, is on a direct line from the sociopolitical impact of jazz, or maybe I should just bombard them with video clips of lindy hoppers dancing to Rock N Roll to show them how that genre was literally created for swing dancing without even needing a verbal lecture on all the intersections of the subject?

#SuchABigTopic #SoManyConnectingLines #ItRemindsMeOfTryingToExplainToAnAuthorOfAltHistoryFictionTheImportanceOfFashionOnPoliticsAndWhyItIsRelevantToTheirStory

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#ProTip - Don't ask a woman to dance more than twice in a row either. And by "row", I mean 2 consecutive songs, OR 2 times dancing with you with neither of you dancing with anyone else in between. 2 is the limit, and even that should be reserved for those times when the first dance is at least halfway through the song so that it doesn't really "count" as a full dance.

So, like, you ask her to dance, then you sit down next to her and talk at her for the next 3 songs, then you ask her to dance again, then sit down next to her and talk at her some more, and then ask her to dance a third and a fourth time, and neither of you dances with anyone else in between.

Don't do that.

Don't monopolize someone's time at a social dance. If you sit down next to her and start talking to her, other people are less likely to come and interrupt to ask her to dance with them. So she may only be sitting with you and not dancing with others because you just cockblocked them, not because she's actually that into you.

Ask someone to dance once. Thank them, walk them back to where you picked them up, and then leave them. Make sure you dance with at least one other person next. Keep an eye out to make sure either she has danced with someone else, or she has been standing there so long that she might be feeling ignored so you can offer her another dance because that's what she came there to do.

In non-dance settings (dance settings being ballrooms, Latin clubs, swing dances, etc., non-dances being things like bars, parties, clubs, and other social events), it may seem a little abrupt to limit yourself to just one dance and then bail on them. The Argentine Tango scene has a 3-song minimum limit, so if you're out, like, at a bar or something, you could probably go as many as 3 consecutive songs, or perhaps 1 song followed by conversation followed by another song.

I usually give someone 3 songs just in case they're an Argentine Tango dancer and not just socially inept. I started doing that when I first ran into a Tango dancer at a salsa club. He properly did the "ask, leave, ask later" method a couple of times, and then we danced a partial song so he asked for a second consecutive song, and then mentioned being a Tango dancer who was used to 3 songs, so I acquiesced to the Tango etiquette and he very properly dropped me off after the 3rd song and left me alone for a while so we could both dance with others.

Once I recognized this as a thing, I have now had it happen to me several times, so I give everyone a 3-song limit, where I will try to leave after one song, but if they hold onto me for a second song, I will give them 3 songs to let go voluntarily, after which time I will abruptly just leave them on the floor. So far I have met several Argentine Tango dancers this way and I've only had to interrupt one person who was going for a 4th song and who was not a Tango dancer. (I also did not dance with him again).

Those who have mastered the art of flirting know the trick to "leave them wanting more". Give them a taste, and then back the fuck off for a bit. Tell them you see someone you know that you want to say hi to, and you'll be back later, or something. Then surreptitiously keep an eye out. Are they scanning the crowd for you? Or are they keeping their head low, hoping you won't see them again? Or are they scanning the crowd for someone else to rescue them?

Catch their eye again, smile, nod, and go back to what you're doing. Do they reciprocate? Or do they seem to have a 6th sense for avoiding your eye?

Partner dance events have ages-old etiquette customs that are actually pretty good guidelines, for the most part. Especially because, as a geek myself, I know a lot of people who find social interactions to be kind of mysterious. So here's a good guideline if you don't have an intuitive sense of how to entice someone with the taste / back off / reel them in style of flirting.

No more than 2 songs. Whether that's actually dancing or chatting and using the songs as a timer. 2 consecutive songs, or 2 times in a row of dancing with them with no other partners for either of you in between (or, say, 2 songs worth of conversation with them, one-on-one, with no conversations with other people in between).

Go away for a little bit, see if you can catch their eye and do they seem excited to have you come back? Then come back. Rinse, repeat.

If not dancing, do this unless / until you get into a conversation with them where they seem focused and engaged, and there is good back-and-forth where you are both contributing, they keep their attention on you and the conversation, and seem excited to talk to you about whatever you're talking about.

Then you can talk to them as long as you both seem to want to talk to each other. But I still recommend looking for natural pauses in the conversation and breaking off to "say goodbye to my friend over there" or grab a drink or even to dance with someone else, and then coming back to continue the conversation later. That excitement that builds as one hopes for you to return really seems to affect a lot of people, so use it.

It will feel a little awkward, and maybe even a bit contrived at first, but practicing enough times at the "hello, now we engage, now I'm off again, now I'm back!" social interaction will make it easier with practice, and it will help you to avoid those awkward moments when you think someone is into you and they're desperately hoping that the ground will open up and swallow them whole just to escape without having to tell you that they don't want to talk to you anymore.

#TheArtOfFlirting #PartnerDancingLessonsAreOftenApplicableOutsideOfTheBallroom

#Irony: Today, sock hops are considered a throwback to a more innocent time, with fresh-faced youngsters in sweaters and poodle skirts or blue jeans and letterman sweaters. They're considered "good, wholesome, family fun". Lots of family-friendly organizations ilke church social groups, host sock hops so that everyone can get all dressed up in cheesy costumes and dance to our now-grandparents' music.

But sock hops at the time were wildly controversial. It's true that they were intended for teens, but the music that was played was considered by the adults to be sexualized and taboo. All that wild abandon in dancing and sexual innuendo in the lyrics were sure to lead to wanton sexual behaviour! And music being played by black musicians?! For our innocent young teenagers to hear?! The horror! (ah, American racism in the "golden age" of our history)

The reality is that they were more like the dance scene in Grease (which is not a sock hop, because sock hops were informal dances, not proms or otherwise formal events), with double entendres, and kids getting up to "trouble" while chaperones did their best to keep kids in line.

But today, we revisit them as a quaint, retro party suitable for all ages and communities.

No, seriously, watch that entire scene of the school dance with the spiking the punch and mooning the TVs and the giant sexual free-for-all hand jive number - this is what a sock hop was actually like, except not a formal dance.

Also, fun fact: they were called sock hops because the kids were literally required to take their shoes off before entering the gym so that the soles of their shoes didn't scuff the floor. And, apparently, the teachers were the worst offenders of scuffing the floor so they also went in their stocking feet.

#DanceHistory #DanceGeek

In dance, we have what's called "back leading". This is where the follow actually guides the lead, on a range of subtle to ham-footed non-verbal cues. See, in a proper partner dance, the person who is the lead (in classical dance, it's the same person throughout the song, in progressive dancing, it can switch back and forth) is the one who initiates and guides the dance.

Dancing is like a conversation. One person does the initiating and that same person does the guiding. It can be structured or loose, like a conversation, but one person invites the other person to it, an then based on how the other person responds, guides the outcome. It can meander all over the place or it can be a focused discussion, depending on how the person leading it wants it to go.

It's also very much like a well-crafted D/s scene, again, where someone is "in charge", but the better Doms don't just rigorously plan the whole event moment by moment, tool by tool, emotional response by emotional response. They set the overall scene for the sub and invite them to play in that scene, guiding the mood but ultimately paying attention to the sub's mood and desires and re-crafting the scene in the moment as a response to the sub's responses to the Dom's efforts.

Also kinda like a DnD game. I don't game, myself, but I keep seeing memes about how a Dungeon Master will create a beautiful, rich, nuanced storyline, and then the players will sit down and, like, spend the next hour torturing a chicken or something. The DM has a bunch of stories and circumstances in their back pocket, to throw at the players no matter what choices they make, and sometimes they have to make something up on the spot because their players threw them a curve that nothing in their back pocket can cover. But ultimately, the DM is "in charge" (for whatever value of "in charge" one can have with a room full of geeks and their own ideas) and is responsible for guiding the outcome of the game.

Dance is like all of that. The follow is responsible for paying attention to the cues that the lead is giving, and working within the framework the lead offers to create a visual and physical work of art (or conversation, or scene, or game). Follows are given a range of freedom in how much input they have on the course of the dance, depending on the style, from almost none to "wait, who is the lead and who is the follow again?"

But sometimes we get a mismatch of experience in a dance pair, and the follow may be more experienced than the lead (or just think they are). And sometimes that follow will attempt to guide the lead into guiding the follow more properly. This is called "back-leading".

Sometimes this is appropriate. When the lead has consented to learning from the follow, the follow may choose to show them what the proper form or invitation feels like, so that they can learn how to do that move on their own. Sometimes, the follow does it out of a sense of compassion or kindness. The follow may find themselves dancing with a lead who doesn't know what they're doing, so the follow tries to "help them out" by guessing at the lead cues and going ahead and doing things anyway, making the lead feel that the dance is going well.

But this is kind of like faking an orgasm - sure, the lead might feel better about themselves in the moment, but they will believe that the execution of the move was done well because of something that they did, and they are likely to be tempted to continue dancing this way in the future, and with other partners. In the moment, in a social dance where it's rude to break into a song to teach someone who has not agreed to be your student, it might feel kinder to just smile and go with what you're pretty sure are their intentions even if they weren't really giving you the proper signals.

Most follows that I know do this. There is a certain threshold that we each have for ourselves before we will become exasperated enough to breach etiquette and correct someone in a social setting (or, if we're never willing to do that, we might just avoid dancing with that partner again).

Someone recently said that she was refusing to back lead anymore, because it was a "politeness" that was ultimately hurting the lead. The lead would never learn that they are not executing the lead signal properly, and if they danced with a partner who was less experienced than this follow, that other follow would not understand and would not do the intended move. The lead would then believe that the follow was at fault, and neither of them would grow from the experience.

But this follow also said that they didn't want to break etiquette by turning a social setting into a lesson when the lead didn't ask for it. I know that *I* hate it when my partner takes it upon himself to start "teaching" me, as opposed to suggesting a new move that I willingly want to learn in the moment (I have a whole other story about this that I'll share in the comments).

So, instead, this follow said that she was just going to not do the move that the lead wanted her to do if she couldn't tell from the actual lead signal what he wanted her to do.

There are some moves that just naturally move from one to the other, and if you are a part of a local community and are familiar with the lessons in that area, you likely know which steps they have been taught based on their experience level. Whenever I go to a new city, I can often tell who are the students who just had a class or who take the same series of classes, from the dancers who have been dancing for a while and just know things (or are visiting from different regions, like me), even if the students are natural dancers or are really good or have that whatever that makes them seem experienced. The students all do the same sets of moves in the same order.

Occasionally, a student will try to stand out from the crowd and do something "different" - throw a move out there in an unexpected place. But this usually feels like the lead is trying to "stump" the follow, trying to trick the follow to see if the follow is paying attention, or to be different for different's sake.

An experienced lead can mix up the order of dance patterns because they understand momentum and they can intuitively feel how one move leads into the next, so they know which moves can follow which other moves and they can mix and match. A student often doesn't have this understanding yet, so they just randomly throw things out there, and the follow's center of gravity might not be in the right place for executing that particular pattern, or they might be on the off-foot.

But I digress.

There are some moves that naturally flow from one to the other, so an experienced follow can often intuit which move the lead wants the follow to do even if the lead didn't give a clear signal (or any noticeable signal at all, for that matter). This follow declared that she was simply not going to intuit or guess what pattern the lead wanted her to do based on her knowledge of how dancing typically goes. If the lead didn't give her a signal that she could read, she would just not do the move and she would just basic in place until he gave her a signal that she could follow.

Things got really interesting for her on the floor when she started doing that.

Suddenly, leads who thought they knew their shit were all "why aren't you doing the move?" and she was like "I couldn't tell from your signal what you wanted me to do" and some of them were getting upset with her for not being able to read them. Many of the leads thought their collective failure to perform this dance was *her* fault, for not being a good enough dancer to know the signals, and when they tried to verbalize with her, would get hurt, shocked, or offended when she said it was their fault.

Especially when it was a partner she had danced with before and she had done that move in the past, so they knew she could do it, but seemed unable to do it now. Kinda like when someone who used to fake orgasms suddenly stops, and the other partner wonders why the technique that always worked before isn't successful now.

Some leads took her refusal to back lead with more grace, asking for advice on how to better lead her. Dance communities, after all, do (in principle) encourage and champion the art of Not Taking Rejection Personally, and there is the mantra that It Is Always The Lead's Fault (which has its own problems, but that's for another time).

But even with the social etiquette dictating a person's outward behaviour, to those of us so used to reading extremely subtle and nuanced non-verbal communication, it was quite obvious that a lot of leads had a hard time after a dance-lifetime of thinking that they were communicating, suddenly being faced with the possibility that they were not communicating well after all. And then simultaneously being expected to correct it and carry the load from that moment on, when they had no tools or experience for how to do that, because they thought they already were and it turns out that they weren't.

It turns out, suddenly refusing to be the Relationship Manager anymore, when one partner is part of an entire group of people who have been raised from birth to not do any relationship managing or maintenance and to not even see it being done because another group was raised to do all of it and to do it invisibly or risk the first group's ire - when one partner suddenly has all that relationship maintenance dumped in their lap with no instruction manual and expected to start managing things, that the expression on their face is a lot like those dance leads when this follow stopped back leading.

Relationship Management is an incredibly huge job description, much like Project Management in the work force. It covers a vast array of duties, big and small, and each Project or Relationship has its own unique mix of those duties. And a lot of those duties are learned "on the job", so we're not always aware that we're doing it, or how to train someone else to do it.

My attachment style is "secure", but just like Personality Types are actually more like spectrums rather than boxes, attachment styles also tend to have gradients and I fall more towards the "avoidant" end of the spectrum. When I'm having more mental health issues, I will jump out of "secure" and into "avoidant" completely, but mostly I fall within the "secure" spectrum, just towards the "avoidant" side in which tools I tend to reach for when it comes to Relationship Management and in my relationship expectations (attachment styles is a whole *other* conversation - Google it if this part doesn't make sense to you).

So, because I'm Secure-to-Avoidant, I tend to think of my relationships as really low-maintenance. I'm pretty flexible in what I find to be an acceptable "relationship". Lives 2,000 miles away? That's OK, we can still make it work. Has a busy life and can only see me once a month? I can work with that too. Prefers to chat online rather than by phone? Sure, we can do that. Needs to live apart? Definitely, we can do that.

But, as it turns out, there is still *some* Relationship Management that happens in my relationships. Whatever goals or expectations we set out for whatever style of relationship we have, those goals and expectations still have to be maintained.

Want to have a long-distance relationship where we only chat online? OK, we still have to make time to chat online. Want to only see each other once a month? OK, that once-a-month date still has to be scheduled. I mean, it doesn't have to be *scheduled* like, on the calendar months in advance, can't change no matter what, scheduled. But, like, at some point somebody has to contact the other person and we have to agree on a time and place that fits into our respective schedules.

Things in a relationship are deliberate. We all make choices about how to spend our time and how to behave around other people. Even when two people live together, there is still Relationship Maintenance to be had. A live-in couple might fall into patterns and habits where they just get used to both being under the same roof for certain hours on certain days, but laundry is getting done by someone, and food is being eaten and that food has to come from somewhere.

For a lot of us, certain aspects of Relationship Maintenance can fall to one or the other by default, without anyone really having a discussion about whose job it is to make sure the dishes get washed or whose job it is to call and ask the other one for a date. And to a certain extent, that's OK. We don't need to have conversations on our first date that go "so, I need you to call me and ask me out every time because I won't call you for a date" and "if we decide to do this relationship thing, it will be your job to choose where we go each time." Things can sort of fall to who has the inclination or the skill to do it, sometimes.

But we do need to be wary of how often certain categories of things fall to certain categories of people, and whether that happens in our relationships with each other because we deliberately take on those roles or because it didn't occur to us to try it differently.

When I get into a relationship, I start out advocating for my own needs. So I'll say that I want to see the other person, and I'll actively engage in the process of making a date with them. Sometimes I'll initiate, sometimes I won't, but the point is that I'm an active participant - looking at my schedule, negotiating the day and time, suggesting or vetoing activities, etc.

After a while, though, I will find myself *always* doing that work. If I don't mention that I'd like to see someone, if I don't point out that I'm free on a particular day, if I don't suggest an activity, those things won't happen.

It goes a little like this:

Me: Hey, we haven't seen each other in a while, we should get together.

Them: We should! I miss you.

Me: OK, so when are you free?

Them: I'm free on this day.

Me: Oh, I'm not.

Them: ...

Me: How about this day then?

Them: That sounds good!

Me: Great! There's this activity that I'd like to do.

Them: Sounds good to me!

Me: OK, it begins at this time. If you pick me up by this other time, we should get there just as this part happens.

Them: Alright, I'll be there then.

Me: Oh, the weather is going to be like this, and the occasion is for this kind of attire, so you might want to consider wearing this appropriate outfit.

Them: Sure!

So, what's wrong with that conversation? I'm advocating for my wants and they seem pretty agreeable. Sounds like we both got what we wanted out of the exchange and are happy about it, yes?

Well, yes and no. There's nothing wrong with that specific exchange. What's wrong is that this isn't a specific exchange. What's wrong is when this is *every* exchange. I'm not just advocating for my wants, I'm Managing The Relationship. If I didn't initiate this conversation and have it in this way, the relationship wouldn't exist. That's what's wrong.

Again, this isn't about people taking on complimentary roles and being happy with those roles. Even in complimentary roles, there is still an equal input of energy and responsibility to that role.

In dancing, the lead is responsible for suggesting the next pattern, but the follow still has to do the pattern of their own initiative. If the lead has to physically manhandle the follow into place, that's not dancing (tricks like lifts aside - and even then, the follow still has to contribute to the lift, but that's yet a whole other conversation).

When one's role is the Relationship Manager, and one stops doing that role for any reason at any time, the relationship itself stops. Like when a follow stops back leading and the lead is used to being back led, the dance just stops because the follow is no longer doing anything. And the mix of emotions from confusion to shock to anger to displacement of blame to expectation from a relationship partner when you stop Managing The Relationship looks just like the mix of emotions from a dance partner when a follow stops back leading.

I've decided to stop back leading. If the people I'm dancing with (or will dance with) don't figure out how to lead properly, the dance will have to end because I'm just going to sit here and do the basic step until the music stops, and when that music stops, I'll thank you for the dance and walk off the floor.

I am not going to teach you how to lead unless you hire me to teach you (and I have limitations to my skills as a teacher - past a certain point and you will need an expert in this field). I am not going to intuit for you and do the work in the background. I am not going to stay here on the dance floor indefinitely, patiently, while you figure out how to make me move. Eventually the song will run out. Typically, that's about 3 minutes.

And then I'm going to go sit down and wait for another dance partner who knows how to lead.

Y'know what? I complain a lot about the conservatism in my local dance scene. I complain about not being able to develop strong connections to anyone because of their political values, their anti-science beliefs, and their religiosity. But after reading some of the comments on the post that I made on my timeline and in a couple of groups, asking for inclusivity suggestions, I feel the need to express some gratitude towards my local dance communities.

In those dance circles that I frequent, we have the following values that I appreciate:

Yes, the dance scene is quite heavily gendered by default, but when people *do* take the non-conforming role, the community typically accepts it and often embraces it. Women and people presenting as women are more likely to take lead roles in the Ballroom and Latin scenes, while all genders can be seen switching roles in the Lindy Hop and Blues dance scenes. The Lindy Hop scene also trends towards a younger and more liberal demographic.

