Your salsa scene's "pecking order"

Smejmoon said:
But also for experienced dancers if they change to street shoes, reject rate goes up dramatically. This did not work in Mambocity at 6am this year though, I remember I changed shoes, dressed in sweater, carried a bag and still could not leave for an hour or so.
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
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You poor soul... :p
(It must be hard finding time to be on SF with all these ladies fighting over you..!)
 
Azalea Isis said:
I got into salsa for the dance. I started off with African drums and dance and ballroom. And salsa seemed like the perfect combo of the two and I was thrilled there was a crowd of people I could social dance with. But I do know some people who come to salsa clubs regularly to socialize and they rarely dance. They are mostly men. I just figure they enjoy the people and they don't bother to learn how to lead. It reminds me of the attitude they might have in a regular dance club where it is perfectly fine to stand around and not dance.
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The two things are not mutually exclusive: socialising and being passionate about salsa.
 
Smejmoon said:
Experienced. Red shoes, red socks is the beast. Since I use linen only for dancing I ignore the rest. But shirts, ties, hairstyle all this matters for ny style dancers.
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I suppose you are probably right, though I don't consciously think about it very much. But fancy non black shoes say "look at my feet". They say confidence. In my area some men wear black and white shoes and I enjoy it. And also a nice shirt, tie, maybe a fedora, yes I suppose it would get a guy some extra attention. It might put an extra sheen on his dance moves, but he needs to have a certain dance skill level to start with.
 
khabibul35 said:
This was mentioned in the "dancing with older followers" thread but I thought it deserved it's own thread because its an interesting topic.

Is it strictly skills based or is there more to it?

In the SF bay area casino scene, there are the cool kids and everyone else. The cool kids are about 10% of the crowd on a given night will almost exclusively dance within their group and while they're generally quite good, I wouldn't say everyone in the group is that great. Aside from that, it's quite egalitarian and the best way to get dances is to know people there. Skill level increases how often you get to asked but not as dramatically as you might guess. Also, being a young pretty woman helps, but again, not to the extreme that I'm hearing reported here. I'd often see such woman on the sidelines waiting for a dance. Maybe it's because most people know each other and are quite dedicated. It seems that once you're in, you're in.

How would you describe your area?
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To share my thoughts.

This is quite common in most scenes but in London it is more about friend circles. Most of that 10% have most probably been dancing a long time and either did classes, trained together or were a part of the same dance troupes. So naturally will dance and hang around each other. Once you get to know people the concept of the top 10% rapidly fades...
 
toan-hoang said:
To share my thoughts.

This is quite common in most scenes but in London it is more about friend circles. Most of that 10% have most probably been dancing a long time and either did classes, trained together or were a part of the same dance troupes. So naturally will dance and hang around each other. Once you get to know people the concept of the top 10% rapidly fades...
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If it doesn't fade in their eyes, then they'll continue to be exclusive in the face of reality. I know SF and Zurich and try to observe the crowd whenever I'm in a new city, in most places, there are people who are too cool for others for one reason or another.

This thread has brought interesting things along with it though, I'll try to notice if dress makes a difference. It didn't seem to matter much in SF casino scene but maybe Zurich and other cities are different. I purposely dress down for salsa events since I... 1) really don't like the idea of a "dancer" being judged on anything but dance and 2) want to be approachable to people of any level. However, maybe I'll experiment with this and see if my upcoming Boston/NY trip will be different as a result.
 
khabibul35 said:
If it doesn't fade in their eyes, then they'll continue to be exclusive in the face of reality. I know SF and Zurich and try to observe the crowd whenever I'm in a new city, in most places, there are people who are too cool for others for one reason or another.
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I agree with you about the Too Cool 10% crowd. It annoys me but there is nothing I can do about it so I try not to waste energy on it. What bothers me most are when people won't even say hello to me. Yet we see each other at the same salsa events week after week. Year after year. But they act like I don't exist. One the other hand there are other people who don't dance with me often but who warmly greet me every time I see them, and that is a whole lot better IMO.

So where does this too cool crowd fit in the pecking order do you think? Does this kind of behavior improve one's ranking?
 
