On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 1:16 PM, JoLaine Jones-Pokorney <[email protected]> wrote:
> As far as telling the newbies to find experienced partners vs telling the > experienced dancers to find newbies - I still stand by my original premise > that we put the responsibility on the experienced dancers. If I have to > weigh the very subtle message "these dancers have to be told to dance with > me" against the overt message "you're on your own here new dancer and its > up to you to figure out who is an experienced dancer and who isn't, and > even though you've already stretched your comfort zone by making an effort > to do something new in a room full of strangers, I'm going to make you > stretch it even more by telling you to walk up to these strangers and ask > them to dance with you." If you don't at least express the advantage of starting with an experienced partner, the newbies will tend to (and may anyway) just dance with the one what brung 'em, often as a group so they don't even have experienced neighbors for a few rounds.
