The issue of complaints among dancers is a difficult one. Having been involved in running a number of dances for a number of years, I’ve decided to document some of the cases I’ve dealt with in an attempt to illustrate the complexity of the issue.
A
A was a, maybe 30ish, dancer who could best be described as extremely arrogant. He had a way about him that put a lot of people off, and a strong lead that some women didn’t like. He also had friends in the dance community who did like him. Nobody thought him a sexual predator, but some women would not dance in a line with him.
This was a dance where we had decided to have three people talk to a problem dancer. We did. He simply got defensive, said nobody complained to him. He continued to dance the way he did and eventually stopped coming because I think we pissed him off.
B
I was invited to join the board in part because I was sympathetic to some of the issues of the young lady dancers and the problems they were encountering with unwelcome advances from older men. This led to a period in the dance where announcements were made targetting creepy old guys, with statements like “if she’s young enough to be your daughter, treat her like your daughter.”
The net result of this was the announcements, instead of painting a picture of a welcoming fun event, painted a picture of a viper’s nest of sexual predators. Not sure that’s what we wanted to do.
There were announcements made to counter the then ethic of always accepting dance invitations. You didn’t have to say yes to someone who creeped you out.
This era was more complex than it might seem. Were there more creepy old men then? Well there certainly were some who loved to dance with young girls and maybe closer than they should. But I would say the majority of men simply liked to dance with dancers of all ages and enjoyed the cross-generational contact that is often so missing from our culture.
I spent a fair amount of time talking to various young women at the dance to get a sense of their feelings on the issue. Again, yes there were some bad apples, but mostly these young dancers wanted to dance with just their young friends and didn’t like it when people of their parent’s generation would ask them to dance.
One young lady told me the biggest problem she had with the dance was that there were so many people who thought they could dance in “their” line. She didn’t even want to encounter people not in their clique as neighbors, let alone men from a different generation.
I had the sense that maybe the dance powers of that era were played into villifying older (and I mean over 30) men to allow a very active and dynamic young clique to stayed closed to outsiders.
It’s still more complicated — that young clique got a lot of criticism from the elders, but everything we said dance should be, a community, a place of mutal support, a welcoming place, etc. etc. was true in spades for these young dancers. That community they had, within the larger community, did everything one would want a dance community to do. Some said they didn’t think they would have survived those turbulent early years of life without the support of that young community.
C
The school we danced at received a lot of complaints from freshmen who attended the introductory dance. The school had a committee of people designated and trained to handle these sorts of issues. We had a meeting. (I was the only man in attendence.)
There were five catgories of complaints registered against the dancers at our dance. Four of those complaints could have occurred at any event where men and women were together. Unwelcome compliments, attempts to get someone to leave the dance with them, and in general all those situations where a man might hit on a woman and the clueless ones don’t pick up on the cues that his overtures are unwelcome.
These things could happen at work or a church social. It’s about men and women trying to balance the normal activities of life with underlying hormonal urges.
One of the five categories was dance specific. Men holding the women closer than they felt comfortable with. This could be something we could address. But again, it’s complicated, this was also an era where grinding was common at the dance and lots of couples enjoyed close physical touch during the swings.
We spent a lot of time teaching women how to assert their space by holding a dance frame at the distance they want. Left hand placed on shoulder in a way that it can push out. This lets the woman be in charge of the distance. I taught that when I was teaching.
Then I had a very educational experience — I sometimes enjoyed what was then called the lady’s role. There was a guy, bigger and stronger than me, who I wound up having to swing with mulitple times in a dance with a shadow swing. He went all faux gay on me, saying how glad he was to have this chance and pulling me close, stroked my back, and, well he was joking, but I didn’t enjoy it, and even seeing it coming, wasn’t able to use a dance frame to keep him away. (He was a dancer women complained about as well.)
It was embarrassing to me and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Hmmm, this is way more difficult than it seems.
I had another man try to pull me close after that, but I saw it coming and used a dance frame that was almost a straight arm to hold him away. He got really mad at me and said that’s how he dances with everyone and how dare I push him away. That’s how I should expect to be swung. (He was a dancer women complained about as well.)