I have not witnessed any ageism or fat-shaming. This does not mean that it doesn't exist, but it does mean that it's not a common occurrence. I would believe anyone who said they did experience either in my communities, but the people I talk to about it don't seem to have experienced it. People of all shapes, sizes, and ages are welcomed at these dance events, get asked to dance often (regardless of gender), and are active participants in the communities.

In my local communities, dance is seen as a social activity and a "community", so the general cultural attitude is that we want everyone to dance and we want everyone to have a good time. To that effect, experienced dancers of either role, and leads of all experience levels, feel that it is their happy duty to go around the room and invite anyone to dance that they see isn't dancing.

Ballroom dance events have a convention called a "mixer" especially for this. Because of the gendering in the dance community and also the gender roles in the culture at large that discourages men from exploring or expressing an interest in learning how to dance (thanks toxic masculinity), dance events are usually 2/3 women and 1/3 men (-presenting people).

So ballroom dance events have at least 2 points in the event where a medley of the same tempo songs are played in a row, the follows (because follows are usually women, and the women outnumber the men) line up along one wall, and the less numerous leads line up across from them. The first lead in line takes the first follow in line, dances her around the floor once and drops her off at the end of the line, and then moves up to take the next available follow for her turn around the floor. This way, everyone gets to dance, if they want to.

This is also a good way to be introduced to other people in the complimentary role if you're new. Now that they've had a chance to dance with you, they know who you are and what your skill level is (and vice versa), and that relieves some of the anxiety about asking someone to dance later.

The communities encourage more advanced dancers to see dancing with newbies as an opportunity, not a punishment or a chore. We take delight in giving newbie dancers more chances to practice because that brings more *advanced* dancers into the fold later as they improve. I'm *thrilled* to do the same 3 steps over and over again with a newbie if it means that they will develop more confidence and keep coming back.

My dance communities, because of that whole "community" and "social activity" thing, also see dating within the community as ... challenging. Nobody thinks you should NOT date another dancer, of course. But pretty much everyone looks on the dance events as meat-market-free-zones. Dances are not the place to hit on people. They are not the place to find partners.

They're like poly discussion meetings in that respect - when you spend enough time with someone at a social event, you might eventually develop a friendship out of that space, and that friendship may eventually lead to a romantic relationship. But the event is for dancing, not hooking up, not flirting, not hitting on people, not propositioning people. People frown on those who hit on other dancers in the scenes.

And because social dancing is a social activity, people also frown on excessive displays of jealousy in the scene. Some people arrive as a couple and only dance with each other. It's allowed, but it's kind of side-eyed. Because of that above-mentioned cultural value of making sure everyone is having a good time (which means everyone is dancing as much as they want to), and because of the gendering of roles and the gender disparity, my dance communities see it as sort of rude to monopolize one person's time when you could be out there sharing your love of dance with everyone.

They don't go too far by insisting that people dance with anyone they don't want to, but having jealousy and not wanting your partner to dance with others is kind of a cultural no-no. When someone in the dance scene gets a non-dancing partner, and the dancer starts to drop off the scene because their partner doesn't dance and they won't or can't dance without them, that couple is usually murmured about. The dancers in my local community see it as healthy for couples to have separate interests, or, if they share the interests, to still be able to do the interest as an individual person, even with other people.

One of the things I liked about my local dance communities, is that when my FB status changed and people found out that I had gotten legally married, not a single person changed how they treated me. Nobody asked me if my husband would "mind" if they asked me to dance, nobody changed their dance style to a more formal, stiff, polite, or distant style, nothing like that. People asked where he was and if he danced, but nobody suddenly got cautious around me or treated me as if I was off-limits.

In my local dance scenes, people are also usually very good about rejections. I can say "not right now" or "no thanks" and they just nod and move on. I'm never afraid of a bad reaction because I've never been given one in my scenes. Everyone sees it as a sign of immaturity and the men in particular are disapproving of people who can't handle rejection gracefully. And the women talk to each other.

Women and/or follows are also encouraged to ask people to dance, so they don't have to simply sit around waiting and hoping for someone to ask them. This is not one of my strengths. I still prefer to be asked than to do the asking, but once I've developed a good dancing relationship with someone, I am more likely to ask them as often as they ask me. There are no gendered rules about who asks whom, for as gendered as the rest of the social conventions are.

So my local dance communities are not perfect. There are still a lot of things that I'd like to see improve. I'd like to see more gender-neutral language (switching back and forth between lead/follow and men/women is still too common), I'd like to see more POC (there are a few, but more Latinx and Asians than black people), I'd like to have more people who share my politics so that I could develop off-the-floor relationships with people, etc.

But not respecting consent, body-shaming, not accepting role-switching, and using the dance scene as a pickup spot are some of the more egregious violations in the dance world that my local dance communities do not support. Not that these things never happen, but they are not supported by my communities. And I have to give them props for that.

For the record, when I teach my lead & follow communication workshop and when I give general dance lessons, I do my best to avoid or reduce all the other complaints as well. So if you ever wanted to learn how to dance, find me at a conference somewhere (or bring me out to your local conferences or communities!) and I will be happy to give some instruction. I don't even have to be at an event for the purpose of teaching dance - I'll teach dance anywhere, any time someone wants to learn.

Here's why my Simple Steps workshop is so important (the workshop where I teach using lead and follow exercises to improve your relationship communication):

I went to an all-night dance event on a Friday - the day after I got fired from a gig over a medical condition. To say that I was having a bad week is an understatement. At that event, I had 2 friends there - one who dances and one who doesn't.

I met them both at roughly the same time. The dancer, I actually met a year or so ago, but only barely. He doesn't live in the US, he only visits here for a couple of months a year. So he came to a dance event once or twice last year, where I met him. I'm not sure I remembered his name until recently.

About 6 months ago, I started doing a weekly dance thing that I helped to organize with this dancer's father. Because it was his father's project, he attended the first couple of weeks even though that style of dance wasn't really his thing. Because it was a late-night sort of event, some of us night owls started staying afterwards to just chit chat. That's where I actually learned his name and set him apart from just "one of the dancers".

We didn't have any alone-time or any particularly intimate conversation, but we got to know each other well enough, and the others who stayed late to talk, that we have formed our own FB chat group to coordinate weekly get-togethers even though that weekly dance event is no longer.

At this same weekly dance event, I got to know one of the employees at the venue. Again, not very well, but we chatted a bit as I arrived and as I left every week, as did some of the other dancers. Then, when the dance event was canceled, we invited him to meet up with us after he got off work, since he really enjoyed seeing all of us dancers show up and now we weren't going to anymore. He and I have since had some *very* personal conversations and some intense alone-time, and we have gotten to know each other pretty well.

So, the day before this particular dance event is when I got fired from that gig. I realized 4 days later that I have officially slid back into my depression, complete with suicidal ideation. But on that Friday, I didn't realize I was heading towards depression, I just thought I was sad and upset over losing the gig, which is to be expected.

On Friday night (the next day), I went out dancing. The dancer friend was performing at the beginning of the event and I wanted to support him. That was enough motivation to push me through my growing depression and make myself leave the house. I fought my depression all night, and on at least 3 separate occasions, I nearly left to just go sit at home and cry. But I didn't. I pushed through and danced all night.

Dancing releases a lot of endorphins. It's a pretty strong mood elevator for me. But "mood" and "depression" are not the same thing, just ask Robin Williams. Once I started dancing, I got into a good mood. But the depression was still there, bubbling under the surface.

Here's my point...

My non-dancer friend remarked on how happy I looked. So I just smiled and mentioned the endorphins. Remember, I didn't recognize my depression yet, but I was a little surprised that the sadness wasn't showing through. I often post a "sneak peak" selfie of my outfits when I get dressed up and go out, and I think it's glaringly obvious in the picture I posted that night.

By the middle of the night after dancing for a few hours, I was feeling energetic and confident, and I was happy to see my friends. And this friend saw that.

But my dancer friend had one dance with me and knew something was wrong. And it was our best dance ever, yet he still knew.

He's a better dancer than I am, and I am new to this particular style of dance. So over the last few months, he's seen me go from unconfident, hesitant, and wooden, to relaxed and confident and trusting with him. So on Friday, we had our best dance ever. He was amazed and said we should have gotten it on video. And I mean it was a *good* dance - I looked like I had been taking lessons and practicing for months, when the reality is that I've never had a lesson in this particular style and I've really only danced it a couple handfuls of times in social settings.

But later, when we left the loud music and walked around outside in the quiet and the dark, the first thing he did was ask me what's wrong.

I was smiling, energetic, and *killing* it on the dance floor. But I was sliding into a depression. The friend who had some really intimate conversations with me couldn't see the depression. The dancer friend held me close for 3 minutes and, even though everything my body did was right, he still felt it.

This is why my workshop is important. With a dance partner, everything is out in the open, laid bare, raw, exposed, vulnerable. You can learn to read that, and honor that. Dance is one of the ways that can be learned.

And, of course, my workshop doesn't teach actual *dancing*, just the parts of dance that are relevant to that ability to communicate on such an intimate, intuitive level. No musicality or physical prowess or ability to memorize patterns necessary. Just pure, unfiltered flow of primal energy between two people.

He was able to read me that easily, in spite of not being a romantic partner and not knowing me very long or very well, because he is a Very Good Lead and I am a Very Good Follow. I can teach you the exercises that will guide you towards those leading and following skills.

But they take practice. He and I have been practicing, independently, for most of our adult lives. We did not need to practice with each other to learn how to read each other. We did, however, need to practice. A lot. For a long time.

My workshop will give you the tools to grow to this level of proficiency. But it's not a magic spell, where you whisper the incantation and move in the ritualistic movements one time and suddenly you're a good communicator. You have to practice the exercises that I will teach you after you leave my workshop.

And I promise, the amount of commitment you put into it will be proportional to the results you will get in the end.

Because he could read me with one 3-minute dance, through the endorphins brought on by physical activity, through my active processes to be pleasant and sociable and pretend like depression isn't a thing, through all the noise and distraction and other dancers, even through the sensuality and flirtatiousness of the dance and the barriers we all put up just for not knowing someone very well. 3 minutes of full body contact, and he knew.

You, too, can learn how to read the people you are close to. If you are driven enough to learn. And I can show you how.

Simple Steps For Better Relationship Communication with Joreth - available to come to your event! My next workshop will be at PolyDay North - SquiggleCon in Carlisle, England. Get your tickets now!

It is my opinion that social partner dancing is *the perfect* activity for poly people. Partner dancing is a conversation; it reinforces consent and active listening and communication; it actively supports multiple partners and good community skills; it's a physical activity that increases endorphins; it rewards effort and personal growth; it provides a pathway for intimacy and vulnerability; it creates an awareness of yourself, your partners, and your effect on others; and it satisfies the Physical Touch Love Language that so many polys seem to speak (possibly why they're drawn to community-based forms of non-monogamy in the first place).

I strongly recommend the movie Alive & Kicking, available now on Netflix (at least in the US, not sure about other countries). It's a documentary about swing dancing, from its origins to its modern day revival.

These are some of my favorite quotes from the documentary because they highlight exactly what I'm always saying about social partner dance and polyamory:

There's a leader and there's a follower. The leader always has to be thinking ahead, planning what they're gonna do next, how they're gonna move the partner. The follower is responding to what the [leader]'s doing and they have this great conversation.
It's a little hard to learn. It's like a lot of good things in life, maybe you have to put in a little work to get to a place where you get tremendous reward.
When you are social dancing swing, there's no choreography. You are dancing to the music that the band is creating.
You have to improvise, you have to negotiate. Kinda like jazz music, this ability to call and respond, to read your partner and see what happens.
You're sharing your imagination with someone else. That's real intimacy. In that moment, you never recreate it, that's what makes it special.
Unlike some dances I've observed that are partner dances but they're very much "I'm on a date with my girlfriend, don't ask her to dance", lindy hop it's understood that everyone dances with everybody. And the more the merrier. I mean I think really if there were a movie called "lindy hop", the tagline should be "the more the merrier".
...
There's an incredible intimacy that forms among strangers. You meet someone for the first time and by the end of the song, you feel like they're finishing your sentences. If I had that kind of connection with someone I met in the grocery store, I'd ask him for his number. But it's not like that. In swing dance, you just move on and then find the next person.
Frankie always called it, like, "3 minute romance". You're just gonna be in love with this person you're dancing with for 3 minutes and it's gonna be amazing, and then you do it again, and again, all night long.

I know that in some areas, the lindy hop community is pretty well saturated with polys and non-monogamists.

But not in all areas, and it doesn't work in reverse - there aren't many *poly* spaces that are saturated with dancers. If I go to a swing dance in the Pacific Northwest, I can be sure to meet a bunch of polys. But if I go to a *poly* meetup anywhere, I can't be sure that I'll meet other dancers, and if I go to any kind of partner dancing here in the South, I'm more likely to meet a bunch of conservative Christians than anything else. And also, lindy isn't the only (or best) style of partner dancing.

And that seems a shame to me because the nature of social partner dancing fits so well with the nature of poly communities. Especially if you expand to *all* forms of partner dancing, not just the acrobatic, elite level of swing dancing highlighted in the documentary.

There are even more elements that I find valuable, such as the reverence the social dance communities have for people of more advanced age that I so rarely see in other areas of society, and the wider community safety net.

So, go watch the show if you have access to it. Maybe it'll inspire you to learn how to dance, or maybe it will help you to understand why I love it so much. It's worth watching, even with the sprinkling of anti-technology sentiment thrown in there (ah, the irony of people who disparage the internet as a form of communication in a documentary that will be disseminated and spread through online viewing & social media, but that's another rant for another day). Roll your eyes at that part, but the movie is worth watching anyway.

www.quora.com/Why-did-so-many-Latin-music-and-dance-genres-originate-in-Cuba

They didn’t. Latin dances originated in a lot of different places in South America and are heavily influenced by Afro-Caribbean rhythms from the booming slave trade and trans-Atlantic travel of the 1500’s-1800s.

Samba originated in Brazil in the very early 1900s: Samba - What Is It? - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal

Salsa doesn’t have a single point of origin but Cuba likes to take the credit for it: Salsa - What Is It? - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal Salsa includes influences from Puerto Rico, Haiti, Africa, and even a little bit of European country dance styles. Mambo is also Cuban, but today’s Mambo is basically the Salsa on a different beat.

Tango comes from Argentina: Tango - What Is It? - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal

Merengue hails from the Dominican Republic but Haiti likes to claim credit for it: Merengue - What Is It? - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal

Cha Cha is genuinely a Cuban dance, having been created by a Cuban composer who invented the music that people eventually developed a dance for: Cha Cha - What Is it? - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal

Bachata comes from the Dominican Republic: Bachata (dance) - Wikipedia

Rumba is a Cuban dance, but it also has some differences with today’s rumba/rhumba in the US. The *music* came from Cuba, and a dance was made up to go with the music, but the 2 versions danced today are American Standard (which was invented in the US) and International Standard (which was invented by a French instructor in London). Rhumba - Wikipedia

Bolero is a dance that has two separate styles and two completely separate and independent origins - Cuba, and Spain, with the Cuban version being heavily influenced by other countries like Puerto Rico and Mexico: Bolero - Wikipedia

Paso Doble is usually categorized as a “Latin dance” when you watch the TV competitions, but, ironically, the partner dance is French (based on Spanish military marches & bullfights), and then adopted by Spain and Portugal: Pasodoble - Wikipedia

And then there’s Jive, which is classified as a “Latin dance” under International dancesport categories, but Jive originated as Lindy Hop in New York at the Savoy Theater by a primarily black community and was later codified by Arthur Murray and other ballroom studios to make it easier to teach, and also to compete in. This led to the development of several different sub-categories of Lindy, and the competition version which is classified as a “Latin dance” is called Jive: Swing Dance - What Is It? - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal

www.quora.com/How-do-I-learn-to-dance

That depends on what style of dance you want to learn. Generally speaking, taking lessons are a pretty good way to learn how to dance.

If you want to learn how to *partner* dance, I wrote a whole article on how to decide what to learn: What To Learn? - Orlando Ballroom Dance Party Portal

Basically, you need to identify your goals, look into the different types of instruction to see what meets your needs, and then choose a dance style to start out with.

My personal bias is that partner dancing requires in-class lessons with a partner and an instructor, supplemented with videos *after the lesson* for “homework”. I usually recommend group classes first because it’s a low-investment, “dip the toe in the water” kind of method for exploring dancing. It costs less than private instruction and there are other people there who are also learning that you can share the experience with. Plus, you don’t need to bring your own partner with you.

I believe you need in-person instruction before videos because it won’t feel the same without the resistance and communication from a partner, and most people need someone who can observe their body and offer corrections. Beginners simply *cannot* tell if their bodies are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

Partner dancing is as much communication as anything else. Partner dancing is a *conversation*. It’s not just learning steps. In fact, memorizing step patterns is the least important part of dancing, believe it or not. The important part to being a good partner dancer is the communication between you and your partner. And, for that, you need to dance with another person, not watch a video. The steps will feel *very* different if you try to do them alone, and some people aren’t even able to do certain steps at all without the partner providing the resistance and communication. Partner dancing is a collaborative effort.

Do a Google search for the name of the dance style you want to learn + “lessons” + the name of your nearest largest city.

I got an amazing compliment last night. I have never danced bal before (balboa, a variation on the original lindy hop swing dance that was developed for really fast music in really crowded nightclubs) and I don't even know what the basic pattern is. But a guy in the local lindy scene who knows bal was at the Gatsby party last night and none of the other follows knew how to dance it either, but a good bal song came on and he wanted to dance.

I've always wanted to learn and, through years of dedication and commitment to learning dance, I have learned how to push through my fear of looking foolish in public and I asked him to teach me right there at the (non-dance-event) party, with dozens of strangers looking on. He showed me the basic step and then led me into the dance. I know I was off-beat the whole time - I could feel it. We weren't in sync and it felt awkward. But he led me and I followed. Afterwards, he gushed, not just to me but to the others in the party, about what a good job I did, that he couldn't believe I had never danced bal before, and that I was able to keep up on some non-beginner steps that he threw at me.

This has inspired me to add bal to my "I will learn these dances this year" resolution. I mean, it's already on my list of dances I want to learn, but I am resolving to actually take lessons in certain dances in the coming year (Argentine Tango being the top of the list, previously the only one on the list). Pushing through my fear of messing up in public has brought me more skills, more enjoyable memories, and more confidence than literally any other thing I've tried. The dance community has been instrumental in that because of the embedded nature of acceptance and welcome for newcomers, especially those who look foolish.

We were all that goofy newbie once, and we are all that goofy newbie again with each new skill we learn. No matter how long we've been dancing, or how good we get at it, we're still always that goofy newbie who messes up on the floor, steps on our partner's toes, bumps into someone else, and generally makes a fool of ourselves in public. I've been that fool so many times, and it still frightens me. But I do it anyway because I have lived through the embarrassment in the past and nothing truly bad happened to me for being embarrassed. And now that I know that, I can tell my anxiety to shut up and I can do it anyway.

I can't always push through my anxiety - as my messy house and full sink will attest. But the more times I do it, the easier it gets to do it the next time. Sometimes I backslide and I just can't in that moment, but I know that I'm a flawed human and that's OK, so I can find the strength to do it next time. It's that "do it next time" that's important, though. Accepting that I'm flawed and then not pushing through next time as every time becomes "I'll do it next time" doesn't make me better. Dancing, because of the acceptance of the community and the knowledge that we are all still beginners at something, makes it easier for that "next time" to happen, to not allow "next time" to become code for "never".

