You've hit the nail on the head but not to many refusals please, my poor ego.
Yes but you can only have so much fun on your own, after all it takes 2 to tango and MJ
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Personally I'd always prefer a so-so dance with someone rather than a refusal but perhaps this is down to the fact that I don't ask strangers that much and it is usually only a "I must dance to this track" that forces me to, in which case I expect to put in the most I can and if my partner doesn't respond then I know not to ask again. (I hardly ever ask anyone again if they refuse me).
However, I find it really rewarding to dance with someone who appears really morose/absent and make them smile if I can, for whatever reason :blush: !
Don't believe her, I've seen grown men turn to jelly! :devil:
Back to the question..
It all depends on my confidence levels at the time.
When I'm on a high, everything's like 'water off a ducks back'.
If I get refused, I'll readily accept any excuse quite happily and not even give it a second thought
If they look like they'd rather be somewhere else :sick: depending on just how hyper I'm feeling at the time, I'll do anything from merely 'thinking'.. poor sod, I bet he's had a horrible day, a row with his girlfriend maybe? or, he can't help having a crap personality I suppose etc (couldn't possible be anything to do the fact he's having to dance with 'me' :innocent: )
To, asking him if he realises that he's making a face like he's sucking a lemon? :eyebrow:
BUT if I've come out feeling down, with a fragile ego (it happens :sad: ) I know I'll be looking at every sign as reinforcement of my already negative view of things.
It wouldn't really matter if I got refused cos someone was desperate for a drink of water, as they were about to keel over from dehydration. I'd think it was cos it was 'me'
And the same if they looked fed up, didn't smile or make eye contact.
But one things for sure, a happy face, an enthusiastic acceptance, a little bit of banter and an occasional look into the eyes, with a genuine smile, can make all the difference in the world and can often turn the whole evening around! :clap:
I think most of us would prefer to have a rejection than suffer through 3-9 mins (depending on song length) of the "I'd rather be anywhere else" dance. It's the old ripping off the plaster quickly rather than pulling it off slowly and infinitely more painfully.
That being said, you don't know what's going on in your partner's head to make them act that way. Eye contact has been talked on at length on the forum, and I'm strictly in the camp that says if I'm dancing with someone I don't know, I'm not generally comfortable with lots of eye contact as it feels too intimate. (Strangely the opposite with WCS - I guess the internal counting is enough of a distraction that I don't mind)
Most of us are also not necessarily aware of what our facial expressions while dancing look like, and how our partners will interpret it. I rememebr the chap who, after asking me to dance, spent the entire time with a face like a slapped backside. As the song came to a conclusion, he said to me (with a weirdly intense look in his eyes) "thank you, that was genuinely the best dance I've had all evening". Not something I got from his facial expression.
(The fact he turned out to be a bit on the 'odd' side so that I now avoid him is neither here nor there)
None of the above however counters the argument that in dancing, as in life, there are prats whose behaviour you will not like, be it in manner of refusal or in the "I don't want to be here" dance. All you can do is focus on the fact it is only one person out of how many dozens/hundreds of people are at that venue/weekender.
(I find mentally sticking my tongue out at them helps me readdress this balance. Or phsycially doing it for special cases)
It's all too easy to blow a single bad dance/refusal out of proportion.
The rejection has to be preferable, that way its only 15 seconds of pain, not 3 minutes or more. There again if I was getting rejections all night that could change my view on things.
Normally smiling and eye contact seems to come naturally, but can be harder to sustain if your partner has an intense look of concentration or disinterest on her face, and if its Tina Arena playing, I'm bored, but trying not to show it.
Greg
Surely, it's always good to look your partner up and down -- you can get in terrible trouble if you misjudge waist level :)
SpinDr
If you've never danced with someone before then I think an outright refusal is much worse, because it can only be based on some preconceived notion of what a dance with you would be like. Maybe they watched you dance with someone else, or their friend gave them a review; but neither of those is really the same as actually trying it.
Unless it's one of those awful, goes-on-forever tracks, 3-4 minutes is no big deal. If, after dancing with me, someone decides they'd rather not repeat the experience, that's fair enough, they should refuse in future, and then both of us are clear on the matter. However, I see no justification for refusing a complete stranger, you might be the one who misses out!
:lol::lol: If only
What a fantastic description - I must use it
that's a point but what if they couple that with face like a slapped backside? or lemon sucker
Anyway most men I know don't look below the cleavage
For me it's the opposite, if they've already danced with me then I've got little choice but to take a refusal personally!
There's also the situation when a supercilious, bored-looking stranger condescends to give me a dance because they can't wriggle out of it but by the end of the three minutes I've managed to squeeze a grudging admission of enjoyment out of them. That always feels good. :DQuote:
However, I see no justification for refusing a complete stranger, you might be the one who misses out!
During the first dance with a stranger, I have 3-4 minutes to determine whether they're likely to respond favourably to a future request. I'll be looking at my partner for quite a lot of that time so I know how they're reacting to the experience of dancing with me. Combined with the manner in which they say 'Thankyou' and walk away at the end of the track, I have a pretty good idea whether to bother asking them again. Of course, there are reportedly some dancers who look miserable even when they're loving every moment, in that case I may not ask them again, unless their end-of-dance 'Thankyou' was unusually strong. However, they're welcome to indicate their previous enjoyment by asking me; sometimes that happens immediately when they invite me to stay on for the next track.
:yeah: