Although I am a lead, I contribute negatively to the gender imbalance situation. I am an adequately decent dancer, perhaps one of those terminal intermediates who "prey" on the beginners. I dance with beginning and with advanced follows. I almost never dance with the intermediate follows.
When a beginner is dangling off my neck, pulling me over, clamping my arm or jumping from foot to foot and generally making my dance unpleasant, I will politely ask ask her to manage her own axis, or to wait, or whatever, and explain that I have a bad rotator cuff, or whatever. Thinking that I am a good dancer, she will say OK, do so, and then the dance is fine. The local follows who are advanced know that I am a good, but certainly not excellent, dancer. However I am good enough that I can give them a decent dance and they will have a good time. They can also manage their axis, they wait, don't clamp my arm, etc, and no requests are required. They say yes to my dance invitations and we have a fine dance. But the intermediate follows, which means most of them, or at least very many, often can not manage their axis, and or don't wait for a lead, and/or.... But, since they know that I am only an intermediate myself, are quite offended if I make any requests, even regarding my damaged rotator cuff. They KNOW that they are not clamping my arm. I have simply quit asking them to dance. Probably slightly passive aggressive, but it does avoid conflict, I can have an excellent evening of dance, and I only feel slightly bad about all those sad intermediate follows lined up against the wall looking hopefully out at the floor. Cheers D. David Thorn _________________________________________________________________ Spell a grand slam in this game where word skill meets World Series. Get in the game. http://club.live.com/word_slugger.aspx?icid=word_slugger_wlhm_admod_april08 _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