So, I had a good compliment - one that actually makes me feel good about myself as a person and inspires me to be even better. That's what a good compliment should do - not simply notify the other person that you have pants feels for them, but inspires them to be their best self and accepts them for their current self at the same time.

#WordsOfAffirmation #5LoveLanguages #DancingIsLifeSkills #MadFollowSkillz #NewYearsResolutions #RealMenDoNotHarassComplimentWomen #ToDanceIsToLive #JustKeepDancing #IWillLearnAllTheDances

http://tacit.livejournal.com/627806.html

This is fascinating! I also had no idea that other people don't feel cold as pain. I mean, I knew other people had higher thresholds for cold than I do, but I still assumed that their experience of cold was similar to mine, just at higher doses, if you will. For me, cold is *pain*, like stubbing your toe pain, as well. I absolutely can't do ice treatments for injuries because the ice causes a deep ache that I interpret as being "in my bones" and in my joints and aggravates the pain from the injury.

I do sometimes use ice to numb the area around insect bites because I'm allergic and numbing the entire area is the only coping mechanism that works even a little bit. But the ache from the cold hurts so much that I don't know which is worse, the body-aching cold or the mind-maddening itch. Both sensations are so unpleasant that I often wonder if this time will be so bad that I will literally lose my mind in order to escape the sensation.

I also find being wet very uncomfortable. Especially the *transition* from dry to wet. It's one of the things that I associate with my OCD that prevents me from doing the dishes as often as I should. If I get hot and sweaty *enough*, I will start to find the thought of being wet less unpleasant, and once I'm in the water, I'm mostly OK about it. But I'd rather not get wet. I was just talking with Ben the other day about how grateful I am that we all come with electronics on our bodies nowadays because I have a built in excuse that everyone respects for not being thrown in pools (since, y'know, my consent isn't a good enough reason on its own).

Oh, and I don't do caffeine. Like, at all. I went off caffeine some 21 or more years ago as part of the process to diagnose a sleep disorder and by the time we ruled out caffeine as a causal factor, introducing it back into my system started giving me migraines. So I just don't take caffeine. Chocolate, as having something very similar but not exactly the same as caffeine, doesn't trigger the migraines, and also doesn't cause any other similar symptoms such as more "energy" or the ability to fight off exhaustion or sleep deprivation better. It does, however, help keep my mood more even and less volatile, so I eat chocolate fairly often.

But I otherwise *do* inhabit my body. I *feel* myself in my space, almost all the time. I'm acutely aware of where I exist and I believe that's related to being in chronic pain as well as having to compensate for other people (mostly men) being largely unaware of the space that they occupy, with a little bit of "oh no, am I going to sit on my cat?" pet-owner-concerns thrown in. The chronic pain and being acutely aware of my body is why, I believe, I developed the reaction to pain of feeling sleepy. It's the only time I can disassociate from my body so when I hurt, I sleep. This has the drawback, however, of being able to sleep through some discomforts that ought to wake me, like needing to pee or my arm being asleep or whatever. Because, otherwise, I'm very much "living in my body".

What's more, I can also start to "feel" my partners as extensions of myself when I am in close proximity for extended time periods or when I am granted extreme amounts of physical intimacy. They did a study on dancers a while back (I don't have the citation on hand) that showed that partner dancing develops this particular encapsulation of other selves over time, so I suppose it's not surprising that I do it too. Knowing that it's a dancer thing, I now use this to teach people how to deliberately foster this sense of partner-as-extension in relationships through my and Sterling's Simple Steps workshop where we use dance techniques (with no actual dancing required) to improve relationship communication.

I am one of those people who "feels" music the way

tacit describes never having understood before. I knew that others didn't have that same sensation because I've tried to teach people how to dance and I've seen the lack of recognition when I try to describe this feeling. Knowing that he has synesthesia, I didn't realize that he also doesn't "feel" music. I sort of imagined the act of "seeing" music as being like "feeling" music only with extra visual stuff. Because of my connection with music, I'm particularly fascinated with how he experiences it and how his experience can be consensually manipulated to better communicate with him through music.

One thing I noticed, though, is that I do have periods where I don't feel like I'm living in my body and I feel like I'm this ball sitting at the top of a meat vehicle. Those periods are my depressions. That description of being a ball sitting on top of a biological vehicle isn't metaphor, it's literal - that's what my awareness of my self actually is in those periods. If you've never been aware of your body yet separate from it, I think it's very hard to understand from the descriptions. If you've *only* been aware of your body yet separate from it, I think the feeling of being connected to your body, of *living within* the body is very hard to understand. In both cases, the descriptions all seem metaphorical to the person who doesn't know those feelings themselves. I know because I am both of those people. When I am feeling connected to my body, the description of a ball atop a meat vehicle sounds metaphorical and I can't quite wrap my head around it empathically even if I grasp it intellectually. But when I'm in a depression, I can't remember what it feels like to be connected and I doubt that I ever really did, and my brain insists that my memories of once *believing* I was "living in my body" are lying to me and that I never *really* felt that way at all, therefore I likely never will again, or if I ever do, it'll just be a return to a delusion. Depression sucks.

I find this particularly noteworthy because Franklin isn't prone to depression that I know of so this sensation is either different from his or isn't dependent upon depression to exist. I don't know if the sensation of not living in my body has a causal relationship with my depression or just a correlated relationship, but they always go together. In fact, that's one of the red flags I use to determine if I'm in a depression. When the depression turns suicidal (thankfully rarely), I don't just feel like a ball sitting inside a meat vehicle, I feel like a ball being *constrained* by the vehicle, limited, like the vehicle is filtering out all the color and warmth in the world and if I could just break free of the body, I would no longer feel the pain of being colorless, of being cold, in a sense, of an absence of life and warmth and color and joy.

Because to me, cold is pain.

Current Mood: contemplative

In just 2 short weeks, Sterling and I will be bringing back our Lead & Follow Communication workshop to Atlanta Poly Weekend! It's the first workshop on the schedule, so you have to get there early!

In this workshop, we will teach you exercises to practice at home with your partners that will improve your ability to:

1) be aware of the physical and emotional space that you take up and how that affects those around you;
2) be conscious and considerate of your actions with your partner and how they affect people outside of the two of you;
3) how to better navigate metamour relations and juggling the emotional considerations of multiple partners while still allowing time to focus on one person at a time (i.e. it's not all everyone together all the time or compartmentalize everyone always);
4) how to get better attuned to recognizing nonverbal communication and expressions
5) how to get more comfortable asking for consent;
6) how to get more comfortable giving clear, verbal, affirmative consent;
7) how to become more comfortable giving clear, verbal rejection to your partner and to potential partners kindly;
8) how to hear a rejection and learn how to not take it personally or to accept it and move on more easily.

These are techniques learned over time in the dance community, but we will be teaching them to you without any dance experience required. In fact, we will not be teaching any dancing at all so you do not need to be good at dancing or even interested in dancing to attend! But we will be having fun with music and movement, so if dancing *is* your thing, whether experienced or not, you will have a good time! If you *are* an experienced partner dancer and are already familiar with leading & following, you may still enjoy learning how we put these skills together with relationship communication.

You do not need to come with a partner for this workshop. You can learn these skills on your own and apply them to your relationships later. You will also receive a handout to help you remember and practice the exercises at home so you can teach your partners on your own time.

I hope to see everyone there!

I'm getting awfully good at recognizing people who don't value consent from tangentially related warning signs.

Almost every nightclub I go to (usually that has alcohol - can't say as I've ever been in a nightclub without alcohol, and this never happens in ballroom dance parties, with or without alcohol) has that one lady. She's always drunk, she's always dancing off-beat, and she walks around the edge of the dance floor gesturing to everyone to get them to join her on the floor.

This, by itself, irks me in a way that any individual person approaching me to ask *me* to dance does not. I am flattered and I appreciate individuals asking me, in particular, to dance, even when I don't want to dance with them. It's what happens after they ask me that determines my final reaction to their request. But this action of both hands out, palms up, waving literally everyone in the club to join her on the floor really irritates me for reasons I never bothered to unpack. So I never accept. Even when I'm *already dancing* on the floor, I do not join this person.

But most people do. They're at a nightclub. They're often there to dance. If they're not there to dance, they're back at the bar or at a table, away from the floor, so she can't really see them through her alcohol-induced fog anyway. So most people accept her invitation and go out to the floor, including people who would rather not, but who feel awkward about rejecting her. It's not such a big deal, right? They *are* there to dance, after all. She's just trying to be friendly, and she's a little drunk, so we can give her some leeway, yes?

No. This person is never able to tell where the boundaries are, and she always crosses them. Without fail, this person will come back to me at least once more, usually twice. The final time, she will actually physically put her hands on me and try to pull me out on the floor. The last time someone did that, I yelled over the music not to touch me and she asked why, so I told her that I was armed. She got offended at *me* for "escalating".

Don't fucking touch me without my permission. That is a consent violation. I don't care what gender you are, you do not have permission to touch me until I grant it. Now that we've convinced ourselves that women are these helpless, fragile, delicate little things, it makes it possible to excuse all kinds of violations and abuses because women, apparently, can't violate or abuse anyone. Now that we've convinced ourselves that there are such things as "blurred lines" and that "no means maybe", it makes it possible to excuse all kinds of violations and abuses because, apparently, no one can even tell where the boundaries are anymore (hint: it's before you touch anyone and before you say anything sexual or insulting to anyone and before you look at someone in a sexual way - i.e. while thinking of either sex or power over them - if you haven't received clear, verbal permission to do so).

These things make it possible for *actual* rapists and abusers to push boundaries. Of course not everyone is a rapist (although, judging by the number of people who gleefully admit to rape as long as you don't call it by the r-word, there are more of you out there than it seems), but our culture protects and hides them. It puts the onus on the victims to be "polite", so people accept small boundary violations because they're "not a big deal", the people don't want to "cause a scene", and no one wants to be a "party pooper" when someone is just "trying to have fun".

So, regular people accidentally cross boundaries here and there, because it's more rude for the person whose boundary was just crossed to police that boundary than it was for the person who accidentally crossed it. In that kind of environment, an actual rapist or abuser can "accidentally" cross a boundary to see how easy it is to cross that boundary with that person. They're testing to see what they can get away with. And when their victim is more concerned with being a "bitch" than with enforcing her boundaries, they "accidentally" cross another one.

Baby steps. Small violations. Each one seeming like not a "big deal", especially when the victim has the previous violation to compare it to. "Well, I let him do that, it would be rude not to let him get away with this too." Until suddenly the victim looks up and sees that the rapist or abuser is WAY behind enemy lines and has no idea how they got there or how to get them back on their own side of the fence.

A lady came 'round the dance floor, waving everyone to join her. I declined. Someone next to me responded, but did so with reservations. The lady came back to me a second time and I declined again. The other person, apparently, didn't join this lady to her satisfaction and she assaulted them, grabbing the back of their clothing and actually pulling a fastening off.

Fortunately, the other person was secure enough to reprimand the lady at this point and she wandered off, probably forgetting the whole thing in her alcoholic fugue. But I declined originally because I saw the warning signs and I was put off. As long as everyone acquiesced to her boundary violations, things were fine. She wasn't going to rape anyone, sex wasn't her goal. But she had a goal for what she wanted other people to do, and if anyone did not consent to her goal, she pressed for it. She isn't a Bad Guy, a black-hat villain, she is a product of her culture. Our culture told her that this sort of behaviour was acceptable. You could pooh-pooh her behaviour away because she was obviously drunk, but being drunk and then violating consent is still a part of our culture - still something that our culture teaches is acceptable. Our culture says that everything about this situation is No Big Deal. Which means that someone who really is a Big Deal has a place to hide as long as he makes his Deal a series of little deals first. This lady does not value consent because our culture told her consent is not valuable. And someone always ends up getting assaulted when one does not value consent.

I saw the warning signs. Sometimes I hate being right about people.

www.thedancesocks.com/

I was at a conference recently and one of the evening entertainments was an electroswing (swing jazz + electronica music) event that I didn't know about when I packed for the event. So I didn't have appropriate attire, including shoes.

I did, however, have The DanceSocks with me, which I threw in my suitcase as an afterthought. I packed both pair, my smooth floor socks and my carpet socks. And I'm so glad I did!

The room that the event was in did not have a dance floor set up, so it was just ballroom carpet. I threw my carpet socks on over my Converse sneakers and I was able to swing dance as if I had a new pair of sueded shoes on a smooth wood floor.

For $5 a pair, I highly recommend everyone get some who even kinda thinks they might want to start learning how to partner dance someday. They fit in most purses and in my thigh cargo pockets (which I was wearing the day of the event). They come in multiple colors and fit over almost any size shoe (my partner, Ben, got the pair I gave to him to fit over his hiking boot-type shoes & fairly large male feet).

They're good for any style of dancing, including partner dancing, hip hop, zumba, and many styles of aerobic workouts, where you might want to twist, pivot turn, or slide when your rubber soled shoes might grab the ground and prevent you from doing those things easily. But they don't make your shoes so slippery that it's like walking on ice. I walk normally in mine.

Atlanta Poly Weekend 2015 is coming up soon! Make sure to get there early, because Sterling and I are giving our Breaking Up workshop first thing Friday afternoon and you don't want to miss it! We've added new content for how the metamours can handle a breakup. Last year, we received rave reviews, including the comment:

"If More Than Two is the General Theory of Don't Be A Dick, then your breakup workshop is the Special Theory of Don't Be A Dick!"

We give practical advice for how to handle a breakup with compassion and grace even in the face of an uncooperative ex, and how to deal with your partners' breakups as the metamour. Given how common breakups are, we believe that we need to shuck the notion that discussing breakups isn't "romantic", and instead, we need to develop relationship skills that will help us to handle the inevitable.

Our culture tells us that we should find our One True Love the first time we try dating and that the relationship will last until we both die. Statistics suggest that this is FAR from true. So, as a culture, we need to take the blinders off and put on the big boy pants and learn how to deal with a situation that we are almost guaranteed to go through at least once in our lives.

Come to our panel at 1 PM on Friday to learn how!

On Saturday at 5:30 pm, come and hear me talk about Polyamory & Skepticism - What's Love Got To Do With It? I'll be revising an updated version of my keynote speech on the intersection between ‪skepticism‬ and ‪polyamory‬, and why they are so important to go together.

And finally, a brand new, hands-on workshop (yes, you can just observe) just for APW 2015 - Using Lead & Follow Techniques To Improve Your Relationship Communication!

Right before the Masquerade, come hear Sterling and me show you how to apply the partner dance techniques of Lead & Follow to your romantic relationships to improve your relationship communication. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO KNOW HOW TO DANCE! Seriously, you can totally have 2 left feet and still get some important tips for your relationship! We will not be teaching how to dance at this workshop.

Lead & Follow are dance terms for who gives the signals in a dance and who receives the signals in a dance. They are not dance steps and they are not specific to any style of dancing. You do not need a partner to participate in this workshop and you do not need any dance experience or even any interest in dancing. This is a communication workshop that applies certain skills from partner dancing to relationships.

We will tackle issues like consent, invitations, acceptance and rejections, non-verbal signals, trust, and more. This is a fun and interactive workshop that will take place conveniently right before the Mardi Gras party, the Drag Show, and the big Masquerade ball! We'll have a few exercises and play some fun music, plus a couple of dance demonstrations with some fun and sexy dances! We'll get you up and moving and ready to party the rest of Saturday night!

Everyone is welcome - extroverts, introverts, dancers, non-dancers, singles, couples, any relationship configuration and any relationship style, and even lurkers! If "interactive" isn't your thing, you can still come in and observe, take notes, and practice at home using our helpful handout. In fact, the tips we teach in this workshop are intended to be continuously practiced, so *everyone* can take what they learn here and bring it back home with them to keep improving their relationship communication!

You won't want to miss this!

If you can't attend Atlanta Poly Weekend, then share this post to spread the word to those who can!

www.thedancesocks.com

So, a while back I was researching DIY dance shoe resoling and I came across a new product called The DanceSocks. I'm often at parties where I'm dressed in sneakers and someone will ask me to show them a dance step, and I'll have to take off my shoes and dance in my socks or bare feet in order to do it. Which is kind of dangerous if I'm outdoors or if I'm showing a partner who has never danced before and might step on my toes! So I thought these looked interesting.

The basic premise is that the smooth floor sock is just a little tube of fabric that goes around the ball of your foot over whatever shoes you're wearing. The sock fabric is chosen to give you the right amount of "slip" for spins and slides while allowing the rest of your shoe to act as a stopper since the rubber isn't covered. They primarily advertise this for zumba, where you might need to stop suddenly and where you might prefer sneakers to dance shoes. It sounds pretty good for Lindy Hop & swing as well.

They also have a version for carpet, which is a sock that covers the entire shoe and is of a different fabric pattern designed for providing slip and spin on rough carpeting. I used to perform as a Bollywood dancer, and most of the time, our troupe was booked in hotel rooms or classrooms where there was no stage only carpeted floor, or where the stage itself was carpeted. Most of the time, we danced in bare feet because of the style of costuming, but carpet can really eat up even callused feet so we would often wear Hermes sandals with leather soles to dance on carpet. When I'm at a party in someone's house and the floor is carpeted and I'm asked to dance, I'll usually dance in socks instead of bare feet just to protect myself from blisters, but even in socks, dancing on carpet can hurt.

So, I decided to test these Dance Socks out. At $10 a pair, why not? I got both the carpet and the smooth floor versions (the smooth floor version comes in a 2-pack for $10, as I pleasantly discovered). I gave one of the smooth floor pairs to one of my partners who is learning how to dance and happened to be at an event with me on the day mine arrived, and we tried dancing in the garage at an Easter party. They actually allowed him to lindy hop in hiking boots!

Then I went to a friend's house where I was teaching him and his fiance to rumba for their wedding. We had been doing the lessons on their living room rug, but they had new leather-soled shoes for the wedding so they were able to do it. I kept showing up in sandals or sneakers because, well, I wasn't doing all the dancing, I was only demonstrating the steps, so I could cheat. But, I figured, I have these new carpet socks so why not? I put them on over my sneakers, and it happened to be on a day when the bride was too sick to dance, so I gave the lesson to the groom while she watched from the couch. Which meant that I had to *actually* dance.

Let me tell you, I was dubious about these carpet socks. I've spent a LOT of time dancing on carpet in different kinds of shoes, bare feet, dance paws, socks, etc. Other than leather-soled shoes, I've never been happy with anything on carpet. I even went out and had a pair of dance shoes re-soled in leather (over the suede) just so I would have at least one pair of shoes I could dance on carpet on!

But these Dance Socks did the job. I was quite surprised at how slippy they were, without being dangerous. They maybe weren't *quite* as slippy as a brand new leather sole that hasn't been roughed up yet, but they were definitely slippy enough to do point turns in!

So far I love these socks as a backup. I'm planning on keeping these in my car (if I had a purse, I'd keep them there) so that when I'm out "in the wild", if dancing opportunities just happen to come up spontaneously, then no matter what I'm wearing, I'll have the proper shoes without having to actually carry around a pair of dance shoes with me everywhere! Because, really, who does that? And who then wants to go out to their car, come back in, change their shoes, all because your date's favorite song came on at the jukebox and they want to dance right now? With these Dance Socks, I just have to pull them out of a purse or pocket, slip them over whatever I'm wearing, and hit the impromptu dance floor!

