Swing Studio Online Podcast Episode 2
Brian: Hi welcome to Swing Studio Online Podcast, my name is Brian.
Autumn: and I’m Autumn
Brian: and we’d like to welcome you to the first audio podcast of the series. We’re going to start it off by telling you a little bit about what the podcast is all about and how it’s gonna kinda work. This podcast is all about audio and video together in one podcast, so those of you already subscribed noticed that we had the first episode being the Move of the Month which was a video episode. This one is an audio episode where Autumn and I are gonna Pow-Wow about West coast Swing and give you all the news and announcements about SwingStudioOnline.com. We’re going to try and alternate that and kinda give a Move of the Month video and then an audio episode and kinda alternate those throughout. Does that sound good to you Autumn?
Autumn: Yeah, sounds great to me.
Brian: Alright, so let’s have little Pow-wow intro here. So Autumn, what have you been up to in your West Coast Swing dancing?
Autumn: Ohhhh, a little of this, a little of that. I actually haven’t had a chance to go out and do all out working on all of my stuff. Mostly because I have been in Grad School and working on getting my board exams taken, so I haven’t been up to that much but I’m really hoping, actually that maybe I’ll get to do an event sometime in the next couple of months and maybe do some sort of strictly or jack and jill. I don’t know, I’m up for a little competition these days.
Brian: Cool, yeah, me too. I’ve been social dancing probably once a week. I go on the Tuesday nights here in New York usually. You know Liberty Swing is coming up so that should be the next event that you get to hit.
Autumn: Yeah, and that’s a nice close one too. I mean most of them, being in New York you feel kind of isolated, you know a lot of the events are big time travel events. When I lived out on the West Coast, I mean, I was at an event almost every weekend but it was so easy because I lived in Arizona so I was popping into California all the time. It’s definitely a little bit different but I’m so glad it’s in our back yard this time.
Brian: Yeah, it’s literally about 10 minutes from my house so I’m pretty psyched about that.
Autumn: Yeah, that’s pretty nice.
Brian: Everything else on the East Coast is probably a 2 to 3 hour drive minimum.
Autumn: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s not as frequent. I mean you might get a couple of events over the course of the year that are actually within driving or short flying distance but everything else is pretty far.
Brian: Right. Cool. Well, how about we get into our Feature Segment, what we like to call the Pow-Wow. We’re going to talk a little bit about Etiquette. Social dance Etiquette for the most part, right?
Autumn: Yeah. That’s a big one.
Brian: Yes, it is a big topic especially being that this is such a social dance. So hold on we’re gonna go right into the section.
Alright, for the Pow-Wow we’re going to talk about Social Dance Etiquette and what spurred this topic actually was, for me at least on my side, was a little incident that happened to me just, what was it, a couple weeks ago.
Autumn: Yeah, a couple weeks ago.
Brian: And Autumn was with me actually. We went to a demo at a dance and we dancing the whole night through obviously and stayed the whole evening. I asked a girl to dance and we went out to hit the dance floor and I was interrupted about 30 seconds into the dance by her “Dance Partner” I guess. He completely just hi-jacked my dance and said that…It turns out he said that he requested this song for them to dance to, even though, I think she ok’d it with him before like, “Oh, is this the song that you requested”? He said, “No, no this isn’t the song”. We decided to go out and dance. 30 seconds in he realized that, “Oh, it was the song that I requested for us to dance to.” He came and actually pushed me aside and took over the dance very rudely.
Autumn: Quite literally, he just stepped on in and was like “Oh sorry, this is the one that I requested” and no discussion about it.
Brian: Right, and it’s funny because I was shocked these guys were, well not her, it wasn’t her fault, but he seemed to be a seasoned dancer and had been dancing for a long time and should definitely have that kind of etiquette about him and where he know kinda what to do and what not to do in a social environment. I never actually had that happen to me on that level, which was amazing.
