Okay, here’s the truth: I didn’t attend my first social dance until 3 months into my swing dance classes. In college, I took an entire semester of salsa classes and never went dancing.
My excuse? I didn’t have anything to wear.
Yeah, I was nervous. I admit it. I was pretty certain I’d look foolish, say the wrong thing, not get asked to dance, or just be totally out of place.
As a newbie, you’re nervous for a good reason. You want to fit in and do things right. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.
But you have to go to a dance sooner or later. Otherwise, why are you learning to dance?
Fortunately, there are a lot of tried-and-true strategies for surviving your first social dance. Whether it’s your first dance ever or your first dance in a new city, use one or more of these for best results:
Strategy #1: Baby Steps
Slowly but surely, ease into the social dance scene.
If you’re insanely nervous, just drive by the venue without going in. Seriously. You may think that’s silly, but lots of people have social anxiety. If you drive by the venue, at least that’s something. You can also figure out the parking situation and where the entrance is, two fewer things to worry about.
The next time, gather up your courage to go in and sit and watch. Stay for at least 30 minutes. The third week, make a deal with yourself to ask three people to dance.
And so on. You can take smaller steps if you need to, or start bigger if you’re not that worried.
Strategy #2: Power in Numbers
Take a friend! Anyone from your class is a good choice. You can even take a non-dancing friend if you’re just planning on watching.
If the class is particularly cohesive, someone might organize a dance outing. Get in on that! Pretend your classmates are your best friends for a night. Who knows? They might be super cool people. And if not, you’ll soon make lots of new friends by going to dances regularly.
Strategy #3: Look Like You Belong
What you wear says something about who you are. On your first night out dancing, you want your clothing to say, “I belong here.”
Find out what people wear to a social dance in your city and genre of dance. Ask your teacher, ask your classmates. Perhaps there are pictures from social dances on a local dance organization’s website. Drive by and have a look in the window if you’re employing Strategy #1.
Seriously, though, don't obsess over the details. The internet doesn't have all the answers.
Get details! The more, the better. Type of shoes? What kind of pants or skirts? Dressed up or down?
Of course you won’t arrive looking like the spitting image of a mega-advanced, internationally esteemed dancer, women falling at your feet.
No, you don’t have to try that hard. So long as you have the basic style down, you’ll feel more comfortable and relaxed.
Strategy #4: Assume Nothing
I’ve heard people say this about their dance scene: “Our community is so welcoming!” Others will say, “People are really cliquish.” Don’t take any of that to heart. Your experience at your first social dances will be unique, and it likely won’t match exactly what others are telling you. Allow yourself to feel whatever you feel.
Don’t assume people will ask you to dance. Don’t assume you’ll be left alone if you’re feeling shy. Don’t assume the venue takes credit cards, or that you can bring your own water. Don’t assume the etiquette will be effortless to figue out.
Keep in mind that each venue has a different flavor. Venues even vary from week to week, depending on the music, the mix of people, and the balance of leads and follows.
Seattle is a great example. On lead-heavy nights, a follow can feel like a rock star. On follow-heavy nights, she could feel like chopped liver.
And on crowded nights, I wonder how Seattle can be filled with such klutzy people. Heh. Or is it just me?
Expect to be a little confused. Expect to integrate slowly into this new social circle. Expect to get your feet (and feelings) stepped on a few times as you figure out how things work and how you fit.
And remember…
Don’t let anyone make you feel stupid for easing into a new social scene. It’s not wrong to be nervous. However, that super-nervous feeling? It only lasts for a few dances at most. In a couple months you’ll be an old pro, gleefully telling your friends how AWEsome dancing is.
And then you can help them go to their first dance!
How did you get through your first social dance? Comment and let me know!
Photo credit: Jerry Bunkers
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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
If you’re nervous about going to your first dance, ask yourself this: do you think you’ll accidentally make a pass at your girlfriend’s sister? No? Well, then you’ll already be one up on me.
Here’s my very first social swing dance:
I was dating a girl in the scene, and after watching her perform at a big band concert with the rest of the local performance group, I decided I really needed to try out swing dancing myself. We really hadn’t been dating for very long, and I had only met her identical twin sister once (maybe twice) at this point. The girl I was dating always wore her hair down with her contacts, and her sister had her hair up and glasses on when I met her.