So, since I've actually tried them out, I'm recommending them to anyone who might find a use for having a pair of "dance shoes" with them no matter where they are but who doesn't want to actually carry dance shoes with them everywhere they go. They're small, washable, fold-able, and incredibly convenient, not to mention affordable! Go get yours today! Seriously.

I've been asked a lot recently about my dancing, so I thought I'd make a public post. I get told that I'm a good dancer and people want to know how long I've been dancing and where I take lessons, so here's the story:

I've been dancing for 18 years, and yet I'm only considered a "beginning-intermediate" dancer. See, I've only had 2 lessons and I only know a handful of steps and no "styling". When I was about 20, I took a class in college called "social dancing" - a 3-hour evening class once a week (I think it was 3 hours with a break, but it was a long time ago, so I'm not sure ... coulda been 2 hours). The class introduced us to a new dance every week - we reviewed what we learned the previous week at the beginning of the time slot, then learned a new style (about 3 or 4 steps) for the rest of the time. For each step that we learned, we practiced it a couple of times with a partner, and then we switched partners to try it again, and we did this multiple times throughout the class.

In this way, I learned, not only 8 or so different dances, but more importantly, I learned lead & follow techniques. It's the lead & follow techniques that make it look like I know what I'm doing. Leading & following is all about communication. The real trick to social dancing (as opposed to, say, competition or performance dancing), is A) keep your feet moving to the rhythm no matter what; and B) communication. That's it. This means that I can get out on a dance floor and, no matter what my dance partner throws at me, I keep my feet moving (and quickly go back to the correct rhythm if I happen to lose it) & I "listen" to what he's telling me to do through his body signals while I "tell" him through my own signals where I am and how I'm doing.

Then, about 2 or 3 years later, I changed schools and discovered that my new school also had a social dance class. So I took that class, and I took a dedicated swing dance class, and a dedicated salsa class - all of which met 3 times per week for an hour each. I ended up dropping the salsa class because dancing for 3 hours a day was too much, so I didn't really learn much salsa. The social dance class covered more or less the same steps I had already learned in the class at the prior school. The swing dance class covered more steps than I had previously learned when the social class taught swing, naturally, but it was still "beginner" level.

So, how did I get so "good" when I've only had two lessons? I dance. Really, that's it. When I took the dedicated East Coast Swing class, my teacher convinced me to compete as a beginner, so in addition to dancing 3 times a week, I also had rehearsals for my competition every day. I danced *every day* for half a semester. I also go to social dance events as often as I can. It's nerve-wracking to attend a ballroom dance as a beginner - you don't know the steps, you don't know the people, you don't know the etiquette. Plus, I'm an introvert, which means I have difficulty in social settings because they tire me out. On top of that, I used to be painfully shy. I still can't ask anyone to dance unless they're already a good friend of mine. So, it's hard. But I did it anyway.

Most of what I know, I learned at social ballroom dances. I just kept going. As I danced with more people, I got better at learning dance communication. As I danced with more people, I learned more steps because new partners know steps that I don't, and vice versa, so we can teach each other out on the floor. As I danced with more people and watched more dancers, I learned certain stylistic movements that seemed popular or flashy or neat and I tried to adopt them, eventually creating my own style.

Many social dances offer a free group lesson at the beginning of the event. They will teach the same 3 or 4 beginning steps in a particular dance style appropriate for that event (so, a dedicated swing event will teach a swing dance, a social ballroom event will teach one of any number of dances that you can expect to be doing at that event like waltz, foxtrot, cha cha, or even swing). Even though it's the same handful of steps that I learned 18 years ago in my first class, I attend as many of those pre-event group classes as I can. I consider them "refresher" lessons.

And as a more seasoned dancer, I find myself "teaching" my newbie partners when they have difficulty getting the step. The instructors are usually trying to teach 20 people at the same time, so there isn't a lot of time for personalized instruction. I can explain something specific to my partner based on what he is doing or not doing, and I find that "teaching" in this way also helps me be a better dancer myself. If the class is teaching something really basic or something that I'm already really familiar with, I'll switch sides and learn it as a lead (traditionally the guy's role) instead of as a follow. Again, this helps me to be a better dancer and it also helps me to teach those same steps to my partners later.

There are things called "stylings", which are certain movements that make a dance look really sharp; really professional. If you watch competition or performance dancers, or even just really good social dancers, you'll see things like the women raise their free hand in the air, or run their hands through their hair, or the men will break from the rhythm and kick or freeze and strike a pose. I know nothing of these, and that's what keeps me from advancing past beginning-intermediate. Most social dance classes - the kind I took that just try to introduce beginner dancers to a variety of dances in a short span of time - don't teach stylings because they have to focus on just getting the steps right. They might occasionally throw in a styling here or there, but mostly we're just trying not to step on our partner's feet. I'm hoping to take a styling class soon, it's just difficult with a freelancer's schedule because I can't dedicate the same day every week without potentially losing work.

So, if you've ever wanted to learn how to dance but felt intimidated, or you've seen my dance videos and were impressed but thought you couldn't do it or thought it would take too many years, hopefully I've inspired in you the possibility. People are impressed with my dancing and it sounds impressive to hear that I've been dancing for 18 years, but I'm only a beginning-intermediate dancer who has only had 2 lessons, which means that anyone can learn to dance at least to my own level with a little dedication. I attend the same beginning group classes over and over again, I dance socially as often as possible with as many different partners as possible, and I try to explain to anyone else interested in learning. Repetition, practice, and exposure - and you too can dance well enough to impress your friends and family and have a good time doing it!

So inquire at your local colleges and community colleges to see if they offer dance as a P.E. class, do a google search for "social dance" in your area, check at your community halls like city parks and recreation departments or neighborhood community centers or even local churches, and just drop in at a dance studio if you happen to see one as you drive by it to ask if they offer lessons or know where you can take lessons. It really doesn't take very long to learn how to dance socially, and to do it well enough to impress other folks.

I'm a fervent believer in the Me Manual - an "instruction manual" telling people how to deal with yourself. It can include your quirks, your fears, your Love Languages, your kinks, your triggers, your medical history, whatever. The point is that I am strongly opposed to treating partners and loved ones as if they have magic crystal balls and can divine what you want and don't want in relationships. So I put together a Me Manual, detailing all of those kinds of things. In fact, it's here, in my blog, under the tag Me Manual.

But Cunning Minx, of the Poly Weekly podcast, has a background in marketing and has put together a User Manual template that is short and to the point (also available at the end of her book 8 Things I Wish I'd Known About Polyamory). It's much easier reading than my jumbled novel-length posts sparked by random thoughts and situations. So I've taken her template and created my own based on it. This covers pretty much all the same things as my Me Manual does, but in a single, digestible format. I'll probably end up posting it on my website in the About Me section too. But here it is:

Part A
Family Background/History
(this might explain some of my quirks)

I'm an oldest child. Excellent student, overachiever, bored easily, often in competition with my younger sister who excelled at everything I didn’t & who felt challenged at everything I was good at.

I am a Gifted child. This means that I am incredibly smart, but I was praised for *being* smart, not for trying hard. Consequently, I get embarrassed or frustrated when something doesn’t come easily to me, so I will often not bother trying or I’ll give up quickly and move onto other things and that my potential in many areas has not been met because I gave up and moved on. But it also means that I have a great deal of interests and knowledge, and I’m proud of that. And it means that I will grasp things fairly quickly and will probably have a decent working understanding of certain topics that I have formed opinions or conclusions about and may not wish to hear an opposing viewpoint if I feel that I’ve heard it already and rejected it. It may be the first time you’ve spoken about it to me, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard it.

My family is the classic American “normal” nuclear family. Catholic parents who married right after high school, still together, 2 kids, dog, suburbs, one scholarly kid & one jock kid. They believed very strongly that family was forever, so fights don’t generally frighten me & I don’t assume there is anything wrong with the relationship just because there is the occasional fight. People who do fear fights or see them as automatic symbols of relationship distress confuse and frustrate me.

I'm independent. I was raised to be independent, but really, this is an internal trait that far exceeds what my parents actually intended to instill. I like lots of alone time, I like taking care of myself, I take pride in developing the types of skills that allow me to be self-sufficient. However, I may occasionally feel a little bit left out when everyone in my life has someone to depend on and I end up taking care of myself when I’m sick and attending parties alone. So very small gestures of assistance or partnership are incredibly meaningful to me, as long as they are not done after I insist that I don’t want the assistance and with the acknowledgement that I am still capable of doing it on my own.

I have abandonment issues because of a long history of men “trying out” polyamory for my sake, only to dump me for the first girl to come along who wants them but doesn’t want polyamory. I also have a long history of men just up and leaving with no contact or explanation (i.e. ghosting). I need lots of assurances that whatever new partner comes along, that I won’t be “replaced”, that my partners intend to stick around for a while, that breakups will be civil and respectful and compassionate, and that my partners have a commitment to being “friendly exes” themselves. After a recent series of very bad breakups, I have an even larger amount of anxiety about people’s breakup skills and dedications to polyamory or to me in particular.

I’m adopted so I have an, apparently, unusual ability to see poly analogs in monogamous society. Most of what I learned about how to manage multiple adult families and how to love multiple people came from my loving, heteronormative, family-oriented, monogamous family. It also means that I’m very sensitive about intentional families and intentional family-planning. I feel very strongly about issues of family being one of choice, not blood, and in the right to choice in parenting, and extrapolating those concepts to polyamory and other family and relationship issues.

Part B: How to turn me on -
Emotionally

Make time for me but don’t demand all of my time. Not enough regular contact and I’ll assume you’re not that into me and I’ll just go about my life without putting too much thought into how it affects you. This could even happen after a relationship has been established. If I feel that you don’t have time for me but I’m not otherwise unhappy about the relationship enough to breakup, I’ll just start to withdraw myself and start going about my life with less consultation with you, transitioning to a more casually structured relationship even if I maintain a deep emotional connection.

But too much *demand* for regular contact and I’ll start to feel confined. I want regular contact with my partners, but I also want flexibility from my partners with regards to my chaotic and unconventional schedule. In order, my preference for “contact” is: face-to-face / in-person time; phone conversations; online chat & public social networking interaction (tied); video chatting; texting & email (tied). One exception is that public social networking interaction that is positive / complimentary / flirty or otherwise publicly acknowledges & reinforces a relationship is also very meaningful for me. But that’s Words of Affirmation Love Language, whereas the methods of contact fall under Quality Time Love Language. Both are equally meaningful to me. If you aren’t familiar with the Five Love Languages, ask me and we’ll talk more on the subject. It’s pretty extensive.

Ask your partner(s) to reach out to me. I prefer family-oriented inclusive networks (now known as "kitchen table poly"), and having a metamour reach out to me reinforces the impression that my partners & metamours share my family values. It also greatly reduces my initial anxiety at the beginning of a relationship regarding the question of whether or not I am wanted or if there are any hidden anti-poly feelings or traps waiting for me.

Share my values on personal sovereignty, freedom in relationships, trust, and personal security. I am very attracted to people who are secure in themselves and their relationships to not feel the need for emotional crutches like veto power & behaviour-limiting relationship rules. Even better if you’re not just personally secure enough to not need those things, but if you actively disapprove of those things and see the harm they cause everyone involved, not just the incoming partner who is typically the most disadvantaged in these situations.

Call me with stuff you think is funny / happy. I've developed an aversion to people with tremendous drama in their lives, and one of the things I've grown to appreciate is a partner who will share joy, not just pain. I’m also prone to the cynical (and I don’t particularly want anyone to try and change that about me), but I do appreciate having happy, joyful, optimistic people around to balance me out. Making me smile or laugh is a great skill.

Be willing to cry in front of me. I'm touched when someone trusts me enough to cry in front of me. Show me your vulnerability, and I'll show you mine. Very few people get to see it.

Be willing to say "I was wrong". Admitting you were wrong with humility and without defensiveness is a huge turn-on for me. Not being able to do this is a deal-breaker. And be patient with me when I have a hard time doing the same, that’s also an emotional turn-on for me.

Be willing to stand your ground when you believe I’m wrong. As the episode from Sex And The City goes, I’m looking for someone who is strong enough to catch me. I don’t want a yes-man, but I don’t want an argumentative jerk either. I want people who are strong and confident and who treat me like a person, not a fragile angel or a goddess or a superstar. Listen to me, even if I'm ranting. Chances are that once I think you understand my point of view, I'll figure out all on my own that you're right on quite a few of your main points.

Let me leave. If I leave the room or ask to stop the conversation when things are getting tense, it’s because I’m becoming overwhelmed (flooded) and I’m feeling attacked or cornered. I need to escape to give myself a chance to calm down and think more rationally. When I leave, I’m not waiting the obligatory 5 seconds to see if you come after me. I’m really trying to escape, so please just let me go. If you have the ability to switch gears and change the subject to something lighthearted, especially if you can make me laugh, then I don’t have to physically leave the room; I just need to emotionally “leave” the argument or situation, so you can ask me to stay and I’ll stay.

Tell / show me you like me for who I am, not just for my hot ass and not just because I'm “Joreth”. I'm really proud of my work and my accomplishments. In addition to a long history of men who leave when they find a “real girlfriend”, I also have a long history of men who either date me or fuck me because they think I’m hot or they’re somewhat starstruck, but they don’t seem to really like me very much. They build up this model in their head of who they think I am or who I should be, and they tend to get resentful when I behave exactly according to who I told them I was instead of the model they made me out to be. So if you show an interest in getting to know all of me, not just the fun bits, I'll be really grateful, and it will help build trust. I’m looking for people who don’t just “put up with” or tolerate these parts of me, like my temper or my “masculinity”, I’m looking for people who celebrate those difficult or messy parts of me, even if they are also trying or frustrating at times.

Rub my shoulders, neck, and back, and don't be stingy with the pressure. Show me you have nice, strong hands and aren't afraid of all the tension I keep in my neck and shoulders. Don’t use massages as a prelude to sexual encounters, as flirting, as an excuse to get your hands on my body, or try to “sneak” in sex or erotic touching. My back is damaged & I am in constant pain (some days are better than others). Back rubs do not equal “sex” to me, and attempts to make them erotic really anger me. If you really want to get in my good graces, give me a therapeutic massage and keep the sex out of it. Do it because you care about the pain I’m in and want to help, not as a selfish excuse to get something out of it for yourself.

Read my writings and follow me on social networking sites. I get not having a lot of time for the internet, but I spend a lot of my own time there, so I spend a lot of me there. If you want to really know me and who I am, be a presence in my internet life and read the things that I take the time to write. The less in-person time we spend together, the more important this is to me.

Get to know my other partners. Taking the initiative to reach out and get to know my other partners is a HUGE emotional turn on for me. Especially Franklin , as he is someone I admire outside of just being my partner. He often expresses the things I want to say in a more lucid way than I can. So it’s important to me that my other partners read his works and interact with him. But it’s also important that my partners get to know each other even those who aren’t Franklin.

When my partners are local, I need to be able to have Quality Time when multiple partners and/or metamours are present, so it’s important that they get along with each other even if they don’t become best friends outside of me. When my partners aren’t local, I need to have multiple eyes and checks on my behaviour and my emotional state, so coordinating and comparing notes with each other is a valuable tool for keeping abreast of my well-being.

Also, being interested and willing to contact each other independently of me shows that you want the kind of inclusive, interconnected network that I want and resistance to reaching out to my other partners often signals an underlying issue with polyamory or my other partners specifically. Even if it doesn’t signal that in you, I will read it as such because of past patterns and it will distress me if you don’t initiate or respond to contact and attempts at finding your own friendly path with my other partners.

The Five Love Languages are a good start to the kinds of things that I need to feel loved and how I express love. I am multi-lingual; I need for love to be shown to me in literally all 5 of the Love Languages. I could write a whole Me Manual just on how I need each of these Languages to be expressed and how each can be used to hurt me in especially damaging ways, so talk to me about this and check in every so often to see which Language is expressing itself the most at any given time. Gift Giving is tricky with me, though, so if you like to express your love by buying gifts, it’s best to stick with my online Wishlist or to outright ask me how I feel about something. I’m also terrible about knowing what to buy, so if you feel loved when you receive gifts, I’ll need a wishlist from you.

Sexually: Flirting

Quote my favorite movies, or movies in my favorite genres even that particular movie isn’t one of my favorites.

Fix my computer/server issues or car issues. I consider myself technically & mechanically competent, but I am extremely turned on by guys who are as competent as I am, or more, especially in those areas that are not my areas of expertise, like computers & cars. Only do so because you want to help me and not with the expectation that I will "reward" you for helping me by offering sexual or relationship favors. Kindness is hot, entitlement is not.

Prefer to wear practical clothing. I especially like geek clothing, stagehand clothing, and “country” wear for casual or practical. There’s nothing like a hot ass in a pair of worn jeans or a shirt that shows off biceps and work-roughened forearms to get me going. I also like it when guys are ready to “do stuff”. When something needs to be fixed, or we go outside in the heat, or we’re working, or we’re just goofing off and playing around, I like a guy who isn’t worried about damaging his clothing or dressing in clothes that won’t let him do what needs to be done.

But also enjoy dressing up for special occasions. It’s also incredibly attractive to me when guys take the effort to dress up for occasions, either in costume or in nicer outfits for dinner, dancing, or other formal events. Knowing how (or expressing interest in learning) to dress for the occasion, whether it’s up for special events or down for practical daily stuff, is attractive to me. Do the emotional labor of paying attention to fashion and its consequences so that I, as the woman, am not the only one held responsible for attire since the consequences for improper attire of either gender tend to fall more heavily upon the woman in hetero relationships. Shouldering emotional labor is attractive. Bonus points for coordinating outfits with me. This is not exclusive – coordinating outfits with multiple people is also win.

Go dancing with me. I really love a guy who dances or who is willing to learn how to dance. If dancing isn’t your thing, being interested in watching me dance is another option. This goes back to liking me for who I am – appreciating one of my skills which is a particularly strong passion of mine.

Send me sexy texts. I enjoy little random reminders of our sexual relationship, but especially when they are stand-alone flirting and do not have any expectations attached to them.

Use puns & double entendres. I like humor with multiple meanings, and if something can be said that is completely innocent but also taken sexually, I’ll probably find it amusing. I will roll my eyes and groan at puns, but I do like humor with layers to it and people who can use humor with layers.

Options for Joreth-friendly dates: ice cream; rock climbing; ballroom & swing dancing; something physical or unusual; interesting meals; movies & hot chocolate afterwards to talk about the movie; photography expeditions; exploring or urban spelunking; learning something new; attending science-themed and/or educational event; attending skeptical events; exploring shared kinks (but only after we have discussed and developed a kinky aspect to our relationship).

Share my interests with me and share your interests with me. I have a lot of interests, not just sex, poly and kink. If you love to cook, I would love someone to cook an elaborate dinner with or to appreciate someone’s cooking skill if you want to cook for me. If you are into interior design/home renovation, I'd love someone to brainstorm and carry out home improvement projects with. If you dance, I'd love someone to hone my dance skills with. If you travel, I'd love someone to go on trips with--sightseeing in Europe, relaxing on the beach in Mexico, exploring Tibet, rambling through Ireland or New Zealand, cruising to Alaska, discovering local Florida. Share your interests with me, involve me in your world, and engage my participation.

I do not drink caffeine, alcohol, or smoke any substance, so being sober around me is a good start to any attempt at flirting, as is taking me places where sobriety will not detract from my enjoyment of the environment.