Autumn: Yeah, well apparently, when I was talking to some other people, he’s actually been an instructor for 20 some odd years, or something crazy like that. So there’s no question that he should have this knowledge of what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate on the social dance floor. Especially with another instructor. You know what I’m saying? It’s definitely, to have the courtesy to say “Hey, I’d like to cut in” or “This is my dance” but it was very odd. I never, ever have seen anything like that.
Brian: Right. I was actually speechless. When it happened I really was kinda like “Are you serious?” But I didn’t even know what to say. I guess there’s two lessons to be learned here. 1- Never do that. Never interrupt anybody’s dance. It doesn’t matter if it’s your favorite person to dance with on the planet or you’re dance partner or you requested a song. Whatever the reason is, if you didn’t capture that partner for that dance then you wait and you go for another song. Maybe you can request that song next time. And the second lesson to learn is, luckily I didn’t know how to react, but if it does happen to you, just don’t argue, don’t fight. Just kinda let it happen because there’s no point in causing a scene on the dance floor of course. He did come and apologize to me because he realized that was the wrong thing to do and I accepted his apology. Looking back on it I could have easily been like, “Are you serious. No way.” I tried to be the bigger person I guess. So two lessons learned. Don’t do it and if it happens to you just let it slide and let it go.
Autumn: Brian, that was actually kind of an interesting night because there was quite a bit of stuff that happened to both of us on the Social Dance Etiquette wave length in that one particular dance. I also had something that happened to me that really spurred a thought of my own in the sense that I was dancing with this guy and I never danced with this guy before. There’s a couple of these moves that are really popular in a particular generation of dancers, not necessarily age wise, but somewhere in the timeline of dancing there was some moves where they actually put their hands on your stomach, or your lower hips to move you back and forth. Almost like a basket whip that they’re moving you backwards basically. There were two things that really popped up in my mind. First of all, this guy put his hand on my stomach. Which I don’t think a lot of guys think about it clearly, but Women who don’t generally know somebody, don’t really want a guy touching there squishy parts. Not that I’m all that squishy but you have to be sensitive to the fact that not everybody likes being touched. That’s one of those grey areas, that obviously there’s the big ones like no hands in the groin, no hands on the breasts. That’s a pretty obvious tell tale non-social etiquette type thing. This is one of those grey areas. But he did, he put his hands on my stomach to do this move. The guy actually, instead of using a flat hand he used the tips of his fingers so it literally felt like I was being impaled by this. And he didn’t get it. He had no concept that he was like literally impaling me in the stomach to do this ridiculous dance move. Im thinking to myself, how is it that someone can be so wrapped up in the midst of doing a move and not realize how much they are actually affecting and hurting somebody else physically. You know, like in the midst of dancing. The other thing was the inappropriateness. He didn’t know me from Joe Shmoe. He didn’t know if that was ok for me and I really feel like there are some particular moves, that being one of them. If you’re going to go that road I think you should at least know that persons name or have danced with them a couple times or you could even ask. You could be like “Is that alright? I have a couple moves I’m working on I want to do this thing” whatever. I was pretty mortified actually because I had a stomach ache for the rest of the night which was really crappy. He used so much force it was incredible.
Brian: I guess it’s kinda like when you’re friends with people and you meet somebody new and you may end up becoming better friends with that person. It’s kinda like that where you’re not going to share the most intimate details about your life with that person just yet. Maybe if you become friends with them over a period of time you’ll release more and more and become closer and closer with that person. I think that dancing is the same way. When you ask someone for the very first time to dance you don’t really want to cross those boundaries if you don’t know the person. Maybe if you know the person, maybe not even then. You kind of feel that out with your dance relationship as you dance with them over and over again and you get to know them better you’ll find out what lines can be crossed and what lines can’t be crossed.
