i won't dance

yesterday morning i saw this article in which a school attempts to make everybody feel better by having a rule that if you are asked to dance, you MUST dance with the person.

and let's face it, because of where this school is, we are nearly certain that this is the fragility of boys being protected against the consent of girls. yeah, in some places everybody asks everybody else, but usually it's the boys doing the asking.

which sends the terrible message that anybody OWES anybody a dance, or a date, or any social interaction.

and fine. i get that we want kids not to be mean to each other.

a long time ago we used to teach contradance to our students. and we taught contradance manners, which include changing partners after each dance, and being polite in rejection if one does nto wish to dance with the asker.

we told the kids it takes courage sometimes to ask for a dance, because it opens you up to rejection. so we have some little rules of manners so that anybody can ask anybody and nobody's feelings have to be too hurt. there are polite ways to reject that save the asker's dignity and if we all follow these rules, you don't have to dance with people you don't want to dance with, and nobody is mean to you for asking.

so this is what we told them.

you can ask anybody to dance. if they say no, you simply leave them alone after that unless they have told you to ask them again later.

if you are asked to dance and you wish to dance with that person for that dance, good. you're all set.

if you are asked to dance and you don't want to dance with that person, you have some choices:

you can say you have already promised the dance to someone else, which you should only say if in fact you are already planning to dance with someone else. you can say you are going to sit this one out, but then you have to leave the dance floor for at least the beginning of this song. then you go outside, get some punch, sit by the wall, talk to your friends, whatever.

if you really were going to sit this one out but you do want to dance with the person who asked you later, you can ask them to join you at the punchbowl or on the porch or whatever. you can tell them to please ask you again later. or you can ask THEM to dance later.

and this is the important part: these little bits of script allow us graceful ways of asking, accepting or rejecting and also graceful ways of being rejected.

if you ask someone to dance and they say "i'm going to sit this one out", on its face you have not been rejected, and your dignity is intact. it's a little social fiction that helps us all get along.