Monday 28 January 2019

Leaving the scene?

When I first started learning to dance Salsa, I heard something with which I disagreed, and continue to disagree. An instructor stated that every mistake during a dance was the responsibility of the lead. In the time since, I've heard this many times - sometimes the word "man" has been substituted for "lead".

At the club where I first learned Salsa, I disagreed with the instructor about this. I said that dancing with some of the ladies was akin to wrestling a bull. She responded that, if the ladies were feeling tense, it was my responsibility to put them at ease. I was astonished that she couldn't see the ridiculousness of what she had suggested. It seemed that she genuinely believed that a male dancer was responsible for the feelings of the women with whom he danced, which was unbelievable in itself, but even more so when you consider that people arrive at dance classes with whatever feelings they've felt during the course of their day.

In the interests of fairness, I have to say that some of the male instructors, pandering to the lady dancers with whom they were hoping to dance later, didn't help matters. Along with repeating the line about men being responsible for any mistakes, I heard other things:

"Okay, ladies. Move round to the next man. We tried moving the men around in the past, but it didn't go well. You know what men are like."

"Women just tend to pick this stuff up more quickly than men. I don't know why. They just do."

"I happen to know that the ladies were all perfect, but ladies, how were the men?"

"Men! Watch where you're putting your hands with this move! Women don't need to be told, but for some reason, you guys are in the habit of grabbing things you shouldn't." 

"Yes, ladies, you know the men's moves. You may know them better than the man you're with, but let him make his mistakes. You don't want to injure his fragile male ego, do you?"

There were many other examples, from both male and female instructors. If I were to list them all, this would be a VERY long post. One female instructor, in particular, seemed to use her classes as a vehicle for airing her grievances with the opposite sex. After taking part in one of her classes at an event, I vowed to never do so again. I stuck faithfully to that vow.

After a while, it started to get to me. Reflecting on the fact that I paid just as much as a woman to be there, I started to feel a whole lot of resentment towards those who were saying these things.

At the same time, the behaviour of a few women had started to irritate. One woman, even when I only knew the basic steps, would lead herself through complicated movements, doing her own thing. Another criticised me constantly throughout one dance, even though I was a beginner, and twice abandoned me during dances because line outs were happening which "looked like fun" - more fun than dancing with me, clearly. Well, maybe that's my "fragile male ego" talking.

A number of times, my behind was touched or slapped during or after a dance. One woman sat on my lap, without checking how I'd feel about this, when I was resting between dances. During closer dances, like Kizomba or Bachata, some of the ladies chose to "grind" against me. At the start, I kept a respectful distance during these dances - I have to admit that I was more than a little uneasy with the close proximity myself. Unfortunately, the hold or "frame" of these dances affords little protection to male dancers, and a few of the ladies chose to close the distance themselves.

On one occasion that I've tried hard to forget, a woman brushed my genitals with the palm of her hand as she was starting to go into a turn. The number of times women have been verbally inappropriate during a dance is also higher than the instructors would seem to realise.

At first, I accepted the idea that women, for some reason, generally learn to dance more quickly than men. Then, however, I started to hear that a number of the women had taken ballet or some other dance lessons in the past, whereas learning to dance was relatively new to most of the men. One of the instructors then acknowledged that learning to lead was more difficult. What I also realised, after a while, was that leads are confined to the moves they know, whereas followers learn from dancing with more experienced leads.

There was something else going on, though, and it took a while before I realised the negative impact it was having on the scene. In a rush to learn ever more complicated and "fancy" turn patterns, a number of the ladies were moving to more advanced classes before they had really learned the basic footwork and other skills which were needed to perform the more advanced movements correctly.

When I started going to the weekend events, I realised how damaging this rush to learn the more complicated moves was. I'd wake up the following morning with pain in my back and shoulders. I, too, had gone along with the idea that I was responsible for correcting the errors of my dance partner, and I was paying dearly for it. I held the idea that I shouldn't be a forceful lead, but aching muscles told me that I'd had to be exactly that with some of the ladies.

They hadn't learned the fundamentals, and I was the one, along with my fellow male dancers, who was paying for their lack of patience. It struck me that, really, both partners were equal in the dance - a lead simply "suggested" a move, and then the follower interpreted that, however she wished to interpret it. Some of the ladies were anticipating what leads were going to do - wrongly.

No one had ever asked how I felt about being hugged. When it became clear that I wasn't entirely comfortable with it, there was no sense that the ladies were going to back off. Instead, they found it comical that I was uncomfortable. The message I was receiving was that, as a man, my physical boundaries weren't important and were to be ignored.

Initially, the hugs were to thank me for dances, but at some point became a standard greeting. When my sister died, and I clearly wasn't okay, the hugs increased in frequency and, after a brief acknowledgement of my loss, a few of the ladies chose to tell me at length about their own experience of losing someone they loved. Again, there was the feeling that, as a man, my feelings were of lesser importance.