My girlfriend and I make plans to meet up at the weekly social. Being a raw beginner, I show up early to take the drop-in lessons, while my girlfriend was going to show up later. Near the end of the lesson, I see her walk into the hall. Now would be a good time to bring up the fact that I never dance with my glasses on – they just always feel like they’re going to fall off, and I see well enough without them to move around. So, I see her walk in, and stand with the other regulars who are waiting around for the beginner lesson to finish. There were more leads than follows in the lesson, and I happened to be without a partner at this point in the lesson rotation, so I walk over to say hi.
I was just getting my hands to her hips to pull her into me, when my brain gets that nagging feeling that something is off. I hesitate just shy of grabbing her, and she looks me dead in the eyes and states:
“Wrong twin, buddy.”
She’s surrounded by about five or six of the regular dancers in the scene at this moment. I manage to sheepishly get out an “I’m sorry” or something along those lines, and slink back to the lesson. I can only imagine what shade of red my face was.
Fast forward almost two and half years, and I’m an avid dancer and very active member of our scene. I’m good friends with those regulars who were standing around to witness my shame, I’m still friends with both my girlfriend from this story and her sister, and I’m engaged to another dancer in the scene.
So get out there and try it!
Okay, well. I sure can’t top that! Some experiences guarantee that you’ll develop thick skin. Great story!
My first social dance was in high school. I went with a few friends from jazz band to see our band teacher perform in his swing band at a swing dance. Before that night, the idea of a dance – any dance – was probably the most tortuous thing I could imagine, fraught with social maneuverings I couldn’t understand, and social anxiety to the max.
I honestly don’t understand why I went, or how I didn’t die. To this day. Why did I do that? How did I survive? I was not that kind of girl to TRY things, or GO places…!
Maybe it helped that I showed up with other totally raw beginners. We had no concept of what good dancing was or wasn’t and that there was a scene to be accepted in or not.
But I had so much fun, and was so entranced by this dark little dance hall up in the ‘big city’, I went back week after week. Only one or two of my friends ever went, and we made friends with kids from another school who also went. I grew up in the scene with those friends and the rest is history, I guess!
“I honestly don’t understand why I went…”
The happiest of mistakes!
My friend and I started going to Lindy Hop classes together. I was eager to go to a social dance but she was really nervous and I wasn’t confident enough to go on my own the first time. It took a couple of months to get her to come with me, but we had a great time. :)
Good thoughts! These strategies apply to every new situation. I especially like #4. As for #3, well, this kind of thing doesn’t phase me as much as it maybe should. Ah well, I have fun anyway! (just to clarify, I DO brush my teeth, etc, before a dance, I just don’t have the oldies clothes! *wink*)
My first (swing) dance experience was at a beginner lesson that my friend invited me to on the day of. I had so much fun that my first social dance was the next weekend. I expected a classmate to go (my friend was working) but when she didn’t show up I had fun anyway. Going to the intro lesson before the dance was very helpful because otherwise I don’t think I would have known anyone other than my instructors – who were (sadly) perceived by me to be clearly too cool to dance with me.
On the topic of the intro lesson: I think this is a very good way to ease into the dance. Don’t show up “fashionably late” because you may not know what you’re doing and may not know anyone. The intro lesson will have other new (i.e. vulnerable) people like you which will enable you to bond more quickly with them. You’ll learn people’s names – a very useful first step in asking someone to dance.
Finally: apologize for stepping on people’s toes, but don’t apologize for being a beginner!
Great tips! I love the one about the intro lesson. That’s a quick way to meet people.
My very first social dance was Blues(!). I have to admit, I spent more time watching how great everyone else was than actually dancing, and I remember I apologised profusely to each and every person I danced with. I did, however, have a lot of fun and was determined to stick it out (my philosophy being, “If I don’t dance, I won’t get better and I will never look as good as those people I’ve been watching”). My first Lindy social, I knew some of the people there from class and also from Blues. Once again, I was terrible and apologised endlessly for being “bad” at it- something I now cringe at! Waiting for people to ask me often ended in frustration as more experienced dancers would stick with people they knew and I was stuck watching again, so I decided I just had to take the plunge and ask people to dance myself.
