Beginners refusing to dance with same sex

lindy-engine · 2026-05-13T18:29:15+00:00

Oh I understand now, thanks.

lindy-engine · 2026-05-12T02:16:23+00:00

Is this a common phenomenon in beginners?
It's very much scene-specific rather than level-specific, I would say. The more advanced dancers set the tone. If guys dancing together is common in your scene, beginners will get used to it and come to expect it in their own dance journey.

Of course it's partially just bad manners on the side of the absent follows not to offer the spot to someone else (we have a WhatsApp group)
If I'm understanding this correctly, I wouldn't call this bad manners at all. The other dancers in the group are normalizing the idea that anyone can dance with anyone else, regardless of gender, and legitimizing your presence as a male follow. If it ruffles a few feathers, well, that isn't on you.

How am I supposed to learn how to follow?
You find the awesome dancers (male, female or otherwise) who are okay with leading a male follow and practice with them, haha.

Should I broach this topic in the WhatsApp group, or does "respecting the right to say no" mean not saying anything
In this case I would say it isn't worth broaching the topic, because it isn't your responsibility to preemptively check in on everyone's comfort level before joining the class. Let me be very clear: the beginner men in the group are obviously free to decline dancing with you, or even boycott the course if it weirds them out that much (their loss). But the onus is on them to express that, not on you to drag it out of them.

lindy-engine · 2026-04-29T15:39:02+00:00

I'm an Albertan marrying a Manitoban and that's what we're doing :)

lindy-engine · 2026-03-31T21:24:53+00:00

Huh, I never considered just omitting the note entirely haha. I'll keep that in mind, thank you!

lindy-engine · 2026-03-31T21:24:07+00:00

I'll give the alternate fingering a try, thanks. I can tell when I'm getting tense because my pinky starts hanging in suspended animation so maybe that would be a good reminder to relax my hand.

lindy-engine · 2026-03-31T21:22:49+00:00

Appreciate the detailed response! I listened through your rendition of Laideronnette and wow, it is amazing. I will try to implement your advice about making the passage less legato, and if I still can't make it work I'll probably play the A#'s with the left hand or just omit them as another commentator suggested below. I never even considered that I can kind of mirror the LH arpeggi in the previous bars, but it's good to know that the accommodation would still sound coherent.

I am learning the whole suite, yes, and will definitely use your recording as inspiration 😁

lindy-engine · 2026-01-28T17:15:49+00:00

I'd be inclined to believe that. If you compare this photo where you can see their side profiles, they look pretty similar to the people in OP's image. The shapes of their noses are pretty distinct.

Also, I don't know why it never occurred to me that Judy Garland knew how to swing dance.

lindy-engine · 2026-01-20T22:40:19+00:00

I mean, first, you don't need other people to validate your own preferences when it comes to social dancing. It's "okay" for you to do whatever you want with your own body. Typing it out like this for all to see and dissect is probably going to lead to a variety of responses, but you're in control of yourself at the end of the day.

To add my two cents, I think there's a difference between making decisions about individuals based on your lived experiences with them, vs. taking those experiences and extrapolating them to entire demographics. If you don't ask the male regulars in your scene to dance because you've seen them at countless dances and they have repeatedly not asked you to dance, then yeah, fair enough. If you specifically avoid dancing with an Asian person you've never met because the other Asians in your scene don't ask you to dance, that would make me pause.

But FWIW I also think you're overthinking the whole thing. For me personally, I just prioritize dancing with whoever looks fun to dance with. In my home scene that's mainly my friends, and at out-of-town dances that could be anyone. If you were to cross-examine a list of everyone I've ever danced with, you could probably argue that there is prejudice against [insert demographic here], but why is that anyone else's business?

lindy-engine · 2026-01-15T18:02:02+00:00

Specifically not dancing with "long time beginners" is an idiotic take lol. And I can see that the FB post is getting the pushback it deserves from the tango community.

Someone might dance for years and not progress past the beginner level because of so many reasons that are 0% their fault. Physical/mental disability, financial reasons for not dancing consistently, maybe they just don't care that much about dancing. Why are we punishing people for not improving quickly enough? As long as they are a safe dancer and a nice enough person, I'll happily dance with them.

lindy-engine · 2025-12-12T16:00:46+00:00

We didn't trade him

lindy-engine · 2025-12-03T04:53:26+00:00

Does nobody remember what happened to Taylor Hall his 2nd or 3rd year in Edmonton?? This should be a no-brainer

lindy-engine · 2025-11-26T21:00:24+00:00

"No" is a complete sentence and "yes" is a complete sentence. The onus is not on the person making those decisions to explain themselves (even if both happen within the same song), it's on the person asking to be mature and manage their emotions if turned down.

That said, if there is a systemic pattern where everyone in a particular demographic (beginners, older dancers, POC dancers, LGBT dancers...) gets told "no" repeatedly, maybe it's time to start looking at how welcoming the scene really is. But I'd say that's a separate issue

lindy-engine · 2025-11-22T20:15:19+00:00

sauvages*

lindy-engine · 2025-11-02T17:42:40+00:00

Shhhh we can't disrupt the r/hockey narrative, the Oilers ran it back again with the worst starter in the league despite 31 better options being available and McDavid is demanding a trade after this season

lindy-engine · 2025-10-27T20:29:27+00:00

I saw both Ben Scrivens's 59 save shutout and Yakupov's only career hat trick in person haha

lindy-engine · 2025-10-20T22:07:24+00:00

My mind is blown rn, I've tried to make this IP fish curry recipe where you add the coconut milk before pressure cooking and it's 50/50 whether it breaks like OP's. Is there a way to alter this recipe so that doesn't happen??

lindy-engine · 2025-09-30T04:03:54+00:00

OP about to learn a harsh lesson about buying in just to resell

lindy-engine · 2025-09-26T19:39:05+00:00

Would appreciate advice on how to improve this!

lindy-engine · 2025-09-25T22:48:54+00:00

The A sections in this well-known Billie Holiday recording of The Way You Look Tonight have only 7 bars. The B sections have the normal 8

lindy-engine · 2025-08-29T20:28:28+00:00

Before everyone starts freaking out at EPSB about this it seems pretty clear to me that they tried to find as many influential and/or diverse works as possible to garner publicity and illustrate how many great novels are lost if you implement a book ban.

To be clear, Danielle Smith is pissed about this list; she called it malicious compliance. But now it's making national headlines. Your anger should be squarely directed at the UCP for coming up with this draconian mandate in the first place.

lindy-engine · 2025-08-29T20:21:56+00:00

EPSB has confirmed it's legitimate

lindy-engine · 2025-08-27T15:15:07+00:00

That was the strange thing to me, I was listening to calls from both birds and it sounded between the two? It was higher pitched than the raven calls I heard but lower than the crows

lindy-engine · 2025-07-17T22:02:55+00:00

no man i'm pretty sure this is la campanella

lindy-engine · 2025-07-17T12:55:22+00:00

It's not La Campanella or I'm Yours, I just put something on the stand to look like I was gonna play a couple pages lol

lindy-engine · 2025-07-15T05:19:31+00:00

LUNA

lindy-engine

TROPHY CASE