Be aware of times of the day when I’ll be most receptive to flirting. I probably have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, which is when the circadian rhythm is off by several hours. This means that I am not a morning person, and nothing you can do or say will change that. Getting on a “schedule” will not fix it, going to bed early won’t fix it, waking me up with sex won’t fix it. My best times for interactions start in late afternoon. If you can stay up late with me, bonus.

I also probably have OCD, which means that if my mind is on something like a project or a task, I will be unreceptive to being interrupted with sexy times, although flirting without attached expectations may be appropriate, depending on the task that is distracting me.

Sexually: Sex

Casual sex: I have a wildly fluctuating libido, so I will go for short bursts of wanting sex all the time to long months, sometimes years, of not wanting sex at all. This means that when I have a deeply intimate local partner, I don’t generally have enough attention or libido left over for casual sex and I find casual sex partners to be fun but ultimately not fulfilling. So I generally don’t expend much energy in pursuing or maintaining casual sex partners. However, I am also somewhat opportunistic about sexual activities. If a rare opportunity comes up for a particular sexual activity that I might find interesting, I tend to want to act on that opportunity even if it means taking on a casual partner or one-night-stand to do it and even if my libido is otherwise in a low point.

I have to be in the right frame of mind for a casual sex relationship, and I am usually aware of when I am and am not capable of such a relationship. If I am not in the right frame of mind, I will likely be very unreceptive to casual sex propositions. If you are hoping to have a casual sex relationship with me, it is absolutely paramount that you accept rejection gracefully and do not continue to push. If I change my mind, I will approach you. If you push, I am not likely to change my mind.

If you are hoping to have an emotionally intimate relationship with me, I need the freedom to pursue the occasional casual sex relationship as certain opportunities arise without you feeling like it is a commentary on our relationship (this is particularly important if I become interested in a casual partner while I am in an otherwise low libido phase). I accept temporary safety boundaries imposed between us due to my casual partners, as I would probably request the same of you.

I also prefer to have partners that do not desire casual partners themselves, at least not often, because of those safety boundaries – I don’t want to have many boundaries between myself and my partners so I’d rather be with people who do not do the sorts of things that result in me needing higher safety boundaries between us. But I am not imposing a “no casual partners” rule for my partners. I am just more comfortable with partners who themselves have a low desire for casual partners. It’s a double standard, I’m aware of that, and I understand if you don’t like it.

Libido: As mentioned above, I have a wildly fluctuating libido. I have what’s called a “responsive libido”, which is where the default position is “off” but it can be turned to “on” in response to the correct stimuli. But it also means that even when it’s “on”, it can quickly be turned to “off” with the incorrect stimuli. The difference, it is explained, is that people with non-responsive libidos think “hmm, I’m aroused, let’s go find someone to have sex with,” while someone with a responsive libido thinks “hey, this activity is arousing me, I guess I can have sex.”

It’s more nuanced than that, and we can talk more about it, but the gist is that my libido will take a sharp nosedive after the NRE has worn off and it’s not a statement on the relationship or my feelings for my partner. I will lose interest in sex and I will stop initiating. This can be very difficult on my partners, but repeated attempts to stimulate my libido when it drops usually result in lowering the libido further. I need partners who have a strong sense of self-esteem who can withstand the drop in sex without feeling it as an assault on their attractiveness or the state of our relationship, and who can work with me on compromises so that I can continue to show and express my love and affection without instigating the resentment that comes from implications of entitlement and neediness (i.e. low self-worth) that many attempts to boost my libido often come with.

That all being said, with the right context and contact, my libido can often be coaxed into being “on”. Check in with me to see if the context and contact is right at any given moment.

Sexyfuntimes: As it turns out, I am most receptive to having my libido "coaxed on" in late afternoon or early evening. Apparently, I am an "afternoon delight" kinda gal. I have definitely been known to get turned on by being awakened in the middle of the night or in the morning with sex happening to me, but it's a crap shoot whether the attempt will arouse me or piss me off. I have no way of predicting how I will respond to having my sleep interrupted. Even going to sleep while aroused is no guarantee that I won't get annoyed to be awakened for sex later. That doesn't mean that waking me up with sex is off-limits, just check in with me before I go to sleep to see how I'm feeling about it, and then be aware that my answer could drastically change with no warning between then and when you wake me up.

Because of my sleep disorders and my anorexia, my arousal is highly contingent upon my sleep patterns and needs and also my food intake. Late afternoon is the time of day when I am most likely to be both awake and fed without being sleepy or overly full. It's also the time when a lot of my sex happened in my formative years, so I may be a bit conditioned for afternoon sex too.

Speaking of conditioning, my arousal (or arousal potential) is also cyclic. During my early sexuality, I learned that sex in the first 3 days after the end of my menstrual cycle was the safest time to avoid pregnancy and I reserved those days for condom-less sex (which I vastly preferred to sheathed sex). So I am much more easily aroused during those 3 days, as well as more likely to experience spontaneous arousal (i.e. non-responsive libido) during those days. My libido also spikes sharply after a breakup, so rebound sex is a great time to initiate with me.

What is sex to me? To me, in general, "sex" is anything that I am most likely to get an STI from such as vaginal or anal penetration or oral sex or genital contact as well as anything that contributes to and/or results in sexual arousal and/or orgasm such as fromage (dry humping), “making out”, heavy petting, “snogging”, sexting and webcaming. I do not consider kissing to be sex, but it is a behaviour that can transmit an STI, as well as other infections. I have a chronic respiratory condition, so when it comes to safety measures, I do include kissing in STI and safety discussions even though I don’t consider it “sex” in the same way that I consider other acts. Also, I separate BDSM scening and sex; kink for me does not necessarily involve sex or sexual contact, so in discussions about sex and/or safety, BDSM is not included unless a specific activity also falls into the category of STI transmission, sexual contact, orgasm, and possibly arousal.

I also separate out “things that are a safety issue” and “things that are an emotional issue” with regards to sex. So even though I don’t consider kissing to be sex, I’m still going to want to be notified about intentions to kiss and as soon after kissing has happened as possible when my partner’s other partner is not an established partner, and only part of the reason I want to be notified will have to do with safety issues.

When a partner has an established partner, I am much more comfortable with not knowing about each specific instance of sexuality. But I have difficulty with change and I have my own emotional issues (discussed elsewhere in this document), so knowing ahead of time that there is potential for sexuality with a new partner, knowing that there is *interest* even if the other person isn’t aware of the interest / hasn’t expressed reciprocal interest, and being notified as soon afterwards as possible of a new sexual development or encounter is very important to me and I may ask for emotional reassurances.
People often ask me what I'm into sexually. And in truth, the answer is, "It depends." There are a few activities I know I enjoy, to be sure. I've discovered, though, that it's often not the activity; it's the dynamic between the people and their respective levels of enthusiasm for and skill at the activity that matters. If you do something really well or have some special skill or kink, just let me know. Even if it's not my favorite thing now, it might be with you. And my favorite thing now might not be all that great with you. Let's just see what we're into together, shall we? That being said...

Turn ons:

Grabbing me by the hair but not pulling. I do not like the pain of hair pulling at all, but I do like the intensity of emotion or passion that is often signaled by gripping the hair and I enjoy the use of hair grabbing to control me.

Forcefulness. Once we are in an established relationship and once I feel comfortable and safe with you and once I feel accepted by your other partners, I am really turned on by a partner manhandling me and pinning me to a wall or a bed, or pretty much anything in that vein. Slam me up against a wall (protecting my head with your hand), push me down, hold my wrists above my head or behind my back, and don’t let up when I resist unless I say “ow” or “stop”. If I say “no” in this context, I might not mean “no”. You have to be able to tell by the tone of my voice and if I’m explaining something seriously whether “no” means no or is just part of the aggressive scene.

Watch porn with me. Not boring straight porn. Gay and/or gang-bang porn. And parody porn, although that might illicit more laughter than arousal.

Flirt with me in public. Use double entendres and over-the-top promises or threats. Make it light-hearted, something that can be taken as a joke. You can even flirt by saying things that are totally off-limits in real life or that you do not actually intend. The point is to make me smile and think sexy thoughts, not to be a serious negotiation.

Tease me. Make promises / threats, touch me in almost-erotic zones, flirt with me in public, steal me away from work or public events for quick make-out sessions and then send me back while I’m still hot and bothered, draw out the foreplay until I beg to be fucked. Foreplay can last a few minutes, a few hours, or even a few days. Just pay attention to see if I’m enjoying the foreplay or if I’m starting to get frustrated. If it goes on for too long, I’ll lose my arousal. But don’t just go straight for the nipples, the crotch, or the sex. I need to get worked up first. However, if you’ve been teasing me well, like getting me aroused while I’m at work, then when I finally do get you in a place where sex is appropriate, you can go straight for the sex with no warm-up because the warm-up will have been happening already.

Be a good kisser. This is very subjective, so what it means is to pay attention to how I'm kissing you and attempt to match my style (as I'll be doing with you), as well as modifying the style for different purposes. I love deep kissing and that's a huge turn on, but I also like sweet, tender kisses, and quick I'm-just-thinking-of-you-and-wanting-to-connect-with-you kisses. I like kisses that start out chaste, and then turn flirty and teasing, and then turn passionate, just like sex. And I especially like partners who like to kiss just for the sake of kissing not only as a prelude to something else. If you're interested in some hot, passionate kissing (especially in public, or pulling me aside privately when we're in a place where that kind of kissing is not appropriate) that gets us both worked up but then ends with the kissing and we go about our business, that's almost a guaranteed way to keep me coming back for more.

Give me oodles of aftercare. Cover me with a blanket and hold me. Let me cry if that’s where I go afterwards. Let me ramble if *that’s* where I go. Let me sit in silence. Have my favorite after comfort food ready for me – milk chocolate Symphony bar and Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider. If that’s not available, one of the many sweets that I enjoy will work too, but that’s my favorite.

Make sure I get home safely, and call me the next day to connect. As usual, I prefer voice calls and video chats to texting, but texting is definitely preferred over no or delayed contact, especially if I'm at work or in some situation where verbal conversation is inconvenient or not allowed. Texting does allow the communication and connection to continue through times and settings where it would otherwise not be possible.

Turn offs:

Insulting your former partners. I understand needing to complain about past relationships or being honest about the problems or flaws with past relationships, but guys who call their exes “crazy” or who can’t maintain any friendships post-breakup are a major turn off and red-flag for me. The same could be said for present partners. If you don't respect your current partners, then I'll have trouble respecting you for your choice to be with them.

Lack of communication. I fall in love with the brain first, so if you can’t talk to me (or your partners can’t), we probably won’t go anywhere.

Being too popular / high turnover. Guys with five or more partners or high partner turnover will probably find dating me challenging, since I like to take the time to get to know my metamours.

Dating too young. Guys who are dating in the 18-25 range tend to enjoy either the drama or glib dependence of youth, and I have a low tolerance for both in my dating life. Guys who find women with a very large age gap sexually attractive (as in - being willing and interested in a sexual relationship with her, not just appreciating her aesthetic qualities) also tend to be men with some embedded misogyny or patriarchal values, or occasionally stunted emotional growth of their own, and, frankly, I'm too old and tired to be dating men with Peter Pan Syndrome or constantly butting up against hidden misogynistic values and assumptions.

Not getting tested. Not being willing to wear protection and not getting tested regularly are hard limits for me. Let me repeat that – this is a deal-breaker. Getting tested and wearing protection just with me isn’t even enough. I am only interested in sexual relationships with guys who are interested for their own sake's in getting tested regularly and using protection when appropriate no matter who their partners are or how many they have.

Not respecting feminism or agency or autonomy or personal sovereignty. You might not understand that feminism is all about the latter three, and so don’t consider yourself a feminist. That’s OK, education can clear that up. But the issues of agency et. al are literally about my very humanity, so not respecting them means not respecting me as a human being, and not respecting me is a turn off. Any current connection with MRA or PUA culture is a deal-breaker. Libertarianism or admiration for Ayn Rand also don’t work too well for me.

Missing The Point Pedantry. I get very irritated when I’m trying to make a point and all knowledge of who I am, my history, precedent, social convention, casual language, and poetic license get pushed aside in order to argue with me some issue of pedantry that misses the point of what I’m trying to say.

Co-dependency. Just like I need my partners to respect my own agency and autonomy, I need for my partners to be autonomous, independent individuals who choose to share their lives with me and their other partners because they want to, not because they feel that they need to.

Unwillingness to explore sexuality. We don’t have to have all the same kinks, and you can have tried and ruled out certain things before I came along, and you can even have thought about something and decided without trying it that you’re not interested in it. But even with our overlapping Venn Diagram of sexual interests, we will each have interests that the other has not explored yet, and I need for my partners to exhibit a sense of curiosity and active exploration about sex and BDSM in order to remain sexually attracted to someone. “Vanilla” sex is fine, even if that’s the majority of our sex. It just can’t be the only kind of sex we have or I will get bored. Since my sex partners are not interchangeable, “getting it from someone else” won’t solve my problem.

Chivalry. I absolutely loathe any and all expressions of sexism, even "benevolent sexism", and that includes gender-based “politeness”. Treating me different from others because of my gender (as opposed to our unique relationship or connection or personal preferences), even if you treat me “better”, is not acceptable in any form.

I like nice people. Gestures of politeness on the basis of my gender or to live up to some standard of your own gender (i.e. being a “gentleman”) are not nice. This is not up for debate and I am not interested in hearing justifications or why it’s “different” when you do it. If you can’t understand why I have a problem with this, we will have much bigger differences later on.

Woo. I am a skeptical atheist and I have lost all patience for being in romantic relationships with people who view the world in a fundamentally different way than I do when I consider that worldview empirically wrong. I have no problem being friends with people of different worldviews, but if I’m going to build an intimate romantic connection with someone, I have to be compatible with them on the most fundamental levels, including what reality is and how to approach life.

Someone asked me the following question, and this was my off-the-cuff answer (with a couple of minor additions & polishes after the fact):

What is your "price of admission" in a romantic relationship? Something that could be considered a flaw or a drawback, but that someone has to deal with to be in a relationship with you.

I'm independent, solo poly (even if I choose to someday cohabit and/or marry, I will still be an independent person who happens to be partnered, never "half of a single unit"). I make my own decisions. I ask for input and I consider how my actions will affect my partners, and I will try to make them part of the decision-making process if I can, based on how these decisions affect them, but ultimately, I make my own decisions about my life, I need to be seen as an independent, unique, and individual human being by my partner and the world around me, and that's that.

I make a differentiation between "couple" and "partnership". A "couple", in my mind, is a single unit consisting of two "halves". This is an arrangement where the relationship's identity is more important than the individual identities that make it up. A "partnership" is a cooperative connection between two equal individuals where the individuals always retain their individuality (and their autonomy) within the connection. I will not be part of a "couple", but I will build "partnerships" with other individuals who have equal power to sculpt and shape that partnership to our mutual benefit.

I still need public acknowledgement of my relationships and to present as part of a partnership at social functions, even though I'm solo poly. This means that I require certain relationship markers such as public acknowledgement of our romantic relationship. This can be achieved through Public Displays of Affection, having "dates", arriving and leaving social events together, using recognized relationship labels in introductions and in conversations (i.e. "this is my girlfriend, Joreth"), etc. Because of the point above where I differentiate between "couples" and "partnerships", these relationship markers within a partnership are not exclusive. We can coexist in multiple partnerships simultaneously, even in public at social events. Just like I can have several friends or coworkers at one event and all be acknowledged as friends or coworkers or business partners, my romantic partners and theirs can all be acknowledged at the same time.

I'm a mass of contradictions on the surface and it may take some digging to understand the motivations that actually make my contradictions totally not contradictory.

I'm poly and that's not changing, although the structure of my network will ebb and flow and change over time and I will occasionally have only one, two, or no partners. The number of my partners and/or metamours is not what makes me poly, it's how I view & structure relationships that make me poly. I will never leave my other partners for someone, and I will never be comfortable dating someone who wants only me, unless he's even more solo & independent than I am and the reason he wants only me is because he spends so much time alone that he can't fit in another partner and still give me the time I need from him, and it's his choice that he's fine with.

I'm atheist. I fucking slam the needle on atheism. I'm anti-theist. I'm firebrand atheist. And I will mercilessly mock religion and supernatural beliefs. My friends know this about me and accept it of me because I don't pick fights with them over their beliefs, and they can choose to read my social media or not, knowing how I feel and that I will express my opinions here. Although I will challenge them if they say something to me directly that I know to be false, I am perfectly capable of holding my tongue and not *bringing up* my opinions against supernaturalism right at my friends because I can still like people as people even if I think they have silly ideas. However, I am *not* perfectly capable of holding my tongue with intimate partners and I need for them to be on board with my brand and style of atheism.

I'm feminist. That actually explains most of the above. And a good portion of below too.

I'm a ballroom and swing dancer. If my partner won't dance with me, I'll dance with others. Even if my partner *will* dance with me, it's proper ballroom etiquette to dance with others, and I happen to like that etiquette because it's primarily responsible for making me as good of a dancer as I am, since I've only had 2 real classes in dancing. And I will always feel like something is missing in my relationships where dancing is not an important shared activity. I view dancing as a metaphor for life and relationships, and vice versa. It's hard to overstate how important dance is to me.

I have a very dangerous job and I love it.

I have a job that keeps me poor, and I love it (the job, not being poor).

I cuss. A lot.

I do not want kids. Like, not even a little bit. And I'm pro-abortion.

I do, however, enjoy having pets. And those pets will always come first because they are dependent creatures that I have accepted responsibility for. Some days I have a reasonable handle on this, and some days I don't. So I might appear inconsistent in when I prioritize my pets above my people, but it's consistent in my own head and that's where it counts. You do not get a say in how I prioritize them, and you do not get a say in when I'm being unreasonable about handling my responsibilities.

I'm a teetotaler. I don't drink *at all*, and I don't do any kind of drugs that aren't prescription and absolutely necessary for medical recovery or treatment. I'm not opposed to those around me drinking alcohol or the occasional recreational experimentation (providing I'm nowhere near any second-hand smoke), but I don't date people who regularly use drugs or smoke cigarettes *at all* and I'm only going to barely tolerate social drinking and vaping. I will never stop hoping that someday my partners (who do them) will give up those things too, although I won't pressure anyone to change what they don't want to change. I will, however, assist in their efforts to quit if they want.

I'm a cranky, cynical motherfucker who gets into fights on the internet, even though they cause me massive anxiety and make me disappear for several days. This isn't likely to change.

As Franklin has once said, I'm a little bit scary sometimes. And I consider that a compliment.

I'm kinky. I don't have to have kink in all my relationships, but I am kinky and that's not likely to change.

My gender identity today is "tomboy". It may not be that tomorrow. But whatever it is, I probably still won't want to have sex with your girlfriend.

I am inconveniently straight. Yes, I find it an inconvenience. No, that doesn't mean that you can find some magical phrase that will "fix" this. On the rare occasion that I do engage in sexual activity with people of female biology, it's usually twigging some kind of gender play in my head, so I *still* consider myself straight even in that context. If you're wigged out by my fluid gender or by me experiencing mixed or different genders during my sex, we're really going to be a bad match. And I still probably won't want to have sex with your girlfriend. But I might be willing to have sex with certain of my metamours, under the right circumstances & with the right chemistry. If you don't understand the difference between those last two sentences, we're going to be a bad match.

I likely have what's called a "responsive libido", meaning that it's mostly low-to-non-existent, but can be revved up on occasion. Sex will likely fade to nearly gone over the course of a relationship and the only thing that will prevent it from disappearing all together is the acceptance of this fact and appreciation for the times when I can get it going. No wheedling, pressure, or moping about its loss will help.

