What do you suggest?!

[Andy McGregor]

and obviously by the way you tell us you enforce them they are not there to help social dancers just hotshots

Nothing could be further from reality. The prime objective of our week-night classes is to teach people to dance and to help them to progress as dancers. This means I actively discourage hot-shot behavior. I don't even let them chat loudly when they sit out the lesson if it disturbs people actually doing the lesson.

As far as rules are concerned I think that they are not really needed for most people. It should be common sense. However, there's always someone who needs rules to act like they've got common sense. It's much easier to point to a rule than it is to tell someone that they've not got any common sense

[martingold]

Nothing could be further from reality. The prime objective of our week-night classes is to teach people to dance and to help them to progress as dancers. This means I actively discourage hot-shot behavior. I don't even let them chat loudly when they sit out the lesson if it disturbs people actually doing the lesson.

As far as rules are concerned I think that they are not really needed for most people. It should be common sense. However, there's always someone who needs rules to act like they've got common sense. It's much easier to point to a rule than it is to tell someone that they've not got any common sense

i must try to get to one of your classes sometime they sound pretty good

[Phil_dB]

I’ve just come on here to check to see if there are any replies, - quite surprised how much this thread has grown!!!!

I'm also glad my post was taken the 'right' way, - as I half expected people to think that *I* must have done something wrong to encourage her, 2 sides to every story etc. I haven't stated what exactly happened as #1 I'd rather forget about it (I dont want a record of it on here), #2 nor do I want the person who was involved to come on here and read that she actually 'got' to me. Threads in this beginners forum hang around on the 1st page for months!


I’ve read most of the replies (busy at work right now!), - sorry not to reply to everyone invidually, I’m very grateful and have read all comments with interest! – thanks everybody for your time


After reading your thoughts i've decided that i'm not going to let it effect my night at all.

I'm not going to spend my time fixed at the back of the class, nor am I going to keep a look out for her all night, trying to avoid, that's all too much like hard work. Of course I'll never accept a freestyle dance with her, but I doubt she'll be asking me anyway.

I'm going to have a quiet word with the manager there about her.

Lastly, i'm going take Beowulf's advice (actually this was my plan anyway ) - I'll use this bad experience as motiviation, - I already have 3 workshops booked up, one this Sunday

You're better to persevere , and if she asks you to dance politely refuse, and in the meantime keep dancing with others and practice,practice,practice so that the time will soon come when she'll sit there in awe as you dance gracefully around the floor and she'll rue the day she critisised you.

Cheers all

[Andy McGregor]

...but when it is the last dance of the evening and you want to end on a high or like you say a track that you adore comes on and one of your favourite dancers is available that would definitely go on the 'What Made You Frown Today' thread, but I would have to have an extremely valid reason to say no.

Ahh, the last track is sacrosanct. I think it would be a reasonable excuse if you said you'd "promised" the last dance to someone else - even if the only promise you'd made was to yourself

[Gadget]

This individual obviously takes herself very seriously, and was very put-out to have to dance with a beginner (not sure why given her clumpy movement and heavy handed follow).

In my opinion, the problem lies with the follower rather than you: every scenario I can think on it is against the general ethos of MJ, class ethics, and is just plain rude. But some people are.

Should you have to make exceptions for rude people? Dangerous line to tread - If not, then for whom should you make exceptions for? The only commandment in MJ is thou shalt not injure your partner*. Everything else is personal judgement about where the balance between selfish and selfless lies.
It should be fun. If it's not, then you need to re-dress the balance until it is#; if this involves too much sacrifice or effort, then you have to cut your losses and stop dancing: no point in dancing if it's not fun.

{#some good advice here as to how to redress this balance }

(* self-preservation is rule zero - an implicit rule of life that shouldn't need to be underlined)

[Moondancer]

Slightly similar issue on my class rotation this week:

As I had a couple of beautiful thumb bruises on my upper arms, I was feeling a tad ‘anti-thumb’ this week and rather disinclined to put up with being mauled, so when a bloke on rotation not only inserted his thumb into the back of my hand during the teaching of the move but even absent-mindedly ground it into my flesh when we were standing still, I asked him not to.