About the meetings with the school, well they were very frustrating. I kept asking the experienced people at the school what steps they recommended we should take, and they were always cut off by our board members who instead wanted to describe the steps we were already taking. It was more as if the board members were trying to defend how they did things rather than learn how to more effectively deal with these issues.
D
The two men I mentioned above were both considered problematic for many women as well. Neither was really a sexual predator, although one was single and, like many people at the dance, enjoyed it as a place to connect with members of the opposite sex. But he was respectful and straight forward, just, well, an asshole.
There are a number of people at the dance who are socially awkward. There was one in particular who did tremendous good work for the dance but who simply rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He probably had something wired the wrong way. He made the famous comment that everyone at the dance is socially awkward, and that’s what’s so wonderful about the contra community. You don’t have to be cool to be welcome in it.
E
E was an individual who definitely did have some mental problems. There were difficulties with dancing with him, there were behaviors that were difficult, but everyone in the community knew him and accepted him. Most of the women were happy to give him a dance in an evening.
On bad nights, people would just shake their heads and say E is off his meds tonight. So, maybe a wonderful story about and open and accepting dance community, but not such a good experience for a new comer at the dance.
I used to drive E home after dances. He told me about his meds, he said people want him on the meds, and, well he does it, but he doesn’t like it. He can feel the real him inside and he hates that the meds repress who he really is. If people can’t deal with the real him, well that’s their problem.
He wound up getting in an altercation with another of the problem dancers mentioned above, and we never saw him again. I tried to find him and see how he was, but was never able to.
F
F was a guy who showed up and waited for the new young dancers. He would hold them close, telling them that’s how a swing is done. I was surprised a number of times to run into him and his current new young partner in line, and have the woman (really girl) sink into my arms as if she thought that’s how you’re supposed to do it. I wound up trying to show them the dance frame.
There weren’t many complaints about F, because most ladies didn’t want to dance with him. He always found the newcomers. Many didn’t come back.
This seemed a problem so I talked to him. The problem persisted. I talked to him again. He explained that the women liked dancing with him that way.
He’s one of two people I asked not to come back to the dance anymore. (I was the monarch at that dance.) He didn’t have many friends in the dance community, there was no sense of loss.
G
G was a guy that was only occasionally at our dances, but someone who danced a lot in the larger dance community, weekends, etc. married to another, really nice, active dancing lady. They had kids and would sometimes trade who went to the dance and who stayed home.
He was a strong dancer and liked to dip whoever he was swinging. He did it in a forceful way, and, while maybe 30 or so, he liked dancing in the “young” line and dipping the young ladies.
A number of the older women in the dance community were offended by his behavior and made a very strong case that he should be banned from the dance. He seemed a nice enough guy, so I decided to watch him dance.
Indeed, he was in the “young” line, and indeed he dipped almost every neighbor lady. But they all came up smiling, they all seemed to really enjoy his dance moves.
I explained this to the women who thought he should be banned, the ones who didn’t like him. I asked them to tell me of a dancer who had a problem with him. They found one lady. I talked to her. Yes, he had dipped her when she didn’t want to be dipped. I asked if she said anything. She said yes, she asked him not to do that. I asked what happened then. She said he never dipped her again.
Despite a lot of pressure, I didn’t ban him.
H
H was maybe the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. But he was physically awkward and was a strong, not always in time, lead. Some women complained that he hurt them while trying to lead them where he thought they should go.
We’re not talking holding close or anything, just putting pressure on hands and arms that was uncomfortable.
I got complaints about him.
I talked to him, and said women say you are hurting them. Well here’s what happens almost all the time. He got very defensive and said nobody ever mentioned it to him. Right away we were in an antagonistic configuration.
Well time passed, and the issue persisted. One difference, I had learned a little bit about non-violent communication (NVC) which is maybe a misleading name. It might better be called non-judgemental communication. It’s based on 4 steps:
1- non judgemental observation
2- expression of how that makes you feel
3- express a personal need
4- make a request
Armed with this I approached H another time.
H, I said, (1) a number of women have come to me saying they feel you’ve hurt them while dancing. (Not the accusatory, you hurt them.) (2) this makes me feel bad since I don’t like it when people aren’t enjoying the dance. (3) I need to run a dance where the dancers feel comfortable. (4) Can you please work on using a lighter touch when you dance so I don’t get these complaints?