I am not a beginner relationship partner.

And I do not react well to being "dealt with" or "tolerated" by partners. This "price of admission" needs to be paid gladly, gleefully, considered an honor to pay, or else I will begin to feel dismissed, condescended to, and unappreciated, and that will sour any relationship with me. The price of admission for a relationship with me is someone seeing all these things about me, truly seeing them, and saying "I'm not paying a goddamn thing. I'm so privileged to be in a relationship with you, that these are not deficits that I have to pay, they are things I am getting in return for providing you with the space to feel safe in being who you are around me. It is you who is paying me with the honor of allowing me to see who you are."

While at the Suits, Star Wars, & Sinatra dance at DragonCon this weekend, I had the opportunity to teach a couple of guys how to dance. The event featured music from the '30s ragtime to big band of the '40s to Sinatra style jazz, which made it excellent for swing dancing. It also made it excellent for cha cha and foxtrot, but nobody there knew those dances.

But because it was Star Wars and suits, it also brought in a large number of non-dancers who were just attracted to the theme. While standing on the sidelines, trying to identify who were swing dance leads so that I could possibly ask them to dance later, I overheard a girl talking to two guys. She knew how to dance, but was mainly from the local lindy hop scene which may or may not have any formal training (sometimes people just learn from the community, which is totally a fine way to pick up social dancing), and knowing how to dance is not the same thing as knowing how to teach. I'm actually a better teacher than a dancer, personally.

Anyway, she knew how to dance and seemed to be trying to pick up the two guys (who seemed to be trying to pick her up) so she was trying to encourage them to dance. They pulled all the usual objections: "I have white boy syndrome", "I have two left feet", "I tried to learn and couldn't pick it up immediately so I gave up", etc.

So she was trying, and one of the two guys seemed to actually be trying to get into it. I moved closer and closer, as I usually do when I see a dance lesson happening, and eventually got close enough to make a comment. The other guy heard me, and he responded, to which I responded, and so on until I eventually got to admit that I teach beginning swing. So he got the attention of the others and introduced me as a teacher. The girl looked over at me gratefully and asked for help to teach.

So I moved over to the guy who was making an effort to learn and I taught him a few things. In a social setting, where the music is loud, ongoing, and ever-changing, it's a very different environment than a dance class. You can't teach the same things in the same order. You have to be able to give just a couple of pointers that the student can then use immediately to have a good time. If the student is spending his whole time trying to remember memorized steps, he won't be having a good time.

So I start out with 2 goals that I think are the bare minimum for enjoying dancing - rhythm and communication.

Step one: learn the basic rhythm, the pattern of steps, where to put your feet. Unless you're planning to perform or compete, if all you want to do is go to a silly little dance at a sci-fi con and impress someone who knows less about dancing than you do, the only thing you need to know about steps is the basic rhythm. No matter what happens, keep your feet moving in the same rhythm and you'll look amazing. If you lose it, pause for a moment and then start over.

Step two: learn the proper points of contact and what signals communicate what moves. As a lead, if you can communicate to your partner what you want them to do, then you can make up shit all night long and look amazing. If it seems like fun, you can take a class later and learn actual proper steps with names and everything. But if all you want to do is go to a silly little dance at a sci-fi con and impress someone who knows less about dancing than you do, all you need to know is how move your arms and where to place your hands so that the follow naturally responds to your signals even if the follow knows nothing about dancing.

That's it. That's all you need to know to go out and have a good time. After I got done with the one guy (in the span of less than one song), I looked over and saw the girl trying to teach the more reticent guy. So I brought my partner back over to the girl (proper dance etiquette - always return your partner to where you found them), and she asked if I'd like to swap and take a turn at teaching the other guy.

We swapped partners and the two of them went off to dance. The more reticent guy told me that he had White Boy Syndrome (to which I automatically responded that many of the top swing dancers in the world are white) and that he tried to learn how to dance once and was unable to. So I launched into the two-step spiel again. He did have a more difficult time with rhythm. He seems to be one of those people who just can't hear the beat, so I broke it down mathematically for him instead. He almost immediately picked it up that way.

Once he got the hang of the rhythm, I showed him how to communicate and I reiterated that he needn't get hung up on memorizing steps - if he just keeps doing the basic step and moves his arms so that the girl can dance around him, he'll be fine. It was fantastic to see the lightbulb go off behind his eyes. He lit up, thanked me, and said that he learned more about dancing in those couple of minutes than in his entire life up until that point.

I returned him to the girl again, and they all tried to apply what they had learned. Since I saw them together for quite a while, they seemed to be happy with the results. I wandered off to do my own thing.

I love teaching people how to dance. Some people avoid dancing because they think they'll never look like the pros. Of course they won't. Just like any other sport, pro dancers are a very small minority of the very top of the heap. Don't go into dancing thinking you're going to be good at it. Go into dancing thinking that you might develop a new way to enjoy music and social interactions. All you need to learn is a couple of things. If the dancing bug bites you, then you can take that and improve on it with classes and practicing, but that's not necessary. My goal in teaching is to help people have a good time. That's it.

Oh, and possibly to have a good time without injuring anyone else in the process - people who don't know how to dance flinging each other around trying to emulate people who know how to dance is a dangerous thing. It takes control and finesse to do those flashy moves. Learn the basics first. Please.

Here's a video of DragonCon that captured a one-second clip of me dancing at this event. It's about a minute in and it's literally only a second long, but it did get me in mid-twirl and shows part of my USO costume. I'd love to embed it, but the site doesn't offer an embed code that LJ recognizes, so you'll have to click on the link. I've cued it up to just before my dance bit.

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/video/tsd2QxcDreMvQ3YjpLg6CwslEycq2FU2?autoplay=1#ooid=tsd2QxcDreMvQ3YjpLg6CwslEycq2FU2&ootime=52s

I'm going to reveal some secrets that normally would be held by the Girl Code, where we all get together and decide what's acceptable and what isn't, and then we agree not to tell anyone outside the special Girl Meeting so that we can make them guess about what's acceptable and what isn't, and then we can punish them when they guess poorly. But I got a special Hall Pass for this one from the Girl Council because of special circumstances. So listen up, because it's not very often one of us gets to break ranks and reveal our special secrets.

Ok guys - this is for all cis men, straight men, bi men, trans men, gay men, and anyone of any gender or orientation who takes on the "aggressor" or "pursuer" role, but ESPECIALLY those who think of themselves as "gentlemen", or as guys who are capable of putting the moves on a woman. Since most of those types of guys insist on retaining the sexist terminology like "gentleman" because they refuse to see how objectifying it is, I'll use that terminology if it's the only way to make you think that this should apply to you.

Should you find yourself in a heternormative situation, such as a nightclub, where it would be reasonable for you to talk to, flirt with, hit on, ask for a phone number from, ask out, or try to fuck someone who appears to be female, there are some lessons in classy from the ballroom dance scene that you should utilize if you don't want to actually freak her out, piss her off, frighten her, traumatize her, or have her male friend beat the shit out of you for.

So let's talk about how to treat a lady in these situations. Anyone who is biologically female, appears to be female, calls herself a woman, or is otherwise a person whom you are targeting for talking to, flirting with, hitting on, asking for a phone number from, asking out, or trying to fuck will be referred to in this discussion as a Lady. No matter how she's dressed, how she acts, how she talks, or even whether she herself likes or doesn't like the term "lady"; for succinctness, they are all "ladies" for this post.

Now gentlemen, let's say you see a lady across a smokey nightclub. She's attractive and you'd like to connect with her on some level. This is how you do it.

DO: When you see a lady, you may approach her, but only in a manner that does not trap her. Stand side-by-side with her so that she can leave you if she wants to. If it's not possible to stand or sit side-by-side, then stand or sit at a diagonal to her, or place your body in a position that is 90 degrees to the direction her body is facing, so that she has a clear path of escape. The exact placement of your body is less important than giving her a path that she can use to leave you that doesn't require you to move out of her way at all and that doesn't require her body to touch yours as she exits.

DON'T: Do not face your body to her squarely or front-on. Especially if her back is to a wall or she is seated with a wall or chair back behind her, do not face her squarely with your body. Most especially, DO NOT LEAN IN AND PRESS HER INTO THE TABLE BEHIND HER, forcing her to physically push you back to escape.

DO: When you speak to her, turn your face only (not your body) so that she can clearly see your eyes and mouth, being cautious of her personal space bubble. Pay attention to whether she leans toward or away from you and adjust your proximity so that she can sit or stand upright.

DON'T: Do not lean your face into her face. It is nearly impossible to tell if that move means you are trying to be heard better or to kiss her. Keep your face out of her space. Think of it this way - she may have a contagious illness that is spread by air like a cold; don't put your face in close enough to feel her breath, or for her to feel yours where she might catch whatever germs you're carrying around or be forced to smell the cheap beer you just drank or the cigarette you just smoked. Don't lean in so close that she can't focus on both your eyes and mouth at the same time. Avoiding these things will also prevent her from thinking that you're trying to lean in and kiss her. Don't lean in and try to kiss her.

DO: If it is too loud to hear properly and you need to lean in just to communicate, turn your face to the side and OBVIOUSLY aim for her ear. Keep your face out of her face. Again, pay attention to which way she is leaning. If she is leaning away, you are either too close or you are speaking too loudly for the proximity to her ear. Back up.

DON'T: Do not take advantage of your necessary proximity to touch your mouth or cheek to any part of her body. Absolutely DO NOT fucking kiss her neck or ear.

DO: Please do talk about relevant topics, such as the music, the atmosphere, the food or drinks available. If you saw her dancing prior to speaking with her and you admire her dancing, it is OK to compliment her on her dance skills. It is also OK to compliment her on an article of clothing she is wearing or her hairstyle.

DON'T: Do not compliment her on her appearance or her body. Even if she is doing things that you think invite complimenting, such as wearing revealing clothing or dancing in a suggestive manner. Especially do not tell her that you think she is "hot". Ladies who appreciate hearing compliments will also feel complimented if you stick to the "do" guidelines on complimenting and, at worst, won't notice that you didn't reveal to her the state of your arousal at the sight of her body. At best, she is probably used to hearing that she is "hot", so your unique and creative compliments will stand out and make YOU stand out from the crowd. Don't be one of the many jackasses that she's had to fend off forever and don't tell her that she's hot. Or that you love her. Or that you want her to be your girlfriend. Or anything at all that you wouldn't say to your younger sister, if you had one, or that you wouldn't want some strange drunk guy saying to your younger sister the moment he meets her. Because, apparently, you can't put yourself in her shoes and treat her with respect just for being a human being, otherwise you wouldn't need to be told to think of a family member in order to consider respecting her.

DO: Do feel free to ask her to dance at a venue where there is dancing. You do so by backing your body away from her space and towards the dance floor while extending your hand, palm up, as if to ask her to put her hand in yours, bow your head slightly in a "questioning" gesture, smile, raise your eyebrows, and ask her politely if she would like to dance. Practice this in the mirror until you get it right. Watch Fred Astaire movies for reference. A self-depreciating comedic flare will probably go over well if humor is comfortable for you and also give you a face-saving way of accepting a rejection by making light of the situation.

DON'T: Do not grab her hand, arm, or any other part of her body and try to physically move her towards the dance floor. If she declines for any reason or using any method, including saying "no", shaking her head in a negative fashion, ducking her head and looking embarrassed, or explaining that she doesn't know how to dance, DO NOT cajole her, harass her, repeatedly request a dance, grab the hand she just pulled out of yours, or demand "aww, why not?" Do not respond to a rejection in any way other than a graceful acceptance.

DO: If she accepts, lead her onto the dance floor and proceed to dance in the manner common to that venue. Holding her hand to guide her if she placed her hand in yours is acceptable, as is placing a hand on the middle of her back if you walk behind her to gently steer her and to let her know that you are still behind her.

DON'T: If she accepts, do not attempt to dance with her in a more sexually suggestive manner than is common to the other dancers on the floor (excepting those couples who are obviously in a preexisting relationship). Don't break with the protocol of the venue by going "down" or more sexually suggestive in dancing style, although if you have formal partner dance skills, it is OK to break the informal protocol to dance more formally. Especially if you have seen her dancing with other people and she clearly knows how to partner dance, do not immediately devolve your dance with her to a sexually suggestive style. If she has skill or dance training, going straight to the grinding is decidedly unimpressive.

DO: It may or may not be common etiquette for the venue to include body contact while dancing. Use the lightest body contact possible for the style of dance and/or music for the venue and allow her to close the distance if she wishes. Many dance styles require body contact and even placing the legs between the partner's legs to bring the hips and groin into contact - that is not necessarily an invitation. Remember, many of the best partner dancers are siblings and family members who nevertheless perform classic dance moves that require familiarity with each other's physical presence. She may be willing to allow body contact that is more than what she would be comfortable with if it weren't for the sake of dance protocol, but it doesn't mean she is consenting to anything else. Keep your hands above the waist and on her back only.

DON'T: Do not grind on your partner unless she initiates it by moving her groin into yours. Do not touch her below her waist on either her front or her back. Do not touch her on her front above her waist.

DO: To look really classy, keep your right hand on her shoulder blade and use your left hand to gently hold her right hand (in a way that conveys enough pressure to give her leading signals but that allows her enough freedom to remove her hand if she wishes - no closed grips!) in the air about her shoulder height and maintain a firm frame with your arms so that she can follow your dance lead. A proper dance lead will be able to lead a partner even if she has no idea how to dance, or how to partner-dance and she will be really impressed if you make her look like an experienced dancer through your leading skills. If she expresses discomfort with that position because she's not used to proper dance hold, it is acceptable to allow her to place both of her hands on your shoulders or around your neck in the more common, informal closed dance position, while you place your hands in the middle of her back or the sides of her waist and NO LOWER. If she exhibits discomfort with being in a closed hold, it is acceptable to allow her to break the hold and dance on her own in your proximity even if you were being the epitome of gentlemanliness with your proper dance hold.

DON'T: Do not take advantage of her willingness to accept body contact while dancing to kiss her. Anywhere. Not on the mouth, not on the neck, not on the ear, not on the breasts ... in fact, do not touch her in any traditional erogenous zone or secondary sex characteristic at all. Even if she presses them up against you, do not take the initiative and do not try for anything more than what she is actively requesting of you. If she wants more but doesn't indicate so, too bad, this is about how you can be a gentlemen and impress the ladies with your gentlemanliness.

DO: At the end of the song, step back, slightly bow your head and thank her for the dance. If your dance included dancing in a closed hold position of some sort, it is acceptable to gently squeeze the hand that you are currently holding while you bow your head and thank her in a sort of modified or implied handshake or hug-by-proxy. If you are in the more informal hold with no hand-holding, it is acceptable to reach up to remove her hands from around your neck and offer the light hand-squeeze then or to pull back from her while running your hands from behind her back, along the length of her arms, to her hands, where you can then offer the light hand-squeeze - both with the bowed head and verbal thank-you. If you ended your dance in a position with no body contact, it is probably safer to limit yourself to the bowed head only. Then walk her back to where you found her. Dance only one song at a time. If you began dancing more than 2/3 into a song, it is acceptable to extend the 1-song rule to the second song and no further. After several dances (not in a row), it may be acceptable to offer a light hug in place of the head-bow while you thank her for the dance, prior to walking her back to where you found her.

DON'T: Do not monopolize her time. Do not dance for multiple songs in a row. Especially do not move straight from one song to the next song with no break. This traps her on the dance floor with you and she may be frantically signalling to her pretend-boyfriend over your shoulder to come rescue her because she doesn't know how to break a dance-in-progress without seeming rude or causing a scene, even if she thinks you're being rude.

DO: When you have reached the place where you found her, excuse yourself with an explanation that is clearly not about her and indicate that you'd like to reconnect later without demanding a commitment from her to do so. An example may be "if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get another drink. Perhaps we can dance again later?" or "I'm so sorry, but I have to go say hi to my friend who just walked in. We'll talk more in a bit?" Give her a chance to miss you.

DON'T: Do not sit yourself down in her space and command her attention. She needs a chance to decide if she wants to continue to be in your presence or if she needs a respite or a rescue. Especially do not beg or harangue her for more dances, particularly if she was the one to initiate leaving the dance floor.

DO: Wait a few songs before approaching her again, but then approach her again if you said you would - she may not feel comfortable approaching you, especially if you really are talking with someone else. Pay attention to her body language - is she leaning towards or away from you? Are her eyes scanning the room or looking at you or looking down or away? If she is not exhibiting signs of wishing you were dead or that a hole would open up in the floor and swallow her up to get away from you, now you can choose to have a conversation or ask for another dance - both of which should use the methods already described.

DON'T: Do not think that if she is smiling, she's happy for your presence. Look for other clues. Ladies are constantly told to smile regardless of their feelings and they are regularly punished for rejecting men, so many of them will be conditioned to smile even when they are uncomfortable. Don't rely on a smile alone for confirmation of her feelings. Especially don't give her shit for smiling while exhibiting discomfort or giving "mixed signals" - it's because of guys who desperately need this guide and don't have it or ignore it that she has that habit in the first place. Some of those guys may even be you. At any rate, it's not her fault that she does that.

DO: Do feel free to dance with other people in between dancing with her. If you do, be especially mindful to allow her to see you treating other ladies with the same respect, including not dancing more than one song in a row with any given lady, so that she doesn't mistake your gentlemanly behaviour with disinterest and so that she doesn't feel intimidated or awkward accepting dance requests from you or from other people. This establishes a friendly, open connection that reduces anxiety about feeling trapped or unwillingly committed. If she exhibits signs of jealousy when you spend time with other people or dance with other ladies, considering how early this is in your acquaintanceship, you can use this as your own escape and congratulate yourself on dodging a bullet so early on.

This is just to get the front door open - etiquette on how to approach a lady. There are whole other chapters on what to do now that the door is open and how to get your foot inside, and then the rest of you inside.

In ballroom etiquette, the gentlemen are required to ask many women to dance because there are often more women than men, so it is polite to give dancing opportunities to as many of the ladies as possible so that they are not left out of the event. Even if a gentleman arrives with a special lady, he is still expected to make the rounds, even if he saves certain dances or more dances for his lady. A gentleman asks for the privilege of dancing with a lady and accepts her rejection with grace. A gentleman escorts her onto the dance floor, dances one dance with her, and then escorts her back while thanking her for the opportunity to dance with her. A gentleman then politely excuses himself so as to give the lady opportunities to dance with others while he does his gentlemanly duty to ensure the other ladies are having their own opportunities. A gentleman only touches where is necessary for the dance and nowhere else. A gentleman does not take advantage of the proximity that the lady offers for the sake of the dance - a proximity that she would not otherwise offer if it weren't for the sake of the dance. A gentleman expressing his interest may then approach the lady several times throughout the event to give her the opportunity to respond to his interest. A gentleman also graciously accepts attention and requests to dance from ladies in the same vein that the ladies generally accept it from him and rejects with grace.

Ballroom etiquette is no longer in favor in nightclubs and pickup spots, so you are not necessarily crossing any social taboos by not knowing or following this etiquette. But someone who is concerned about whether or not he makes other people uncomfortable by his presence will want to take the safest route when dealing with unfamiliar people and ballroom etiquette is designed to minimize social discomfort even with the most ... sensitive ... of us.