…I was polite, I took the oh, I don’t think you realise that you’re using your thumb approach. But he still didn’t take it out, and as soon as he lifted my hand up for a turn or something the pressure on my hand increased, so I told him he was hurting me and pulled his thumb off with my other hand. When he put it right back in straight away, I told him again that he was hurting me and pulled it off again. Then he looked at me as if I was a complete half-wit and said “But I like leading like that,” and pressed it right back down again. So I just said “Well, it’s painful” and then it was time to move round.

Sometimes the teachers say something about no thumbs in class, so I went up to the stage after the lesson and asked if thumbs could be mentioned in the next class, since this man isn’t a beginner and would certainly be there to hear it, and I explained what had happened. Unfortunately, when it came to the next class the teacher didn’t say anything at all.

I don’t know if having no excess hand fat means I am particularly prone to thumbcrush, but given that the back of my hand had a lovely blue circle the next day, what else can I do? I like going round the class rotation and changing partners, so I don’t want to sit out or try the fixed partner option, but once my hand was sore from this man, the slightest pressure from the odd other thumbdiggers on the rotation seemed to hurt, when I’m sure normally I could have put up with them for so short a time.

[emmylou25]

…I was polite, I took the oh, I don’t think you realise that you’re using your thumb approach. But he still didn’t take it out, and as soon as he lifted my hand up for a turn or something the pressure on my hand increased, so I told him he was hurting me and pulled his thumb off with my other hand. When he put it right back in straight away, I told him again that he was hurting me and pulled it off again.

I spend a lot of time lifting thumbs off my hands. I don't say anything until about the 3rd time of doing so, eventually people get the idea although most of those aren't really experienced dancers.

If they get told the same thing several times by different people it'll usually sink in - maybe find some friends/other followers to do the same thing as you in the hope that he'll get the hint?

[Moondancer]

I spend a lot of time lifting thumbs off my hands. I don't say anything until about the 3rd time of doing so, eventually people get the idea although most of those aren't really experienced dancers.

I found it quite difficult to get the thumb off, to be honest. How do you do it? I had to get the thumb and finger of the other hand and really pull his thumb because he just didn't want to let go! I found it almost impossible mid-move. Is there an easier way?

..like maybe a quick release button located in the groin?

[Phil_dB]

One thing I have noticed since doing Ceroc, is the dramatic difference in people's co-ordination -- some people just seem to be very INsensitive.

The bloke you're talking about sounds both ignorant, stuck in his ways and unwilling to change.

We all do things we don't mean to at times, - but surely after hearing someone tell you that you're "hurting them" - how can that message not get through?!? Baffling.


As a male I can't speak from experience, - but how about using the broken record technique; everytime the thumb goes on; STOP dancing, - freeze, look him in the eye and repeat... "your thumb is hurting me".

[Magic Hans]

I'm sorry to hear this but at least, as you say, for every one bad apple, there's 300 good ones.

Unsurprisingly, I'm in the grin & bear it camp. But the funny thing is, you may find that you can get an innate satisfaction from this.

I'm thinking about whenever I'm forced into this kind of situation (not at dancing, I'm thinking more of my role as a union rep, for example) - the more someone is nasty/outrageous/losing control, the more polite and sickeningly nice I try to be to them.

This really unnerves them because they want to be horrible to you, but can't actually find a valid reason to be. And you're left feeling smug and blameless.

Rachel

Doh!!!! You just stole my thunder!!!!! Nought like a bit of the ol' reverse psychology!!!

I haven't had the (dubious) pleasure of being criticised or yanked about recently. If I did, and felt very strongly about a particular female, I'd try to pre-empt her by lavishing ever increasingly outrageous compliments on her .... and watch the (confusing) results!! .... as well as accepting every criticism as a compliment!!! lol ..... 'Ah! Thanks for noticing!!'

It does tend to lighten the atmosphere (at least for me) and results in, at least, a few seconds of respite, as the shock hits!!

[Lost Leader]

Actually, I have just remembered a 'dancing' situation I was in recently. And believe me, many many people heard about it afterwards - partly cos I was so incensed and disbelieving, and partly cos it was so funny.

