Is it rude to not dance with someone?

Amun said:
I feel like I'm probably living in another universe judging by other answers here but what comes to my mind: she has a mouth, she can ask you. Or does it mean you were rejected because she didn't ask you despite there was eye contact? If I offended everyone I had a chat with and didn't dance with them and vice versa, I guess I have a lot of enemies now.
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You and me both. I am probably the male equivalent of you (or worse pobably). I walk past girls all the time who are staring at me, or I’ll have long conversations with them and don’t follow up with a dance. Granted if it’s someone I’ve never danced with, I will usually follow up a conversation with a dance. Then there are times when I’m having a conversation and some dude will come and pluck her away from me or another girl will pluck me away.

Them’s the breaks.

If I want to dance, I’ll ask. If they want to dance, they’ll ask.

If anyone gets offended, that’s on them (yes, it’s on me too if I get offended, but I rarely do anymore).

dadada_486 said:
So in these situations, while I'm not rejecting a follow, I'm also not asking either. And sometimes, even worse, when you walk around the dance floor, your eyes make contact with a follow you danced with maybe earlier, maybe the previous night, and you just didn't want to dance with her that night. She might even think the same!
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You’re not obligated to ask. And unless you decide that you will ask every single person you make eye contact with, you are going to offend some people but that’s not on you.

There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to dance with someone who wants to dance with you.

Plus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you will encounter all manner of strange behavior at parties that will make your head spin. You never know what people are thinking and it’s best not to overthink yourself.
 
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Sabrosura said:
This comes with the privilege of guys being the ones who usually select who they want to invite and for the most most part, it is not seen as a rejection if for example they walk past some follows to invite another. We talked about this in another thread.
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It's not rude to invite a woman in the middle of a line of follows, skipping over 2-4 before? In my eyes that is really rude, and I try to never do that.
 
Noobero said:
The attractiveness aspect is a little strange. I'm there to dance not meet women, so beauty usually doesn't phase me. If there happens to be some attraction or chemistry that goes a bit beyond dancing is when I get intimidated. I usually try to dance at my level, but also need to dance with more experienced partners to progress. I usually get asked a couple of times per night to dance by someone more experienced than me and take it as an invitation to dance with them in the future. The only pther times I ask people far above my level is if they've been standing on the sidelines waiting a bit. This is uncommon in my extremely lead heavy scene
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Where do you live?
 
Al Israel said:
It's not rude to invite a woman in the middle of a line of follows, skipping over 2-4 before? In my eyes that is really rude, and I try to never do that.
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I think it depends a lot on context and how it is done.
Eg is there a completely 'equal' relationship between you and the follows, do you know them/dance with them equally, etc.

And also, what is the 'line' like -- are they together or apart.

If you are just walking by various people waiting on the side at a party or a festival, and you reach one you want to invite, does that mean you were rude to all those people you walked by (and who clearly were waiting to dance) and you didn't invite? I don't think so as it would mean you literally can't walk around past waiting people without being rude :p
 
Well if we’re discussing rudeness, last night a guy I’d never danced with before asked me to dance kizomba. Nowmy kizomba is not amazing but I can usually follow basics quite easily with a good leads & a couple of leads have even complimented me, so whilst I might not be very good at kizomba I’m definitely not atrociously terrible! Anyway, I really struggled to feel his lead, the connection just wasn’t there, I couldn’t feel anything clearly at all so I ended up fumbling about a bit. About half way through the song he asked ‘do you dance kizomba?’ I said ‘a little’ and then he just ended the dance mid song & left me in the middle of the dance floor! So there’s a bit of perspective for everyone wondering if saying no politely or not asking somone you were chatting to for a dance is ‘rude’.
 
