additional dance blather

[jinian]

I talked with roommates at lunch about having aspie traits and finding that framing useful quite often, and dancing was a great example. I can dance okay, I can get lost in the music and move to it on my own, and I can look at other people to get ideas that will gradually percolate into my own movement. But I pretty consistently fail at dancing this kind of dance with people.

In ballroom dance it's obvious and explicit who your partners are. Where I fail at social-or-individual dancing seems to be in processing a negotiation step:

• I am busy dancing to the music.
  
• Someone maybe wants to dance with me and sends a mysterious signal saying so.
  
• My processor is DOING MUSIC RIGHT NOW and also not crashing into people, so sends no response.
  
• The other person thinks I mean "no" (or maybe "you suck"? some people seem kind of grouchy later) and gives up.
  
• I eventually think to myself, "hey, wait, something happened there" and maybe try to reciprocate, to no avail.
  
• FAIL.

Of course, I'm generally bad at mirroring what someone else is doing, anyway, so it might be just as well. That bit is my trouble in learning movement. Classes are way better, especially if the instructor describes things thoroughly in words; imitating on the fly does not go well.

I was also looking for gender cues in dancing. I definitely have a deliberately and overtly gained knowledge of masculine cues in some other contexts, so I thought if I was doing drag it might benefit me to dance like a dude. Turns out a deliberately genderfuck event is not the place to look. I got some ideas, but as we were all trying to mix it up I got nothing too consistent out of it. Stiffer, broader movements seems about the size of it. Further elaborations if I manage to discover them.

Comments

don't know if this will help

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

My most common signal for "I would like to dance with you" is likely to be mirroring your movements, with some eye contact. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for me to recognize someone who wants to dance with me, because I tend to either look down, or close my eyes.