Azalea Isis said:
What bothers me most are when people won't even say hello to me. Yet we see each other at the same salsa events week after week. Year after year. But they act like I don't exist.
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I actually think this is quite normal and is more of an insecurity thing. There are people who I've seen for years in my scene yet never say hello to. I'm sure they think I'm a snob or something. But in reality, i'm just really shy and after a certain amount of time has gone by without introduction, I feel kind of awkward going up to them, yet if they came up to me, I'd greet them warmly. In these situations, whose responsibility is it to break the ice? I think most people in the salsa scene are quite shy and introverted, but it comes across as aloof, snobbish, elitist, etc.

I've had a few instances where I've had wonderful dances with a follow, but the next time out, they act as if they don't even know me. Maybe it's because I didn't pay them enough compliments or didn't ask them for a repeat dance, so they figured I didn't like the dance. Or maybe they are just as shy as I am. We think that the salsa scene is different and that everybody should be nice to us, but people still carry their prejudices and social awkwardness with them into the scene.
 
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Azalea Isis said:
I agree with you about the Too Cool 10% crowd. It annoys me but there is nothing I can do about it so I try not to waste energy on it. What bothers me most are when people won't even say hello to me. Yet we see each other at the same salsa events week after week. Year after year. But they act like I don't exist. One the other hand there are other people who don't dance with me often but who warmly greet me every time I see them, and that is a whole lot better IMO.
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You should consider the fact that you simply can't greet everyone.

I've never said a word to most of the people in the venue, but I know their faces and they know mine. But there is no point of exchanging pleasantries since we are not friends. We are just people who happen to be regularly in the same place around the same time, but since there is maybe 100+ of such people we don't interact with each other. Everyone has just a smaller circle (the size of which depends on you introversion/extroversion/popularity/looks/shyness/skill) of acquaintances or friends who they greet, the rest gets probably just a nod if at all.

You might be feeling like you know the other person well enough to at least get a hello from them, but that is not necessarily true for them. Maybe they think that compared to all the other people they are friends with you do not warrant a greeting because you two simply do not interact that much. When I go dancing and would want to greet everyone I know there I would spend 10+ minutes doing a round around the dance floor shaking hands just because I have been going there for a couple of year now and recognise most of the dancers. I would rather dance so I greet maybe 5 people who I spend time the most with and go silently by the rest and maybe just smile.
 
Chris_Yannick said:
I actually think this is quite normal and is more of an insecurity thing. There are people who I've seen for years in my scene yet never say hello to. I'm sure they think I'm a snob or something. But in reality, i'm just really shy and after a certain amount of time has gone by without introduction, I feel kind of awkward going up to them, yet if they came up to me, I'd greet them warmly. In these situations, whose responsibility is it to break the ice? I think most people in the salsa scene are quite shy and introverted, but it comes across as aloof, snobbish, elitist, etc.

I've had a few instances where I've had wonderful dances with a follow, but the next time out, they act as if they don't even know me. Maybe it's because I didn't pay them enough compliments or didn't ask them for a repeat dance, so they figured I didn't like the dance. Or maybe they are just as shy as I am. We think that the salsa scene is different and that everybody should be nice to us, but people still carry their prejudices and social awkwardness with them into the scene.
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agree 100%
 
Chris_Yannick said:
I actually think this is quite normal and is more of an insecurity thing.
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Azalea Isis said:
So where does this too cool crowd fit in the pecking order do you think? Does this kind of behavior improve one's ranking?
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I think it's part insecurity, part egoism. Some people get into dancing because they enjoy it, others because they want to be admired, and most are probably a mix of both. I'd bet the more people lean towards hierarchical thinking, the more being exclusive improves their ranking. The people who don't like this kind of behavior will murmur about it but won't try to form competing groups or anything because it goes against what they believe.

As a real life example, perhaps the top dog of the bay area is a guy who I've heard some pretty negative things about from follows in terms of attitude and he's the ring leader of the cool kids. A friend of mine refers to him as "Mr. I DO NOT" because of a friend of hers from out of town came up to him after seeing him and asked him "Do you want to dance?" and he answered with a scoffing "I DO NOT!"

Now, my friends still dance with this guy once in a blue moon because he's a good lead and it's not like we hate him, but we know that his views are incompatible with ours and that this precludes there being a possibility of a friendship or even respectful relationship that can grow out of this. It's co-existence, which might sound OK, but I think most people are looking for more than this in their dance community.
 
My one-to-one interactions with people in the scene have been remarkably pleasant. When people arrange themselves into groups, then things like "pecking order" start to appear. Also, I find people like to judge from the sidelines and make their own assumptions without actually knowing a person. Pretty much everything bad about a person comes from hearsay and not from personal experience. I've had zero negative experiences with vicious people in the scene. Most, if not all, of my negative experiences stem from my own incorrect assumptions, for example thinking I meant something more to someone than I was led to believe.