eclo said:
Well if we’re discussing rudeness, last night a guy I’d never danced with before asked me to dance kizomba. Nowmy kizomba is not amazing but I can usually follow basics quite easily with a good leads & a couple of leads have even complimented me, so whilst I might not be very good at kizomba I’m definitely not atrociously terrible! Anyway, I really struggled to feel his lead, the connection just wasn’t there, I couldn’t feel anything clearly at all so I ended up fumbling about a bit. About half way through the song he asked ‘do you dance kizomba?’ I said ‘a little’ and then he just ended the dance mid song & left me in the middle of the dance floor! So there’s a bit of perspective for everyone wondering if saying no politely or not asking somone you were chatting to for a dance is ‘rude’.
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Probably going overboard but if there is one thing that should be barred from the dance floor, it is for either party, lead or follow, to leave and walk away half way through a song. I get it if the guy is being inappropriate or hurting the follow and it is also unfortunate if the lead smelled really bad or something, but I'm talking about walking away for any other reason. I don't care if your friend or dance crush is leaving the place. If you accept a dance you accept a dance. I once had a girl plead and apologise to me profusely to finish the dance because her friend was leaving. I respected this. However there was this one other girl who walked off and left me in the cold, standing there like a complete idiot. I felt completely insulted and almost quit dancing for the rest of the night :(
 
dadada_486 said:
Probably going overboard but if there is one thing that should be barred from the dance floor, it is for either party, lead or follow, to leave and walk away half way through a song.
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I don’t know. The only thing I would consider barring would be for extremely intoxicated people to dance as it’s dangerous for everyone involved. But that’s the thing. It’s just human beings doing stupid things.

You can’t bar people from being rude.
 
dadada_486 said:
Probably going overboard but if there is one thing that should be barred from the dance floor, it is for either party, lead or follow, to leave and walk away half way through a song. I get it if the guy is being inappropriate or hurting the follow and it is also unfortunate if the lead smelled really bad or something, but I'm talking about walking away for any other reason. I don't care if your friend or dance crush is leaving the place. If you accept a dance you accept a dance. I once had a girl plead and apologise to me profusely to finish the dance because her friend was leaving. I respected this. However there was this one other girl who walked off and left me in the cold, standing there like a complete idiot. I felt completely insulted and almost quit dancing for the rest of the night :(
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Yep in my mind there’s a quite a difference between ‘I’m sorry but my friend is leaving can we cut it short?’ and just walking off and/or making it clear you’re ending the dance because someone isn’t ‘good enough’, that crosses a line. Thankfully it’s rare, or seems to be. It’s never happened to me in salsa before, in tango once but tango in London is apparently notorious for being snobby & elitist & apparently this isn’t that unusual.
 
eclo said:
Well if we’re discussing rudeness, last night a guy I’d never danced with before asked me to dance kizomba. Nowmy kizomba is not amazing but I can usually follow basics quite easily with a good leads & a couple of leads have even complimented me, so whilst I might not be very good at kizomba I’m definitely not atrociously terrible! Anyway, I really struggled to feel his lead, the connection just wasn’t there, I couldn’t feel anything clearly at all so I ended up fumbling about a bit. About half way through the song he asked ‘do you dance kizomba?’ I said ‘a little’ and then he just ended the dance mid song & left me in the middle of the dance floor! So there’s a bit of perspective for everyone wondering if saying no politely or not asking somone you were chatting to for a dance is ‘rude’.
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Seems terrible, but it could be just regular kizombies being weird situation.

Was it an actual song or random computer generated noises that they like? Sometimes there is no musical way to figure out when to escape and any moment is as good as other.
I quit kizomba at random spots as well, after it gets intolerably boring. I talk to my partner before though, and most of the time they let me go.
 
eclo said:
Yep in my mind there’s a quite a difference between ‘I’m sorry but my friend is leaving can we cut it short?’ and just walking off and/or making it clear you’re ending the dance because someone isn’t ‘good enough’, that crosses a line. Thankfully it’s rare, or seems to be. It’s never happened to me in salsa before, in tango once but tango in London is apparently notorious for being snobby & elitist & apparently this isn’t that unusual.
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It was actually even worse than this. She didn't indicate she wasnt enjoying it or that I wasn't good enough. It was more simply she didn't care for the leads feelings if she walked away.
 