It was at a recent weekender and I made one of my very rare visits from the blues room to the main room. I ended up having a dance with someone I barely knew, and with whom I'd never danced before. I thought the dance was ok'ish - though very 'main room' if you like, forceful, and with several drops thrown in for good measure.

Anyway, at the end of the dance, just when I'd said thank you and was about to walk away, this person decided to tear me off a strip and tell me what an appalling dancer I was. I was 'totally unleadable', 'impossible to dance with', had 'no connection whatsoever', etc etc. And then proceeded to tell me exactly how I should be dancing.

I did think about arguing back along the lines of 'different dance styles ... don't like so much force ... try the blues room ...' etc, but then thought, what's the point? Either we stand here arguing, when I have no chance of changing his opinion, or we leave it at that and both get on with finding someone more compatible.

So I just smiled as nicely as I could, tried out all the points he was trying to demonstrate to me, and thanked him for all the useful feedback.

I still find it funny to think about to this day. But I am also angry because, if he had given that criticism to someone new or on their very first weekend, how likely is it that it could have ruined their whole night?

R. x

Well this certainly takes the proverbial biscuit, and a chocolate covered one at that.

If anyone doubts that some of the people (OK, it is mostly men) that hand out criticism or "advice" to their partners at the end of a dance are frankly idiots whose opinions should count for nothing then this is surely proof positive. I find it difficult to think of anyone who is better than Rachel at making her partner's dancing look as good as it possibly can by covering up any mistakes, compensating brilliantly for any bits of dodgy leading and adding plenty of elegant styling and it goes without saying that you, Rachel are an absolutely top class dancer of the first order. It is of course more than possible for there to be to a clash of styles between partners but that does not in any way explain or justify this sort of nonsense, especially as I know that Rachel would do her very best to accomodate her partner's style of dancing.

What this shows is that this type of unsavoury event happens because some men just like to have a go at people as some kind of power trip or feel it somehow necessary to hand out unsolicited advice and criticism at almost every opportunity. Laughably it quite often seems to be the case that the propensity to this kind of behaviour is inversely related to the actual skill and ability of the person giving partners the benefit of their opinions.

I do hope that you were really able to laugh this off but as you say if it had been a relative beginner it would have totally ruined their evening and possibly put them off partner dancing altogether. On the bright side though this incident will hopefully bring home the point to those who have been unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of this sort of behaviour that is really is something to be dismissed and that more often than not the judgements and opinions handed out are so far off the mark as to be laughable and worthy only of total derision. However good a dancer you feel you really are though, if someone tells you that your dancing was somehow bad it is very difficult not to take this to heart and feel that you must have been doing something wrong.

[Astro]

Sorry...bit of a story here.

After I'd been dancing for a while, I quickly realised that MJ was pretty much going to be a big part of my life and I desperately wanted my husband to give it a go so that we didn't just drift apart in to completely different social worlds.

Anyway, I managed to persuade him to go along one night and he quite enjoyed it and was willing to keep going until he got the hang of it but the next week he went some woman was so rude to him, he couldn't face going again.

He'd plucked up the courage to ask someone for a dance in freestyle and she just basically ranted at him how she doesn't like dancing with beginners, she doesn't do charity, too many bloody beginners, etc, etc.

So that was that. His confidence was rock bottom and he never went again.

I'm not saying it's related, but we were divorced 6 months later. Him being a non-dancers certainly didn't help things.

From my own personal experience, I don't think venue organisers do enough to ensure that intermediate and advanced dancers make an effort with beginners. I know they have taxi dancers, etc, but I've never heard a teacher ask the non-beginners to be nice to new comers. I think they are too worried about upsetting them.

I imagine the low retention rate of beginners has a lot to do with bad experiences with rude/smelly/dangerous dancers.

A similar thing happened to me too. After months of persusion I finally managed to get my male friend (who drives) to go to ceroc.

There was a really rude girl in the line who after an initial tussle stood back and refused to carry on with the lesson.

Even though I told him that the girl is a bit odd (it's true she is) he wouldn't go again.

(I have not seen her for a year or so)