The effect was amazing. He thanked me for pointing it out and changed his behavior.
J
J was, at least for me, one of the most interesting cases. He was old, very intelligent, and with a personal history of great ups and downs. Many people, including myself, who knew him really liked him.
But he did like to get close to the ladies. And here’s how various women reacted to him. Either evil or as a harmless old man.
A young woman, a sensitive gentle woman, new to our community and staying at our house was watching some dance videos I had. She was suddenly visibly upset seeing J in the video, saying that’s the man who ruined her early dance experiences. She was clearly very damaged by whatever interaction she had had with him. Yes, a bad dance experience can have lasting effect.
Wow. So I asked a lot of other women about him. One was another young dancer, a vivacious sort of lady and I asked if J bothered her with his hands, his grabbing. She just threw it off, saying “nah, that’s just J.”
Amazing, two different young ladies with completely different reactions.
What about the older (again I mean over 30 but also into their 60s) women? One was my partner in a dance. She went over to some neighbor interaction with J, and came back shaking her head and laughing, “J always figures out some way to cop a sneak feel.”
Another said she enjoyed grinding with him, but hated some other strange gesture he had and asked him to not do that. He stopped that and they continued to happily grind away.
I didn’t really have many direct complaints about J. As with E, it was as if he was a likable old guy with some strange behaviors that didn’t stop a lot of the women from giving him a dance in an evening.
But, like with F, he would sometimes go after the new young ladies. I watched him hold this young girl close, squeezing her breasts tightly against him. I asked the girl afterwards if she was comfortable with that. Well I’m like her grandfather, and so is J, and she couldn’t have been more than 20, and well what do you say? She didn’t know, she thought that’s maybe how you’re supposed to do it. She was clearly uncomfortable both with J’s dancing and my asking her how she felt about J’s dancing.
She didn’t come back.
I told J he couldn’t come back either. (Although I’m told he’s reformed and dancing again.)
XY
Having left the dance community, I’ve heard of two dancers who have been asked to leave the dances. Both were long time members of the dance community. Both have personalities that some people like and others don’t.
Both feel as if they’ve been thrown out with no good cause and no good explanation and no good process.
Ironically, Y was one of the people who enforced the ban on X, and who, according to X, didn’t offer due process or explanation just as Y complains now.
I am in no position to judge what happened, but things are so complex and I noticed two really interesting examples where supposedly factual incidents were flipped from what they first appeared.
In one Y complained that there was no process or procedure used for “alleged” complaints in one dance. Well it turns out, there were, and he ignored them.
In another, someone complained about Y hurting them. Well it turns out, maybe, who knows really, that she was hurting him and wouldn’t stop.
This stuff just isn’t that easy.
Well, I know nothing of these two cases, but do have a fear that people might get banned because they’re assholes, or rub people the wrong way. As that one time dancer said, what’s wonderful about contra is you don’t have to be cool to be welcomed.
What if they’re sexual predators driving young dancers away? Well probably should be banned then.
What if they’re personalities that simply piss people off? (Two dancers back in the day famously almost got into a fist fight arguing about how a dance should be run.) Well maybe that should just be people working things out without the need of a higher dance organization stepping in.
Z
There is no Z, but there will be. I tend to think this is not a problem that dance organizers can easily address.
Today I see the dance more like an arena, a place where men and women come together to enjoy an activity which has wonderful music, great dancing, and a constant interaction between all the men and women in the hall. It’s not like you can just dance with your favorite partner all night, or a few select friends.
It’s a learning experience for all of us, learning how to deal with all the dancers coming down the line at you. And there will be mistakes, and people not as good at it as others. And people that really like each other and wind up being couples for life, and people who become good friends and meet and socialize outside of the dance, and people who just piss each other off. Except those people also have friends, and maybe lovers in the community as well.
How much control should the organizers try to exert over the behavior of the men and women acting like men and women at the dance?
I think a lot of it just has to be left up to the dancers. And the truth be known, the dance won’t be for everyone. Some will thrive in the community, others won’t. People will learn who they feel safe dancing with, and also which lines to avoid. Like the one with your ex in it, or that asshole you can’t stand.
But the predators waiting for the new young dancers…. Well that’s where I would draw the line.