I think the experience has stuck with me, and I now try and ask as many beginners as possible for a dance (because I recognise that not everyone will be able to walk up to someone they don’t know and ask for a dance), and make an effort to make the dance fun. If it means breaking out into Crazy Legs, I’ll do it if it makes my leader smile, have fun and stop being so apologetic. So as much as I think it’s great that we’re giving beginners tips on how to overcome nervousness, I also think regular dancers on the scene have a responsibility to make beginners feel like they want to be there- as Jamin Jackson said in his blog, they’re the future of your scene.
What is it about social dancing that just is SOOOO scarey? At the ripe old age of 44, I’ve been dancing for a little over a year, and still find social dancing one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve ever done. (And I’ve done natural childbirth.)
One of my first social dances was after a class. I was asked to dance by someone from class I knew; he was a beginner, like me. He took me right up the front, directly in front of the band (when I was hoping for a dark, distant corner) and proceeded to dance. Unfortunately, I could not interpret it as anything like the dancing we’d been learning. If I had been a more proficient and relaxed follow, I probably could have made stuff up, had fun with it and done my own thing in time with the music (which was pretty much what he was doing). Alas – I did not have the confidence or ability to do this and so turned around and left him in the middle of the dancefloor. I am not proud of it. I still feel shame and remorse for doing so, but quite simply, at the time, I wanted to die.
Luckily, subsequent social dances have been a bit of an improvement – but I still took myself off to the toilet and hid when they announced a ‘birthday dance’ around the time of mine – just incase someone did a roll call off the membership records and called me out.
I would normally consider myself relatively confident and outgoing; but there is just SOMETHING totally illogical and irrational about social dancing that scares the dancey-pants off me!!
But I am determined to keep going until I can actually get through a dance without saying “sorry” – (either to my partner or to someone I crash into!).
I just wish there was a dance equivalent to an epidural to take away the pain!!!!
I took up dancing in university. We had a small club, and after lessons we’d have free dancing. Even this made me nervous.
Halloween weekend we all travelled to an out of town event, and this was my first real social dance after a month or two of lessons.
My friends felt total immersion was the best bet, so this girl I knew saw this girl there dressed as a pirate, pushed me at her and told the pirate not to let me get away without a dance.
This is such an awesome blog Rebecca, I love the new design and your writing rocks! I’m not even a dancer and I clicked through to read the rest of this article. :)
Thanks Irene!! Who knows, maybe now you’ll become a dancer. Hmmmmm….
I wanted to try out my local monthly dance for quite some time, but was really nervous about going without knowing anyone at all and where to go at the venue etc. When a friend mentioned he was going, I jumped at the chance! I took the beginner EC lesson and the instructors did such a great job really making sure we were getting it. I got ridiculously excited that I actually knew some legit swing.
They told us we could ask anyone to dance in open dancing. You didn’t have to tell me twice. I was so excited that I asked everyone. Beginners to advanced, it didn’t matter. I hopped over and asked for a dance (I get really bubbly when I’m happy). I knew I didn’t know anything but I didn’t care. When the DJ randomly asked me to dance, I was over the moon. I left knowing what I had always suspected…. dancing was in MY SOUL. :)
That was 5 months ago. I have since taken more lessons, joined a club, the DJ lead has turned into my Lindy coach of sorts, and I’ve had enough awkward experiences to make up for that splendid first dance. haha :)
Great tips , as usual. It’s a good reminder for what the experience is like for new folks just coming into our scene and how intimidating it can be. Thanks for preparing this.
I’ve been a dancer my whole life, but I didn’t know about lindy hop until my senior year. I met a girl in my building who was really into swing dancing, and she convinced me to go try out for the beginning team at school. I made the team, and I’m so glad I did–I wasn’t a fan of jazz music (that’s slowly changing), so I may not have returned without a solid weekly commitment; I might have stuck with the dances I was already good at, instead! So I think it helps to find a structured class or good friends or something else that will force you to go, at least for the first few weeks.
My first social dance happened somewhat around 1987 and it was organized by our dance instructors. I can`t recall much of it but we were 4 (me, a friend, and two girls from our dancing lessons). As much as I remember it was a real fun night and I have never been a bit nervous about dancing in public.
The same procedure at Lindy Hop:first social dance at our dance school and I danced with every woman that said yes, even the advanced female dancers.