Autumn: Absolutely, you know I see a lot of people out there use their dancing as kind of like a flirting mechanism, like a way to get physically close to somebody, maybe they like that somebody, and I’m not saying that is necessarily a bad thing. You have to make sure that both people are on the same link in order for you to start throwing that stuff out there. Especially those very intimate type of moves. Granted, we are doing partnering dancing and we are touching each other all over the place. I’m not saying necessarily that it’s touching that’s bad but there’s certain moves that really cross that grey line. I agree with you, you really should get to know your partner a little bit before you start throwing some of those body checking type moves in there. If you are using dancing a flirtation device, you know, almost like a flotation device but a flirtation device but different you know? If you’re using it that way you really have to make sure that the other person is on the same wave length. I can’t tell you how many creepy guys I’ve had who think that they’re flirting with me and they’re doing the sex pot type thing and I’m going “oh god, this is disgusting!” I hate that. Social Etiquette is the same in dancing as it is in actual real life. I don’t think people realize just because you’re touching more often and you’re closer in contact with them means that those barriers are not there.
Brian: Right, and it’s not always the place where you touch. Like the stomach might be in-appropriate, but it’s how you do it as well. I’ve seen some guys put girls into dips and kind of stroke their face in that flirtatious way. Who knows they could totally be great friends and maybe it’s totally appropriate for their dance. I certainly would never do that to somebody I dance with. I don’t even think I would do something like that with someone I was intimate with.
Autumn: It’s true.
Brian: It’s definitely how you do it. Not only where, you have to be careful where, but also how. I’m very conscious with whomever I dance with. Even with people I dance with all the time, who are just my friends, I’m still conscious of that. Accidents happen all the time, which funny because I crack up all the time because I hit a bad place. I’ll totally call myself out and be like “Sorry about that.” Even with my friends I’m very careful. It’s more of a respectful thing to me. I don’t want to let it get out of hand just because you’re friends with them and you joke around. Definitely respect their space and all that good stuff.
Autumn: Absolutely. I really do understand. People really do feel sexy when they’re dancing. I’m just gonna put it on out there. It’s something that people do innately. They’re out there wiggling and moving and like shaking it for the benefit of, not only for themselves, but a lot of people are out there to attract someone else. They feel really sexy. Maybe they don’t get a chance to express themselves in that way for whatever reason so that’s their outlet. Which, I want to say, is totally fine but again, you’re right, how you’re touching somebody and making sure that just because you’re attracted to somebody. Like if I’m on the bus and see some hot guy I’m not gonna go over and just start touching him. That’s just not appropriate. Maybe he would be down but at the same time you have to feel each other out just a little just to make sure that’s cool. For all I know he could be gay. That could be hideous to him. That’s such a faux pau to just make an assumption about somebody and then go forward with your own agenda without understanding what it is you’re affecting in the other person.
Brian: Right, absolutely. We’ve covered two main topics. We talked about not interrupting anybody’s dance socially on the floor for sure and if it happens to you kinda let it go and hopefully they’ll apologize. Definitely don’t do it yourself because it’s not appropriate and not good etiquette. And the touching and doing moves that are inappropriate. Touching in not so great places like stomachs and things like that and flirtatious/how you touch the person. So definitely take that with you on the dance floor at your next social outing and think about these words and make sure you’re not crossing that line. That line can be very easily crossed and you might not even realize it.
Autumn: Absolutely, absolutely.
Brian: Alright, so let’s go ahead and move into our news and announcements for SwingStudioOnline.com.
Alright, so now that you’ve heard us go back and fourth about Swing Etiquette we want to hear what you think about it. Maybe you’ve been a dance etiquette victim or maybe you disagree completely with what we have to say about it. You can definitely let us know a couple different ways. So the first is you can comment on this episodes blog post on swingstudioonline.com and there’s , second you can send an email us at comments@swingstudioonline.com, and lastly you can make an audio comment at 206-984-1907.
Now if you’d like dozens of other resources such as this one, you can find them in the Swing Studio Online Academy along with video West Coast Swing lessons, interviews, articles, and tips n tricks. To learn more about the Swing Studio Online Academy go to SwingStudioOnline.com.
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Autumn & I love to hear what you have to say. If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions please send them to comments@swingstudioonline.com. You can also leave an audio comment at 206-984-1907. We want to know what kind of content you want us to deliver in the Swing Studio Online Podcast, Website, and Academy so let your voice be heard and we promise to listen.
That’s it for this episode of Swing Studio Online, we look forward to seeing you on the dance floor.
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