It's true you interact with more people on average dancing salsa than in other communities, but the percentage of real friendships is on par with other social activities, which is to say, not very many.
 
Chris_Yannick said:
I've had a few instances where I've had wonderful dances with a follow, but the next time out, they act as if they don't even know me.
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Personally I have a big problem with recognizing a follow after a single dance. I usually need at least 3-4 classes together, until I can recognize a follow in a party :( And even then I often ask a follow in a party being pretty sure it is a same person we were together in a class, just to find, that I have never danced with her before. It is even worse, because I am fairly easily recognizable because of age differences. So, yes, being really bad at recognizing faces is also disadvantage, which often seems like an ignorance :(
 
Aurel said:
You should consider the fact that you simply can't greet everyone.

I've never said a word to most of the people in the venue, but I know their faces and they know mine. But there is no point of exchanging pleasantries since we are not friends. We are just people who happen to be regularly in the same place around the same time, but since there is maybe 100+ of such people we don't interact with each other. Everyone has just a smaller circle (the size of which depends on you introversion/extroversion/popularity/looks/shyness/skill) of acquaintances or friends who they greet, the rest gets probably just a nod if at all.

You might be feeling like you know the other person well enough to at least get a hello from them, but that is not necessarily true for them. Maybe they think that compared to all the other people they are friends with you do not warrant a greeting because you two simply do not interact that much. When I go dancing and would want to greet everyone I know there I would spend 10+ minutes doing a round around the dance floor shaking hands just because I have been going there for a couple of year now and recognise most of the dancers. I would rather dance so I greet maybe 5 people who I spend time the most with and go silently by the rest and maybe just smile.
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I certainly wouldn't expect you to spend 10 minutes greeting everyone in the club when you arrive. I am thinking more of a situation when I pass someone alone in the hallway on the way to the restroom or the door perhaps. And it is unavoidable that we notice each other. It just feels odd to me to not say "Hi how are you?" Or even a nod or a wave or something. Like if I walk right past someone and our eyes meet and we are face to face. And this is a person I see all the time for years now. And the person turns away without acknowledging me at all.

Also it feels weird to me when the host does not greet people. Like the dance studio owner or the event host. Most hosts do and it seems like good business practice. So I notice it when there is a host who consistently doesn't welcome people. It feels odd to me. But everyone is different.

Also I understand that some people are introverted and this is not the same as being snobby. So that is a valid point.
 
wol said:
Personally I have a big problem with recognizing a follow after a single dance. I usually need at least 3-4 classes together, until I can recognize a follow in a party :( And even then I often ask a follow in a party being pretty sure it is a same person we were together in a class, just to find, that I have never danced with her before. It is even worse, because I am fairly easily recognizable because of age differences. So, yes, being really bad at recognizing faces is also disadvantage, which often seems like an ignorance :(
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I too am really bad at recognizing faces. And I often forget someone who I have only danced with a few times. And it is normal for me to forget names of people even after I start recognizing their face. I once had a man get angry at me because he said I didn't greet him. I didn't ignore him on purpose. He has never asked me to dance again.
 
Azalea Isis said:
AlsoI understand that some people are introverted and this is not the same as being snobby. So that is a valid point.
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This describes me. I am introverted, big time. Occasionally I am a little shy, but not usually, and its a completely different issue. But introversion, that's a major factor for me.

If I am socially drained and I have been around people too much, I might barely speak to anyone. I probably wont ask anyone to dance, I will just dance with whoever asks me (I'm a lead). If too many people are asking me, I might stand outside. People still come get me but at a reduced rate.

When I am kinda at medium capacity, in terms of the social/introversion aspect, then I probably only dance and speak with friends and maybe people that I have danced with in the past. I will also maybe dance with one or two people from the beginner class if I came early and I know they took the class, because I feel just enough connection/sympathy to them to be able to make myself dance with them. Otherwise, I might nod to others in the club but not dance. Thats it.

When at full social recharge, when I have had lots of solo downtime, those are the nights I will dance with lots of newbies, strangers, or with people I am less comfortable with. But that only happens maybe once a month.


The net effect of this is that some people may consider me rude or standoffish or withdrawn. Really though, I'm probably just trying to decide whether I have the energy for eye contact. :)
 
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