The Wrong Question

Arlene (LondonTango) has an "Ask Arlene" feature where people send in the questions that are on their minds, and she gives some sort of an answer and then throws it to the floor.

The last question was "How good do I have to be for a good dancer to want to dance with me"?

The answers are ok, you can go and read them there. I started to write a comment, but it turned into an essay. So I put it here.

On one level this seems to me like a completely reasonable, natural, and practical question, and I entirely sympathise with it. On another level it seems, like most questions that are interesting at all, to be The Wrong Question.

It does work like that, up to a point. As you get better at dancing, people feel able and willing to dance with you, who weren't before. If you eliminate some quirk that makes you difficult to dance with, you're going to get more dances and they're likely to go better. The goal is to have fun, and to a certain degree it's more fun if your partner is better at it, so it makes sense to want good dancers to ask you, and it makes sense to assume that they want you to be good. It's also more fun if you are better at it, but I'll come back to that.

I feel sympathetic towards the person wondering whether it is actually feasible to make the next step up, what that step would be, how long it's likely to take, and whether, even if she does, it will do her any good at all. Is there anything on the other side of all that effort - effort to be made in an unknown direction, by unknown means - that will make it worth it?

Everybody talks about what makes men good to dance with, but hardly anyone talks about what makes women good to dance with, as opposed to merely inoffensive, and you can easily get the impression that either there's no such thing as quality for women, beyond looking good, or that it just doesn't matter very much. What it consists of is generally a mystery. You may well wonder whether it's worth sticking around, what exactly your contribution is meant to be, and what on earth you are meant to do next.

On top of that, it's very easy to waste a lot of time going down wrong tracks, so I sympathise with the writer's "When?."

If I were trying to pick apart the question, I might point out that there's no general consensus as to what "good" means. People like me and my friend tangocommuter and many others might like it if there were one, and we may sometimes write as though we think there is. And maybe there is, either at some very broad worldwide level or at some narrow local level of people who think and talk about these things, or maybe both. But among the general population of dancers in London, there just isn't. There isn't anything remotely approaching one. I'm not saying there won't be one some day, but there isn't one now.

However, if the questioner were sitting with me or with Arlene at a milonga, we might very well ask "Which good dancer?" And she might reply "That one over there." In that case, the chances are good that we'd have some practical hints. For example:

"You need to be able to do close embrace properly, and work on your connection, and do something to show that you're interested in dancing that style, like always defaulting to close instead of defaulting to open as you were taught."
"It doesn't matter, he's really shy and only dances with people he knows from class. Try chatting to him."
"You need to be able to do a V-embrace. He can't lead square-on."
"You need to be able to do a square-on embrace. He can't lead in a V."
"Try changing your clothes so he knows you want to dance that (other) style."
"You need to stop doing that 'ornament' where you rub your shoe on the man's trousers, he hates hates hates that!"
"You need to have totally neutral steering and be able to deliver everything likely to get thrown at you in social dancing."
"You need to be a safe and accurate follower, and then just chat to him, then wander off for a while and give him a chance to watch you. If it doesn't work just cross him off the list for three months and try again."
"You need to do all of the above and listen to the music more."
"Just ask him, you're a reasonable dancer and he likes to be asked, and so many good dancers ask him he doesn't need to bother."
"You're over half his age, and you don't come in a colour he likes. Forget it."

What I'm saying is, it's not a silly question.

But when I say it's the Wrong Question, I mean it's a question that's directed at a solving a problem that might be better solved by the answer to some other question. It's a Wrong Question I've asked myself more than once, but I've only ever answered it with different ones.

For example:

Is my own pride and satisfaction a sufficient reason for me to want to dance well, rather than badly?

Does this activity, as it is now, add something good to my life that I want to keep?

Because, if the answer to those is no, I am not doing myself justice and I should switch to something that does satisfy me as a person. If the answer is yes, then who asks me to dance doesn't cease to matter, but it does become something I look at in a different way.

I can use whatever motivation there is lying around to get me through difficult times when I'm doing something I want to do. If I feel inspired by someone in particular, I can try to put myself in a place where I'll truly appreciate him and be able to give him back as much fun as he gives me. There's nothing wrong with that. It's natural and it makes sense, and it's great motivation to look for improvements and try to solve the mysteries.

But I don't have control over whether he wants to dance with me. That's not up to me to decide, and I can't necessarily change it by dancing well.

If I do dance well, I'll get dances with others who dance well too. I'll be able to give and recieve more pleasure. But this is not a mechanical thing. It's not like passing some sort of exam. As I do it for longer, and the average quality goes up, another dimension starts to matter, too; those who I have known for a while now, and who also care about me.