If more people still followed ballroom etiquette guidelines, I wouldn't have had my ass grabbed tonight on the dance floor, I wouldn't have had one guy grab my hand 3 times after I pulled it away from him, I wouldn't have had someone tell me "but I love you, I want to dance with you!" repeatedly after I repeatedly rejected him, I wouldn't have had someone try to kiss me on the dance floor and when I turned my head aside and pulled back, had him pull me back towards him and have him kiss my neck because that was all he could reach, and I wouldn't have been pinned against a table as yet another guy ground his groin into mine forcing me to put both hands on his chest and physically push him back to get enough space to escape. I also wouldn't have had a friend see what was going on in that last example and rush over to rescue me only to have the asshole get offended that I ran off with another man and shout "what the hell?" and complain to his buddy who was next to us and saw the whole thing, then had the two of them shoot me dirty looks the rest of the night, prompting my friend to insist on walking me to my car at the end of the night.

Look guys, I know some of y'all think you're all smooth with the ladies once you've had some liquid courage, but you're not. I'm sober, I can see what you think is "smooth". You're not. If you're not a sociopath, you'll care whether the ladies you hit on in bars think you're an asshole or not. The advice I give might make you miss an opportunity with a more passive lady who doesn't know how to deal with someone who values consent and autonomy and personal space, but it will prevent you from being an asshole, whether you like the label "gentleman" or not.

Some people think that having some chick they hit on in a nightclub bitch about them on Facebook later that night isn't a big deal. So what? You didn't know her anyway, right? Most reasonable people care about not making people feel uncomfortable, especially people they were hoping to connect with in some way, but if you need a purely self-centered reason, these tips will help you to be your best self. If you like to brag about being a "gentleman" or you like to think of yourself as a decent person, this is how you start. This is how you start being a decent person and have the side effect that other people like you and like being around you because you're a decent person who can at least fake empathy and compassion while doing your best to respect other people's autonomy and space, if caring about their feelings isn't enough of a reason.

How NOT to pick up chicks at a club:

Don't invade her space before you've even exchanged names. I know it's often hard to hear and you have to get close to speak, but keep the body bent away and/or stand side-by-side, and back up when there are no words exchanged. Make it clear that you're leaning in towards her ear, do not drag your mouth across her cheek to get to her ear and then back across her cheek towards her mouth when you back up.

Don't mistake her smiling at you for an invitation for anything. Women are socialized to always smile and be polite, and many smile when they're nervous and don't know what else to do. Watch her other body language, like is she leaning towards or away from you and is she trying to hide behind her drink and are her eyes flitting around the room rather than fixing on you?

Don't shout "SMILE!!" when she's waiting at the bar for a drink and obviously annoyed about something. Ordering her to perform for your benefit is probably not going to be a reason for her to legitimately smile.

Don't stand facing her squarely if she's sitting down or her back is to a wall so that she can't escape without feeling like she has to push past you (even if you think/know that she wouldn't have to do that; she doesn't know that).

Don't do a weird step-forward-lean-in-step-back step on the dance floor so that she can't tell if you're trying to come in and kiss her or not;

Don't cut in on her when she's dancing with someone else. Especially if she's dancing with a female friend. ESPECIALLY if she then grabs her friend back and they "close ranks", don't try to cut in on her again.

Don't stomp off to the bar pissed off when she does the last, or when she does anything to discourage you, for that matter.

Don't try to kiss her when you haven't even exchanged names.

When you're doing the kind of dancing that requires touching (i.e. swing dancing, ballroom dancing, pseudo-partner-ish dancing) and/or that requires you to lead her, DO NOT lead her into simulated sex moves. If she wants to turn her back on you and grind her ass into your crotch, she will.

Don't challenge her to kiss or touch you by asking if she's "too afraid" to do so.

When she clearly refuses your challenge, don't then challenge her with "am I too young for you?" Yes, that question shows you are definitely too young, like too young to have social skills and you should be put in a time out by your mother for misbehaving. Even if she's barely 18 herself, you are too young to be allowed to date.

AND DON'T FUCKING TAKER HER HAND AND TRY TO FORCE HER TO FEEL YOU OR HERSELF UP OR TRY TO TOUCH HER BREASTS, ASS, OR CROTCH. Hands and back/shoulder blades only, even if she does allow you to do the kind of dancing that brings hips and legs into contact.

Shit like this is why I prefer swing dancing, ballroom dancing, and gay clubs. Ballroom & swing clubs may still be too heavy on the chauvinism-masquerading-as-chivalry but they emphasize maintaining a level of dance etiquette that makes women feel safe. Men are supposed to ask a variety of women to dance so that none of the women feel left out, but then they are supposed to return her to her table or spot after a single dance and not dance more than two in a row so that they don't monopolize her time. Even people who arrive together or as a "couple" are supposed to dance with others at least a little so that the single women have dance partners and none of the women are monopolized and can feel safe to socialize as they choose without feeling trapped or stuck and jealousy is strictly discouraged. (The reason why it's the man's job to dance with all the women is because there are usually more women than men and if everyone partnered up, there'd be a dozen women with no one to dance with. Women are also encouraged to ask men to dance so it's not one-sided, but women often outnumber the men so this etiquette exists so that women don't stop coming for lack of dance partners).

Alcohol-induced boundary-pushing is also limited at many swing and ballroom dances by not selling alcoholic drinks at all (although I've attended several swing dances in public bars and it's still usually fine because of the general swing etiquette of discouraging public drunkenness - it's too difficult to pull off many of the dance moves while drunk without hurting your partner or other dancers).

So even when I get hit on by people I don't want to be hit on at swing and ballroom clubs, it's always with much more respect and much less threatening behaviour than I do at regular night clubs. So I'd rather go partner dancing or club dancing at a gay club to avoid men all together.

This is why so many guys have so much trouble meeting or finding women, why they're not approached, and why they have to "do all the work". Many straight women, even those of us who are aggressive and totally fine with making the first move, get chased away by the few jerks that are out there, and because we can't tell the jerks apart until after they've done their damage, it's easier and safer to just go away so that we don't HAVE to try and tell them apart. There's also the complication that what could be inappropriate behaviour to some women may not be inappropriate for others, so even if we could label all the jerks with a big neon sign over their heads, we still may not be able to tell until after we've been made uncomfortable. All that unpleasantness often just isn't worth the effort to go out, so you guys get stuck with "were are all the women?"

If men who want to meet women, and men who care about women, want to help change this, then instead of bemoaning "where are all the women?!", you can help by addressing other men when you see it happening, or when you know someone who behaves inappropriately to make the places you are in feel safe for the women to come back on their own. Because the jerks are the ones fucking it up for you, not the girls who are running away.

I don't mean that it's your job to "rescue" women and protect us, I mean it's everyone's job as a participant in society to help create a society where people feel safe. And since a lot of hyper-masculine behaviour is done to impress other men and done completely contrarily to women's preferences (i.e. men who refuse to learn to dance because it's "not manly" even when their own female partners express a preference for male dancers), it is helpful to have other men discourage harassment and molestation. Again, not to be the white knight and "protect" us, but to be a responsible citizen and contribute to creating a welcoming atmosphere for everyone.

And thank you to my friends last night who kept interrupting the guy I was with on the pretext of dancing with me to give me excuses to get out of uncomfortable interactions. Even when sometimes you guys were mistaken and you interrupted me with an actual friend, I really appreciated the effort because several times you weren't mistaken and I needed an escape.

Touch is one of my Love Languages, and when I'm nervous or anxious, I find that I need a lot of affectionate touching to help calm me down - stuff like holding hands or standing with arms around the waist or leaning against someone, nothing unusual and things that even platonic friends can do. But that contact really helps. Most of my coworkers, however, have remarked to me that I often seem very aloof and that I am really quite self-contained most of the time. So when I am affectionate with someone, it is REALLY noticeable by comparison and many times that affection is mistaken for meaning something more than is intended. Being affectionate, to me, means only that I am either really comfortable with someone, or that I am feeling a lot of anxiety. It is not an indication of sexuality, to me.

I noticed that, by the end of last night, I had practically not taken my hands off my friends for the whole rest of the evening. I was letting even dance acquaintances that sometimes make me feel a little bit uncomfortable stay close to me and keep their arms around me, and I kept holding onto my drunk friends to keep them upright, when I would otherwise close in on myself around all that. So I was more bothered than I thought I was at the time, which is why I woke up today with this rant running around my head.

Guys, don't do that to girls you just met at a bar. And guys, please do the other stuff I was talking about, like discouraging this kind of behaviour, giving your female friends "excuses" to politely escape and then backing off if they say that they are actually OK, and allowing her to do a little bit of what is necessary when she's not OK like leaving or hiding or being nearby.

Another blogger wrote a post called When Dance Gets Kinky with some examples of BDSM elements found in dance performances.

I often use dance as a metaphor for sex and relationships, but for me, the parallels are so strong that "metaphor" is not always the right word. Dance, sex, and romantic relationships all rely on the same elements - communication first and foremost, physicality, and passion. Just like sex, dance can be done with strangers, friends, long-time partners, solo, or in groups. It can be awkward, silly, hot, fun, tender, or chaste. It can be comfortable or challenging. You can teach or learn something new or fall into predictable patterns.

Like good sex and good relationships, good dancing incorporates the skills and steps you learned from past situations to blend with the new partner, forming a unique, one-of-a-kind experience that can never be duplicated or replicated with anyone else ever again. Even with the same partner and the same steps, it will not be the same. The chemistry will be different, or it'll be more effort some times than other times, or it'll be faster or slower, or you'll hit it just right or it'll be a little bit off.

For me, dancing is not just a metaphor for sex and relationships. Dancing is almost interchangeable for sex, and what I learned from dancing I apply to relationships. The three very different activities are inextricably intertwined in my head, even though I am perfectly capable of having relationships without sex, dancing without relationships, and I certainly don't have sex with everyone I dance with! It's just that, to me, they are three sides of the same coin, as it were.

So naturally, I'm interested in examples of dance that also incorporate elements of BDSM. To stretch the coin metaphor way too far, BDSM would be the fourth side of that coin - in requiring the same elements, in who it can be done with, in the moods you can have while in a scene, and in how it can be mixed or isolated from the others. Most of my kink is separate from sex, I have to mix my kink with relationships but I don't have to mix my relationships with my kink, and I am desperately hoping to one day mix dancing and kink but finding a partner who does both (and who does my style of poly, since I can't do kink outside of a relationship) AND has that chemistry that makes any kind of relationship even possible is a pretty tall order.

Just a tip, if anyone really wanted to increase his chances with me, he'd learn to ballroom dance and be interested in at least some of my kinks and have advanced poly skills and he'd mix all that up under a rational & skeptical worldview. Seriously, the dancing & kink stuff REALLY goes a long way towards catching my attention - just as much as the poly & skeptic stuff does. None of this is a guarantee, of course, but dancing will catch my attention immediately and at least make me consider the dancer, even more than the other stuff (but, to be honest, the other three are more likely to *keep* my attention once I've decided that I'm interested).

Anyway, the examples she gives are from the TV show So You Think You Can Dance, but from a night when the dancers are doing the same choreography from previous episodes. While all 3 examples are exemplary, I am still partial to the originals just because they did them first and they are now associated in my brain with those routines. So I'm going to include the original videos in the comments, while the ones the blogger highlighted are embedded in her post:

http://reginawest.com/2012/08/16/when-dance-gets-kinky/

This dance is actually about addiction. It's passionate and entrancing and heart-wrenching and I cried when I saw it for the first time. But the blogger included it for the domineering manner of the male dancer and how rough he is with his female partner, who keeps coming back again and again for his treatment.

I want to take a moment to make absolutely clear that BDSM relationships are not about addiction and they are not abusive, 50 Shades of Fucked Up notwithstanding. They are also not exclusively about male Doms and female subs. This song and this choreography are NOT about BDSM or even about abusive relationships. The male dancer represents the addiction itself; he is the addiction personified.

But within BDSM there is role playing that superficially takes on the trappings of things that might look like abuse or pain or even addiction to someone outside of the relationship or unfamiliar with BDSM and kink. It was this superficial resemblance that attracted the blogger. Rough treatment and the resistance can sometimes be found in some BDSM scenes and the blogger's point was that there were elements of kink found in the choreography's individual steps, leading her to imply that the choreographer herself may have a background in kink to draw on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ-1cq8ibwg

This one is all about spanking. That should be self-evident why the blogger included it on a list of kinky elements in dance routines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T209HHIJ8bc

The first song included on the blog post is a little different. It doesn't appear to be a remake of a past choreography and it's not one of the dances in the competition. It's one of the group dances that the contestants often perform as the opening number to kick off the show. Their performance will not be rated or included in the judges' consideration of the contest.

The video she embedded also doesn't work. At least, when I tried to watch it, it said that the user had been banned for too many copyright violations, so here's another upload of that same number:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9okkG-8BOM

"I've never been there, but I once met someone who talked about it and I didn't like that person, so I'll just assume that he's representative of the entire experience there and say that it'll probably suck."

When it's not a subject with objective data that can illustrate, contradict, and/or remove our own logical fallacies and cognitive biases regarding experiences, I'm going to take a pretty dim view of any review that includes "I didn't experience it myself", especially when combined with "because I don't like a person who likes it".

Now, if the objection is "the entire content is this subject I don't like" or "the target audience is people I don't relate to", it's probably a safe assumption to make that you're less likely to like it yourself. But...

"I don't want to go to an adult store because only losers go there" and

"I don't want to go to Kentucky because my cousin is a redneck and he lives there so it's filled with rednecks" and

"I don't want to read Shakespeare because elitist snobs read Shakespeare" and

"I don't want to listen to country music because I once heard the joke about listening to it backwards gets your dog, your wife, and your truck back so it must all be filled with stupid lyrics" and

"I don't want to go to the ballet because I once saw a picture of a guy in tights so I assume there's nothing there but men in tights" and

"I don't want to go see your dance performance because I know a guy who pops gum and likes the theater so the audience will probably have people there who pop gum and I can't stand that" and

"I don't want to try Indian food because I was once in an Indian person's house and it smelled funny"

are all examples (from real life, I might add) of people being prejudiced, close-minded, and in some cases just stupid. Telling others not to try the experience without having done it yourself (again, with experiences that are enjoyed or disliked subjectively, not that make truth claims and have objective data to verify those claims) only lets those around you *see* you acting prejudiced, close-minded, and in some cases just stupid. And since I know no one thinks of themselves as prejudiced, close-minded, or stupid, I know that none of you will want to APPEAR that way even by accident, right? So don't do that shit.

This is not to be confused with reading several reviews about an experience from people/organizations that have a stable pattern of having similar opinions as your own and reporting "I heard/read that This Person didn't like it for these reasons". I want to be very clear that I am complaining about a specific thing - criticizing an experienced based on association with another person that you don't like, not for the content of that experience, which can be verified even second-hand, and assuming content of an experience based solely on the presence of another person that you don't like without verifying that content is, in fact, the content.

I have a habit of liking movies that get poor critic reviews, so I might decide to go see a movie just because all the critics said it sucked. If my close feminist friends all say a particular movie was sexist and offensive, I might give it a miss. But if one of my coworkers, who happens to be sexist, likes a particular movie, I won't assume that the movie is sexist just because he likes it unless he actually SAYS something about the content. Him just liking it is not enough for me to assume anything about the content. I need some other data point, like WHY he liked it or the demographics of the entire audience who liked it, to give me a clue as to whether or not I might like it.

And even then, I often surprise myself by discovering things I used to swear I hated and would never like. Hummus, for example. Absolutely hated it until about a year ago. Tomatoes are another thing. I've hated the texture so much that my mom had to puree them in pasta sauce before I'd even look at it. Now I love them both. I also used to really love the Chronicles of Narnia, even though I was an atheist child. But back then, I lived in a liberal bubble where my atheism wasn't the target of oppression. Now that I'm more aware of oppression, I can't help but feel turned off by the obvious religious apologetics in the series. My tastes change over time, and the more I deliberately test my assumptions about my opinions, the more aware I become of who I am and I am better to more accurately predict what I might like or dislike and in what direction I might change.

And the more I find to like where I previously assumed I wouldn't like. The universe is a vast and wondrous place, far more interesting than any individual can really comprehend. And there is far too little time to discover all its wonder, so I don't want to waste time avoiding things that might turn out to be amazing just because some other jackass also happens to like it.

“Your true self can be known only by systematic experimentation, and controlled only by being known.” Francis Bacon

For the last several years, I've maintained a Group Me for conventions. This is a web-based service that allows you to enter your phone number, join a particular Group Me (or be added by the moderator), and then send a regular SMS text message to the Group Me phone number that will then be relayed to everyone else in the group. They have the option to do the same. This has come in handy for sending a single message out to everyone to say "I'm going to eat at the hotel restaurant, anyone else free and want to share a meal?" and "Party tonight is in room 465!" and "Sorry, have to cancel the party - roommate is sick. Please don't show up tonight!" I send one message to one phone number and reach everyone who needs that information. Everyone else can send a message or reply to mine and everyone else gets to see it too.

Some people have suggested that Facebook or Twitter is the same thing, or good enough, for this purpose. But I don't agree. For one thing, it requires that everyone whom you wish to speak to has a FB or Twitter account. Second, it requires that you be friends with those people. Third, it requires that you have the ability to access FB or Twitter whenever you want to send that message. For some people, this is all true.

( But not for me. And here's why... )

Group Me allows you to join yourself or have the moderator add you to the group. No one else will see your phone number unless they already have your phone number in their phone's address book, so it protects your privacy. It allows you to choose your display name so you can use the name that people can use to find you online or not, as you prefer. It removes me as the central organizing point and gives everyone else on the list some degree of control or participation. It works for all phones that have SMS capabilities (and if my ancient clam-shell dumb phone can do it, then every cell phone can do it). It does not cost anything except whatever your current text messaging plan is. If you have limited text messages, you can turn it on and off, and you can also check messages at the website with a computer or other device with internet access.

If you have no internet access and no or limited texting capabilities, then it's true, this service will not work for you. But I'm also at a loss as to how to include you on con' plan coordination at all in this case if I can't text or send you internet messages. So, sorry.

( Here are specifics on how to join & use the GroupMe... )

So there's a guy who pissed me off recently and I want to delve into it to process the incident. As ya'll know, I do a form of ballroom dancing that's called "social dancing". It's basically people who have learned at least a little bit of formal ballroom, Latin, and/or swing dancing who then go out either to public venues or to ballroom dance studios and other dance spaces and just do what they do. Sometimes we learn something new, but mostly it's about having a good time and practicing or expressing whatever amount we *have* learned. Social dancing tends to focus on being good leaders and followers - on good communication - rather than perfect form or memorizing a lot of patterns (specific dance steps within a dance style). Many people only know a handful of patterns for each dance style that they've learned. It's about communication and connection and physical activity more than excelling at a physical art or sport. Perhaps not coincidentally, that also sounds like romantic relationships - being about communication and connection and physical activity.

( Some background on the kind of dancing that's related to the incident. )

( So back to the incident... )

( Now I have some things to say about that... )

( Video of the dance )

Someone told me recently that I seem really happy and wanted to know what my secret was. How do I work in the stressful environment I work in, how do I deal with the people I deal with, how do I live in the world we live in, and still be happy? I have 2 "secrets" to being happy. They may or may not work for anyone else, but this is what I do:

1) I follow my passions. I am dirt fucking poor. I live below the poverty line and require government assistance on a quasi-regular basis. I'm one month away from total disaster at all times. I've been stuck here in this state when I really would rather live elsewhere for a decade past the point I had originally planned to leave because I can't afford to move. Why? I have skills in several job categories and could make a decent living. I used to do a job that paid me $25K a year entry salary, with health benefits, 15 years ago and could be quite comfortable if I had stayed there with various promotions and raises over the years. I could move up in my current job into management or equipment/personnel coordination, with either a salaried position or lots and lots of hours at a good hourly rate. I'm poor because I love my job. It's my passion. I don't work in the other industries because I'm not passionate about them. I don't move up into management in my current job because I like, as I usually put it, playing with my toys and getting dirty. I'm merely a technician.

