[returning to an old thread and therefore overquoting] On Tue, Jan 22, 2013, Alan Winston wrote: > On 1/21/2013 6:27 PM, Aahz Maruch quoted me: >> Alan Winston: >>> >>>Even if you did only want to dance with your friends, that is your >>>perfect right. You have complete freedom to decline any offer you >>>don't want to accept for whatever reason and then accept an offer you >>>do want to accept. You are not required to offer an explanation. >>> >>>(If you say no to Joe and then yes to Jerry and Joe's paying >>>attention, he'll get the message that you didn't want to dance with >>>him and his feelings may be hurt, but that's actually his business, >>>not yours. It would possibly be a kindness to Joe and to the >>>community to tell Joe "you twirl me too much" or "I don't like to do >>>dips" if there's some simple way he could alter his behavior that >>>would let you enjoy dancing with him, but it's not required, and just >>>saying "No, thank you" means you don't have to have a conversation and >>>can each try to find other partners. If you only ever dance with a >>>small subset of the people in the hall, other people will eventually >>>notice and have opinions - and that's still their business, not >>>yours.) >>> >>Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with this, but how do you reconcile >>what you're writing here with the meme that people "should" dance with >>the newbies and the sidelined dancers? > > Everyone who comes to a contra dance is trying to engage in > enjoyment-maximizing behavior. There are usually plenty of other > things they could be doing with their Saturday night, and this thing > is what they decided would be most fun. So beyond the very basic > rules - you kinda have to do the figures the caller called, and do > them with whoever you come to in line; that's the basic contract - > anything else is optional.
Hrm, this (particularly the first sentence) seems to contradict what you say below about mature dancers. Or do you mean to apply "enjoyment maximizing" only to the choice to come contra dancing as opposed to the behavior at the dance? > I personally don't want anybody dancing with the newbies who is > doing it solely out of a sense of duty, rather than because they > hope to enjoy it or because they're taking a big-picture view and > realize that the activity needs to integrate the newbies in order to > survive so that they can keep enjoying it. Fair enough. > Erik Hoffman has a thing about the stages of a contra dancer, and > the mature contra dancer - in his view - has passed through the > crazy flourishes and hottest partner phase already and is now > concerned with the happiness of the room; can enjoy helping a > beginner through a dance as much as being in a hot set with a hot > partner, etc. I like to think that will happen, although I look > around the Bay Area and see several people who, it seems to me, are > not mature dancers even though they've been doing it for twenty > years; guys and gals who book every dance, often while in line for > the previous dance, do dips; appear - and of course I'm not in > their heads so who knows what's actually going on - to only partner > with others they'd like to date, etc, etc. And while that annoys > me, it _is_ their perfect right. They paid their ten bucks; they > can try to have the kind of dance experience they want to have. > We're not going to toss them out for being uncommunitarian. And we > need their ten bucks. (Maybe not their individual ten bucks - we > can afford to bounce somebody for being creepy - but their > collective ten bucks; if we banned everybody who ever behaved > selfishly from contra dances we'd have a lot of trouble filling our > dance halls.) Given that I disagree with Erik on a number of issues, I'm not taking his word on what a "mature dancer" looks like. More precisely, I'm both a "mature dancer" (because I try to stay aware of what of what keeps the community together and take actions based on that awareness, such as dancing gently with newcomers) and an "immature dancer" because I'm a "contra cut-up" (as I usually phrase it) and therefore tend to reject any kind of strict labeling. >>Also, what accounts for the prevalance of the meme that one "should >>never" turn down an offer to dance? (I tend to fall into this camp and >>I'm not really sure where I got it from.) > > I was surprised recently to encounter the "If you decline an > invitation you must sit out that dance" meme in Jane Austen, > although I've forgotten where. I don't know if that's where it's > coming from, though. Okay, so it really has been around a long time. ;-) -- Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6 http://rule6.info/ <*> <*> <*> Help a hearing-impaired person: http://rule6.info/hearing.html