Before I started learning Salsa, I'd spent some time learning to dance Modern Jive. There, one of the women had assumed that I was there looking for something I wasn't actually looking for. When she discovered that I was engaged, she became angry, and shouted loudly that I should have told her. On learning that my sister was at that time terminally ill, she assumed that my feelings would be easy to manipulate, and on one occasion firmly stated her desire for physical intimacy. When I didn't respond in the way she had wanted, threats and lies became her weapons of choice.

"Correcting" my movements during classes, so that I would forget what had actually been taught, was another method used in shallow attempts to remove me from the dance scene. I've since seen her employ this with other men at events - in one class, "instructing" virtually every man she came across. When she appeared at my regular Salsa class, after apparently deciding it would now become her regular dance class, she immediately accused me of hurting her during one movement. It was a killer move on her part - I already knew enough about the relative place of male and female dancers in that club to know that, had she continued to say I was hurting her during classes, it would not have gone well for me.

To be honest, I wasn't sad about going to learn at another class. As it happened, the quality of instruction was orders of magnitude better. Also, people I'd thought of as friends had been all too eager to welcome a bully into their midst, and were indifferent to my plight. Later, I was to learn that a bunch of lies had been told behind my back, and those I'd thought of as friends had played a part in perpetuating those lies.

Even in the new class, some of the old problems soon reared their head. During a class, one of the ladies deliberately forced her arm into a position from where I had no hope of performing the move being taught. When the inevitable happened, she turned to the man with whom she'd just danced and asked him to show me how to do it "correctly". Embarrassed, I abandoned the class and watched from the bar area. I moved down from the intermediate class to the improver level class, in the misguided belief that I'd be confident enough in those moves, and the ladies not confident enough, for me to be able to avoid a similar situation again. I was wrong.

There had been gaps in what I'd learned previously, which were being filled in the improver class. Unfortunately, I soon came into contact with another lady who led herself through the movement, wrongly, and was able to do so because of my refusal to be overly forceful as a lead.

"He's doing it wrong!"

The instructor looked around, as did other dancers in the class. She asked me to go through the movement again. There was nothing I could do. I knew that, with everyone watching, my thankfully temporary partner in the class would lead herself wrongly through the sequence again. I took the instruction without complaint, and simply nodded. I didn't attend for a few weeks after that.

There are plenty of arguments that one dance scene is better than another, or more friendly. I have the Kizomba scene for comparison. At a Kizomba event, one lady danced no more than two steps with me, after reluctantly accepting the dance. After those two steps, she said "Nope" and released her hold. Before she walked away, she fired a shot:

"I feel sorry for you, because I can dance."

At another Kizomba event, the lady with whom I was dancing cast my left hand aside and gripped me in a bear hug, informing me that this was also an acceptable hold in Kizomba. Internally, I disagreed, because it was a clear boundary violation. She compounded the error by then switching to a lead hold and leading me. I hadn't learned how to follow, but didn't disgrace myself. After the dance, however, I left early. The night was being run by a friend, and I felt sorry to be leaving early, but didn't feel comfortable enough to remain.

All of this had an effect. I would drive to classes or dance events, and would often drive away again. Things were going on in my life away from the dance floor and, unusually for someone so introverted, this was a time when I would have appreciated some company. What turned me away was previous experience of how these nights could go.

I recently turned up at a dance, chose to give the class a miss, and was careful about who I chose to dance with. I'd been absent from the scene for a few months, and wanted a positive experience. What I'd come to realise in my time away, confirmed by how things turned out on my return, was that I now had issues with physical contact.

There are likely a whole load of omissions in my narrative. What matters is that the experience has brought me to this point. I love to dance, but there's the feeling that my involvement in the scene is unsustainable. I made the mistake of accepting friend requests on social media from some of the lady dancers, and a number of the posts I see are surprisingly open about a poor attitude towards men. I'm not even sure they realise how offensive some of the things they post or share might be to males in their friend lists - it's likely that they don't even consider it.

Something I saw recently angered me:

"Too few men understand either boundaries or that “showing off” is not a great attribute especially when it is miss placed and they are not as skilled as they think they are and I don’t think all teachers point this out"

I've directly quoted the post, so grammatical errors within it are not mine.

As usual, the behaviour of men was highlighted. The message was from a female dancer, who seemed blissfully unaware that women are also guilty of the behaviours she describes. To me, it feels like yet another attack aimed squarely at male dancers. There's also the possibility that, when her criticism is seemingly aimed at the majority of men, she is yet another lady dancer who projects her own incompetence onto the leads who agree to dance with her.

How many men will fight their corner, and answer her? None, I fear. We'll continue to silently bear the weight of it all, until we leave the scene, silently.