Don't get me wrong, even my lowly technician gig pays me very very well, per hour or day and plenty of people make good livings doing what I do. But I also don't work as often as I should. Sometimes it's because I take time off for my other passions, like relationships or hobbies or vacations. Sometimes it's because I suck at the work-politics game and I don't know how to schmooze the right people to move up the corporate ladder. Sometimes it's because my job is more about who you know than what you know. And sometimes it's because I failed to keep up with changing technology and have trouble finding mentors to bring me up to speed so I can't always compete in the job market.

But the point is that I love my job so much, I'm willing to live in below-poverty conditions to keep doing it. I do what I have to in order to survive, including taking other kinds of work. But it doesn't make me happy. When I'm gigging, I'm happy. When I'm costuming, I'm happy. When I'm dancing, I'm happy. When I'm photographing, I'm happy. When I'm creating, I'm happy, and that's what all my passions have in common - creating something. When I take the time to indulge in my passions, no, to pursue my passions with a ferocious intensity, I am generally happy with life itself.

2) I find outlets for those things that make me unhappy. Like ranting on the internet. Most people who know me primarily online think I must be profoundly unhappy because all they see are my angry posts. But I make those posts in order to get the thoughts out of my head, where, if I didn't get them out, they'd just run around in circles all day, every day. They're like music earworms, sorta. Some people have to listen to that very song in order to get it unstuck from their heads. I have to rant about whatever is pissing me off in order to let it go and get on with my day getting back to the business of being happy.

People who know me in real life first, who then find my online profiles, feel a little jarred at the difference. I don't seem like "me" to them. But if you were to ask most of my coworkers who have either not seen my online profiles or who don't read much of Facebook or Twitter or LJ even if they have a profile there, if you were to ask them to describe me, "happy" is a common descriptor. A boss once quipped something to the effect of not recognizing me without my smile, or if I'd lost my smile, something must seriously be wrong. I don't remember the exact line, but the occasion stuck out in my memory because I had just lost my place to live because I was "always angry" online, even though I'd never had a harsh word IRL with that person and, in fact, had been told when we first met that he had a crush on me because he so loved how often I laughed around him. So when that boss remarked on how being unsmiling was a rare event, it struck a chord with me.

I have periods of depression. I get overwhelmed by stuff and I start to withdraw into myself. I stop reaching out to my friends and loved ones, I stop going out, I start to cry more easily, and I can start to say and do things that, to someone who doesn't know what's going on, may seem out of character because I stop being able to express myself clearly. Being a generally happy person doesn't mean never feeling any other negative emotion.

But, in general, I think I'm happy. I love life and I think it's worth living. I feel that death is the enemy and I can't even comprehend the idea that there might come a day when I'll be tired of life and voluntarily want to end it, even when I think of living for hundreds or thousands of years. I joke easily and I laugh often. Even when I'm in the depths of a depressive episode or feeling particularly down, I know, with every fiber of my being, that it'll pass and I'll be happy again. Sometimes I even willingly indulge in periods of sadness, knowing that it's just part of the range of human emotion and expressing it can be part of getting through it. I never need to be told after a breakup, for instance, that things will get better and I'll find someone new. I know that, and I don't stay sad for very long. I pretty quickly bounce back to being happy. Even when Misty, my cat, died, I was able to be at work the next day, laughing and joking as usual with my coworkers. I'm very much still in mourning for my cat, and I still cry at the drop of a hat when I think of her. But the joking around at work the day after her death was not a mask I had to wear in order to get through my day. I was genuinely happy to be working and to be with my coworkers. And I'm creating a memorial for her, which goes along with my first point about creating making me happy. Sadness doesn't overwhelm me and life goes on, dragging me along with it.

And I think that's essentially why I'm generally happy. I follow my passions and I allow myself to express the negative emotions so that I can get through them and get on with the business of being happy. I remember trying to suppress my negative emotions for a while. I had a very troubled adolescence and, for a time, the only thing I wanted was to stop hurting. But, even in that first depressive episode, suicide or self-harm was never a serious consideration (although I did consider them). I shut off the negative emotions so that I wouldn't hurt. But then, one day, I realized that I wasn't feeling any of the positive emotions either. Well, that's not entirely true. I still felt all my emotions, but they were all very, very muted. I didn't feel strongly about anything. I spent many years trying to turn back on the positive emotions without turning on the negative ones, and I failed every time.

Eventually I embraced the idea of feeling because I wanted to feel happy again. Feeling sad on occasion was just part of the price to pay in order to feel happy. I don't like the idea of an emotional roller coaster. I know some people that swing from extreme to extreme, and I've heard of those who are basically emotion junkies. And I'm not talking about any of that. I just feel happy in a general sort of way, with moments of elation and joy, and, fortunately rare, moments of sadness. Every couple of years I go through a depressive stage, but then I pull back out of it again. To me, depression is not a "normal" state to be in. Like my moments of sadness, it's something I have to occasionally go through, but those moments are like islands dotting a mostly placid but occasionally excitingly active, sea of happiness. I'm not sure I could answer definitively about whether the chicken or the egg came first here, but I believe following my passions and allowing myself the opportunity to express and feel my sadness or anger in a controlled manner, are what cause me to be happy in life. It could be that I have a "happy nature" and that's what gives me passions in the first place, or makes me seek out these outlets for my anger or sadness to expunge them. But when I'm feeling down, if I can somehow find the motivation to get out and dance, or take my camera somewhere new, or get inspired by a new costume design, then my depression or anger or sadness usually lifts. So I *think* the causal relationship goes the other way and it's that my happiness is caused by the things I do.

At any rate, I've found it to be a self-perpetuating cycle. The more I dance, the happier I get. The happier I am, the more I want to dance. Same with work, same with costuming, same with photography, same with picking up some new skill or hobby even if that particular one turns out to be a phase that I drop later and never get back to. Work is where I feel most like "me", where the most number of facets of my personality get to shine at once. Dancing and my other hobbies are opportunities to focus on a single facet at a time; to really give each facet some undivided attention and undiluted expression. Sometimes, that hobby is pure emotional expression, like dancing. I was told not too long ago that he was sorry for staring, but even though he was surrounded by dancers, many in much less clothing than I, he couldn't help watching me dance. I hadn't ever been told that before. I've been told that people enjoy dancing with me, or they are impressed when I do a structured dance that they don't know, like swing or Bollywood, but not that my dancing was so sexy and beautiful that he couldn't help but stare. And he wasn't hitting on me. When he mistook my enthusiasm for dancing with him as a more personal interest, he was quick to back up and tell me that he was in a monogamous relationship. He just genuinely felt drawn to me when I danced and was willing to tell me. I know I'm only a mediocre or intermediate dancer, and that's OK. I dance for myself, for the sheer joy of feeling my body move. I dance as though my body was an instrument to join in the song.

And I think that's what people see when they say they like to watch me dance, because my technical skills are, well, they're above average but not particularly exceptional. Because that's what I see when I feel compelled to watch someone do what they love. I once watched an artist while he sketched me. There was something in his expression, something I can't define, that changed everything about him. When he concentrated on turning the visual signals he received from looking at a subject to a physical representation on paper, he was pursuing his passion. And it showed on his face, and it made him compelling. I think I almost fell in love just a little with him right there because of that expression.

My high school sweetheart is a performer. He is never better than when he is performing. He is always amazing. His passion for his art is one of the reasons I fell in love with him in high school and one of the reasons I continue to love him to this day, even though we are no longer romantic and not even the slightest bit romantically compatible. Back before I realized my stalker was, in fact, a stalker with Nice Guy Syndrome, back when he was just my best friend, I would sit at his feet or hours and watch him play music. His preferred instrument at that time was guitar, but he could play anything except piano (for some reason, he couldn't put the two hands of a song together on a piano). He put his soul into his music. I loved another guitarist too. He was blind, and he interpreted the world primarily through touch and sound. Which meant that his playing was exceptional because it was the very essence of how he experienced life. Not coincidentally, I met him at the same time that I met my high school sweetheart. In fact, my first introduction to them was the guitarist playing accompaniment to the performer singing. Two such passionate boys expressing themselves through their passion - it's no wonder I could never really choose between them, and it was only circumstance that kept my relationships with them separated by a decade.

tacit is passionate about life itself, and consequently is one of the 3 or 4 happiest people I have ever known. My Darling Boy also has many passions and is one of those people whose very presence in a room make it seem brighter, as though the sun through the window just came out from behind a cloud at the moment he walked in. He's passionate about flying (he's a chopper pilot) and rigging and music and, like

tacit, about life itself.

I surround myself with passionate men - men who are intensely, maybe in some cases obsessively, interested in something that makes them happy to experience. I find this trait to be more compelling in a person than any other trait. It might not be sufficient, on its own, to sustain a meaningful relationship with that person, but being passionate about something is a necessary element to being able to love them, for me. That's the best thing that anyone can do to attract a romantic partner, or even friends, y'know - be passionate about something. People who do interesting things are interesting people, and others are attracted to interesting people. It doesn't work if you just try to do something with the goal of attracting a mate. You have to actually feel passionate about that thing, and your passion will make you attractive - far more attractive than any nice clothing or nice car or slick pick-up line will make you, and it'll last longer than a superficial sheen's attractiveness too.

So, if you're still searching for the meaning of life and how to be happy or make your life look the way you want it to look when it doesn't, that's what I suggest you try. It may not work for you. Unlike those self-help books like "7 Tips Of Successful People" or whatever that try to boil life down into a series of steps guaranteed to make you rich, good looking, and happy, I'm not saying that my method will work for everyone. But if you don't know where to even start looking, I think these two things are good to try. Find something to feel passionate about and pursue it, and find an outlet and allow yourself to express the negative emotions every so often. I'm not saying to revel in sadness or self-pity or anger. I'm saying that repression of negative emotion may result in a difficulty or inability to also experience those strong positive emotions that are necessary for passion and happiness.

You may need to learn how to feel sadness or fear or anger, and consequently how to manage and get through it, before you can feel passionate about something else. A lot of people try to manage their bad feelings by orchestrating their lives largely to avoid feeling bad feelings. Then, when something inevitable comes along to make them feel bad, they lack the familiarity to recognize the early warning signs and the tools to manage it productively. This can spiral, I think, into a never-ending cycle of always feeling bad and not knowing how to feel happy anymore.

tacit says that life rewards the path of greater courage. I think that's essentially what I'm trying to do with my two happiness tips. I'm certainly not claiming to never fail or fall off the path. But I think it takes courage to feel bad and to get my hands right up in those bad feelings like mixing bread dough and really examine those feelings and deal with them. And I think it takes courage to leap head-first into an endeavor, which is what I feel that "passion" is - feeling so strongly about something that I just leap into it, giving myself over to the creative process and rolling around in the joy of creating. Passion, even though it's a positive emotion, can be scary. It can put us in a place of vulnerability. It can leave us open to criticism, condemnation, mocking, and separation. You have to really put yourself into whatever you're passionate about, and a negative reaction about what you're doing can feel like the most intimate, fatal, of attacks. But being passionate about something, at least for me, means that I can't help but to leap into it.

So I think my reward for pursuing my passions and for exploring and expressing the negative emotions is that I feel that I am generally happy with life. I am rarely without romantic or sexual partners, except by choice, I often have a handful of people I can count on to be there for me when I need someone, and I enjoy life even when others might look at my situation and think it looks hard or uncomfortable. My life, overall - the big picture - looks mostly like it does because of deliberate choices I made to make it look this way. I'm not "lucky" to have multiple partners, or to have any specific partner. I have these relationships because I arranged my life in such a way as to make these relationships possible. I'm not "lucky" to be working my dream job. I made choices that allowed me to pursue my dream job, and those choices have had some consequences and drawbacks that are part of it. You can zoom in on any part of my life or history and find low spots or difficult spots or places where I didn't make the best choice in hindsight. But when I pull back and look at my life as a whole, I'm generally happy with it, and the places on the timeline where I'm the most happiest are the places where I expressed my two tips the best. I don't think that's a coincidence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o

http://www.xojane.com/entertainment/dirty-dancing-is-a-subversive-masterpiece-and-here-are-four-reasons-why

OTG YES! Dirty Dancing is such a complex, multi-layered piece of art that had such a huge impact on me and several facets of my various world-views that it's hard for me to emphasize its importance enough. This article only addresses 4 points, but I think that's just a starting point, although a very strong starting point. The article covers having an awkward heroine who never turns into the "beautiful, popular girl" to win the guy, having a "hot guy" like the awkward heroine for who she is as a person without being blind to her until that magical "ugly duckling" transformation, giving "the sheltered 17-year-old all the sexual agency", class politics, and illegal abortion. Set in 1963.

It's not a "chick flick" or a rom-com, or even your typical "coming of age" story. It's a sociopolitical commentary on class struggles, women's rights, sexual agency, gender relations, communication, trust, and personal growth. Baby remains one of my all-time epitomal characters that helped to define who I am, and Johnny remains the ideal romantic partner to whom I compare all my potential partners. It's not just because he has a nice ass and abs, it's because of his integrity, his character, his personal struggles, and his values.

Dancing, to me, is not just a fun physical activity. It is a vehicle through which we can achieve personal growth and relationship enhancement, as well as a story-telling device that we can use to address controversial and taboo subjects. And this movie combines everything that I find valuable about dance - the fun, the storytelling, the catalyst for growth, the beauty, the pain, the personal expression. I don't think it's even possible to truly "get" me without understanding this movie. That doesn't mean that you have to have watched it in order to get me, but that you would have to be the kind of person who *would* understand this movie if you saw it in order to understand who I am as a person. But watching it helps.

Maybe, in my copious free time that isn't today, I'll write my own full post enumerating the points and analyzing the movie the way the article does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9BbUqHrWFI

"Dirty Dancing - Time of my Life (Final Dance) - High Quality HD" (Watch on YouTube)

(Click for bigger picture)

Hey guys, we're putting on a show just for our friends! If you saw us perform at the 2011 Holiday Party, this will be a bigger show with more numbers! If you missed us at the Holiday Party, this is your chance to see us!

This performance will take place at the Ventura Country Club ballroom. This means that RSVPs are *required* because we have to put your name on a list so that the gate guards will let you in. But it's free!

Please RSVP at the official event page: http://bollywoodangels.eventbrite.com/

September is, apparently, "Step-tember" at the Enzian Theater (a local independent movie theater), with a whole month of dance movies & events. So I want to make September an annual celebration of dance appreciation!

I have 4 distinct inspirations from my childhood for getting into dance:

1) Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo - my very first dance movie and I actually learned to breakdance (poorly) because of it.

2) Footloose - which taught me that dancing wasn't just fun, it was inherently a celebration of life, in all its forms. Dance expressed joy, anger, sadness, love, passion, every emotion, and was a necessary form of expression for me.

3) Janet Jackson - one of the first female dance choreographers I had ever been exposed to, thanks to a summer day-camp in elementary school that offered a jazz class where we performed to one of her songs. I learned that there was a place in the dance world for women, not just as a pair of pretty legs, but as the creative directors and leaders in the industry.

4) Dirty Dancing - introduced me to partner dancing as something more than just "that stuff old people did at weddings" and to the concepts of courage, honor, and being yourself, no matter the cost.

Dance, for me, has always been more than just exercise or another chance to embarrass myself in front of my peers. Dance has always been about empowerment, about expression, and a metaphor for life itself. Even when I'm sore or injured, or having trouble getting a step right and looking stupid, I am rarely ever more alive than when I am dancing.

Happy Step-tember everyone! Go out and dance!

One of the drawbacks to taking dance lessons is that if you don't practice what you learned, you can forget pretty quickly. So I'm going to be posting some YouTube videos of dance instructors teaching the steps we learned in class. If you took the class, you can use these videos to practice. If you didn't take the class, you can use these videos to learn the same steps that we learned in class and then you'll be caught up with everyone else.

At the bottom is a playlist of music to dance to at home. In fact, even if you're not dancing, just play the music and move around your house, maybe while doing chores or standing in front of the stove or something, stepping to the beat of the song in the rhythm of the dance. Remember, you can practically make stuff up as you go, as long as you keep your feet moving in the proper rhythm. So drill this beat into your heads & listen to the music so that when you're out in public, when a song comes on that has a good dance beat, you'll be able to recognize it and do the proper dance to it.

( Instructional videos & links to videos behind the cut )

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Joreth

The Inn Between

Page Summary

Costume & Wardrobe Storage Solutions For Everyone
Country Swing Dancing And The Systemic Obliviousness Of Men - A Compliment Becomes A Metaphor
The History of America Is The History Of Tap Dancing
Why White Men Decided Dancing Is Unmasculine I'll Never Know
If You Want A Thing You Have To Actually Do The Thing
The Most Inappropriate Interaction I've Had At A Club
Yes You Really Can Do Exercises To Improve Your Non-Verbal Communicaiton Skills
Bachata Makes Me Better At Blues Makes Me Better At Bachata...
I Challenge All The Men To Do This Core Strength Challenge
What Is The Benefit To Learning Dance?
Dance Floor Etiquette
Which Dances Are Ballroom Dances?
How Many Dance Steps Can You Do?
No-Tie, No-Loop, Adhesive, Double-Layer-Filtered Pandemic Mask (disposable)
Can Guys Be Lifted In Dancing?
Movie Review: Cuties
There's Little Else That's As Polyamorous As A Swing Jam
So Much Music History And Music Theory That Young Dancers Just Don't Always Get
Dance Etiquette And The Art Of Flirting, aka Twice Is The Limit
A Brief Tidbit Of Dance History: The Sock Hop
How Much Do Your Partners Back-Lead You And How Would You Know?
Sometimes The Dance Community Does Not Suck
How I Can Help You Become A Better Communicator
Watch Alive & Kicking If You're Into Polyamory Or Dancing Or Both
Why Did So Many Latin Music And Dance Genres Originate In Cuba?
How Do I Learn To Dance?
On Dancing, Confidence, Anxiety, Self-Worth, And Good Compliments
On Learning To Be A Human
Lead & Follow Relationship Communication Workshop Only 2 Weeks Away At Atlanta Poly Weekend!
When Dancing Cross Boundaries
The Dance Socks Saved My Night! Get Some!
Come Hear Me Speak This Weekend!
How To Have Dance Shoes Anywhere Without Carrying Dance Shoes Everywhere
How Did You Get To Be Such A Good Dancer?
Me Manual - The Cliff Notes Version
My Price Of Admission
Dancing At DragonCon
How To Be A Gentlemen: Chapter 1 - The Approach
How NOT To Pick Up Chicks At A Club
When Dance Gets Kinky
Suckage By Association
Keep In Touch At Dragon*Con
You Have No Claim Over My Dancing
On Happiness
Dirty Dancing Is A Subversive Masterpiece
Bollywood Angels Performance
Happy Step-tember!
Merengue Dance Lesson #3
Cha Cha Dance Lesson #2
Swing Dance Lesson #1

August 2024

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Ranty Lessons by Joreth

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