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Floor Etiquette
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| Dance Floor Etiquette for Any
Situation |
| by: Shawn
Trautman |
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| An essential yet often overlooked
aspect of successful social dancing is floor etiquette.
Dancing on a social dance floor is much like driving.
Often new drivers learn in an empty parking lot or some
other controlled environment. They gain confidence in
their own skills and ability to maneuver their car,
only to discover the difficult part of driving once you
master the basics is not pointing your own car in the
direction you want to go and hitting the gas; rather,
it is negotiating all of the hazards along the way
(otherwise known as traffic). In the same way, a
beginning dancer can be thrown for a loop after
mastering the basic steps for the two-step, only to
discover that negotiating a crowded dance floor in a
country nightclub for an upbeat two-step is much akin
to merging into traffic on the beltway around Boston,
Massachusetts—traffic is bumper to bumper, with
everyone going at least fifty-five miles per hour! The
following three rules should significantly improve your
chances for success and enjoyment on the social dance
floor. |
| Be Aware of Your
Surroundings |
| On a crowded dance floor your
surroundings are always changing. In the interest of
preventing collisions and other unhappy events,
awareness of the layout of the floor and all obstacles,
moving and otherwise, is necessary. This responsibility
falls primarily on the leader because he is in charge
of selecting the moves, and in dances that move around
the circumference of the floor, the leader is usually
in the forward-facing position while the follower
spends most of her time moving backward around the
floor. That being said, it is also important for the
follower to be aware of her surroundings. There are
some collisions that only the follower can see coming,
so if you can see over your partner’s shoulder,
followers, pay attention and alert your leader if you
see anything! |
| Apologize or Excuse
Yourself |
| If a collision occurs on the dance
floor, always apologize or excuse yourself, even if the
other person ran into you. Think of it this
way—you are either apologizing for running into
someone, or you are apologizing for not seeing the
other dancer’s disastrous course and taking the
high road of collision prevention. Even if you
don’t feel that the collision was your fault,
apologize in the interest of a pleasant evening.
Engaging another dancer’s ego in a contest to
determine whose fault a collision really was is rarely
in anyone’s best interest. Save any disparaging
remarks for a pillow or other inanimate and non-emotive
object. |
| Know the Correct
Placement for Each Dance |
| Collision prevention is even more
effective in the battle against spoiled evenings of
dance than collision management. The first step of
collision prevention is knowledge of the dance and the
correct placement of that dance on the dance floor. For
instance, to dance the two-step, waltz, or tango
successfully, it is vitally important to know that
these dances are danced around the circumference of the
dance floor with constant movement in the
counterclockwise direction. |
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