Sabrosura said:
My suggestion would be, if you're chatting to someone but don't want to dance with her at that moment because of reasons independent of her, you can briefly say something about it as you move away, like that you don't like the song for example, but you hope you can dance together later.

At the same time you can also just normalize the fact that sometimes you want to chat with someone but that does not mean you want to dance. However, even in that situation I think a lot of people will still feel some rejection -- but I think this greatly depends on the lead follow ratio for example. If there are a ton of follows and few leads then these things are more of an issue. If the ratio is pretty balanced, don't worry too much about these situations.
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There are follows whom I rarely (if ever) invite, yet I still talk to them.
I mean - what is the alternative? "Oh, we do not dance anymore, so now I'll pretend you are not there when I see you?"
Just because I don't like dancing with someone doesn't mean we can't be friends.
In fact, there was that one I *Hated* dancing with (and she knew that very well), yet we regularly left the social together... She was my girlfriend.
 
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Dissonant Harmony said:
There are follows whom I rarely (if ever) invite, yet I still talk to them.
I mean - what is the alternative? "Oh, we do not dance anymore, so now I'll pretend you are not there when I see you?"
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I’ve had the situation where I regularly dance with someone but then the same person would refuse to acknowledge me outside of dancing. That to me is a bigger mind ***k than being on friendly terms with someone but not dancing with them.

And yes, it’s common not to like dancing with your g/f lol.
 
dadada_486 said:
It was actually even worse than this. She didn't indicate she wasnt enjoying it or that I wasn't good enough. It was more simply she didn't care for the leads feelings if she walked away.
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It's happened to me twice over the years if it makes you feel better :). One was a beginner/low intermediate lead who was struggling with the dance and blamed me. While it looked bad to be left in the middle of the floor, I focused on how it enabled me to escape a horror dance (and walked off the floor just as quickly as he did :) ). The other was in a congress lifts and tricks workshop many years ago when he was on the small side and shorter than me, looked me up and down and said "Impossible!" (I was a size 8; not huge or particularly tall!) and walked off and grabbed another follow. It was not a very nice experience, especially when he visibly made a fuss of enjoying dancing with the replacement. There were several more follows than leads at the workshop so I simply left. I saw him at the social later in the evening and he was not a strong dancer. So not one to waste time worrying about.

These things happen...
 
Curious, does it help to think of these occurrences as style incompatibility rather than "he/she walked away cause they think I suck"?

I have had the situation during the middle of the dance where someone walked off because we didn't dance the same style. She said "you don't dance Cuban?" I said "No" and she walked off.

It's the same as someone saying "you don't dance On2?" and walking off.. Or asking "are you a beginner?" and walking off

Or i it more rude to walk off depending on the reason? To me, it's the same level of rudeness.

I didn't take offence, BTW. I felt it was the right thing to do for the both of us
 
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Chris_Yannick said:
Curious, does it help to think of these occurrences as style incompatibility rather than "he/she walked away cause they think I suck"?

I have had the situation during the middle of the dance where someone walked off because we didn't dance the same style. She said "you don't dance Cuban?" I said "No" and she walked off.

It's the same as someone saying "you don't dance On2?" and walking off.. Or asking "are you a beginner?" and walking off

Or i it more rude to walk off depending on the reason? To me, it's the same level of rudeness.

I didn't take offence, BTW. I felt it was the right thing to do for the both of us
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Nahh... I get what you are saying. It was much worse than what you describe. We were in the middle of the floor. Think we were doing shines. Half way through the song, she just walked away. I yelled "hey"... I looked like a total idiot. One of the most embarrassing and insulting experiences I had! Thankfully, it only ever happened once in this fashion over many years of dancing.
 
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