Carousel

Jammix is a social dance event at Stanford University, usually held on the second Friday of every month during the academic year. “Social dance” here refers to a style of dance evangelized by noted dance historian Richard Powers, who teaches a popular series of courses at Stanford entitled, “Social Dances of North America.” The term encompasses not only a particular set of dance forms — generally including swing, waltz, salsa, cha cha, club two-step, polka, hustle, tango, and even the occasional one-step or schottische — but also a philosophy of dance that encourages experimentation, adaptation, and a focus on partner experience rather than adherence to rules of form, structure, and style. (I’ve published some reflections on this philosophy before.) Consequently, although many of the dances taught by Powers are strongly related to ballroom styles — indeed, when mentioning this interest to people outside the Stanford community, I always refer to it as ballroom dance — he tends to draw a sharp (if potentially false) distinction between his flexible, fluid approach and the prescriptive approach purportedly espoused by most ballroom studios.

If Social Dance I is the adventurous Stanford student’s introduction to traditional couples dancing, Jammix is his or her final exam. Its format is simple: Richard plays a song in Roble Dance Studio (usually calling out a suggested dance), people find partners, they dance, and the cycle starts again. The series of couples dances, for which the tunes are mostly contemporary, is punctuated by a variety of traditions, including a Bohemian National Polka, a midnight cross-step waltz mixer, and a delightful ’70s-style line dance to Wild Cherry‘s “Play That Funky Music.” But simple as it may sound, Jammix is also one of the most complex social situations I’ve ever encountered.

To illustrate this complexity, I’ll describe my own perspective as a male lead who searches the room at the beginning of each song for a female follow to dance with. The first assessment I need to make when evaluating a potential partner is whether she even wants to dance this song at all; she might be taking a break, or she might be catching up with a friend, or she might just hate Latin dances. Body language cues like leaning against the wall or “cheating out” during a conversation can help you decode the intent of all the people standing around the edge of the room.

If a prospective partner looks like she wants to dance, the next question is whether I am actually eligible to ask her. The most obvious consideration here is whether she has come to Jammix with a boyfriend or date with whom she intends to dance exclusively (a situation that, for some reason, seems increasingly common). A related and even more common situation occurs when a group of friends arrives together; these groups rarely intend explicitly to stick to their own, but it can nevertheless be very intimidating to approach a group of strangers or almost-strangers and ask one of them to leave the group and dance. (It’s especially confusing if the group is, say, three women I don’t know; which one, if any, should I ask? What unspoken and undesirable messages could I be sending to the girls that I didn’t ask?) And of course, if she’s already walking toward a partner or clearly looking for someone specific (or, for that matter, pretending to look for someone so she can avoid me), she’s out of contention.

Another constraint on eligibility comes from the fact that, like every community, the social dance community is stratified and cliquey. There is unquestionably an “inner circle” comprised of the most skilled and experienced dancers (and also a few intermediate dancers whose connection to the group is primarily social). They generally seem like perfectly friendly, open people, and none has ever treated with me with anything but respect, but they still tend to dance almost exclusively with each other, and asking a member of this inner circle for a dance feels equivalent to sitting down at the cool kids’ table in the school cafeteria. (Never mind that not a single person in a room full of lindy hoppers is, objectively, a “cool kid.”) A fair number of otherwise viable partners are thus eliminated because I am neither self-assured enough to approach a member of the social dance elite nor socially adept and committed enough to join its ranks.

We then come to questions more directly related to the identity of the potential partner. Do I know her? (I’ve been going to these things for the better part of four years, but I still know almost nobody, which is confusing and frustrating, to say the least.) Is she too good a dancer for me? Not good enough, or more commonly, unlikely to know this particular dance? Have I danced with her so recently that it would be awkward to ask again? (My wholly uncorroborated rule of thumb is that asking the same person more than twice in an evening, unless she is a friend, reeks of desperation or ulterior motives.) Did my last dance with her go poorly? There ought to be a statute of limitations on this last one, because even two good dancers can have an awful dance now and again, but under the premise that most bad dances are my fault, I never ask someone for another dance on the same night after having a bad or even mediocre dance of any style with her. I’ll often extend that avoidance for months or even years.

Believe it or not, I could actually write more, but I think you get the idea. I imagine that most readers’ reaction to this analysis, and perhaps even most Jammix-goers’, will be that I am overthinking the entire situation. These readers would argue that none of these things really matter, and that I would enjoy Jammix far more if I would just forget about all of it and, well, just dance.

These things are true. But I simply don’t believe that I am the only one who thinks as I’ve described. I’ve seen it in far too many faces: the surreptitious scouting of potential partners during a break in the action, the strategic jockeying for position, the studious avoidance of eye contact between two people standing right next to each other whose eyes are examining what seems like every other person in the room. It’s a veritable minefield for everyone, but Jammix is probably toughest for novice-to-intermediate women, who have the unenviable challenge of making themselves noticeable enough to be asked to dance by strangers (assuming they aren’t comfortable with taking the initiative) but not so noticeable that they attract patently undesirable partners.

For my part, it’s not that I’m afraid of rejection, per se; most women at Jammix are far too kind for that, and the culture of the event doesn’t seem to encourage it anyway. The worst I’ve ever gotten is, “thanks, but I’m going to sit this one out,” and I’ve never seen any woman accept a dance after declining an offer from me in this way, so I do take these at face value. What I’m really afraid of is the grudging acceptance, the “oh, uhh, sure,” perhaps accompanied by a disappointed glance in a preferred partner’s direction, apparently borne out of some perverse combination of obligation, indifference, and pity. This reluctant acquiescence, however carefully masked, stings far worse than any “no” possibly could.

So what are the ultimate results of all this analysis? Do I actually enjoy Jammix, or is it just another source of stress in an already-stressful life?

Well, I’d say that the most common case, the 70% case, is the middle ground. At most Jammixes, I dance every waltz (my most comfortable dance, by far), plus one or two dances of most other styles at some point during the night. This amounts to perhaps 40-50% of available dances and leaves me feeling like I had a solid night, one appreciably better than sitting in my room and blogging (hah), but nothing to write home about.

The top 10% of Jammixes are the ones where I really get into it, find a great set of partners, feel confident about trying out some new figures I’ve learned, and so on. On these nights, I’m on the dance floor 75% of the time or more, enjoying even the dances I’m usually too insecure to try (like salsa or tango) or the ones I generally think are too dumb to bother with (like schottische). I get home on these nights feeling energized and great about myself.

Finally, the bottom 20%, of which Friday night was a great example, really suck. On these nights, I struggle to find partners even for the waltzes, and I hardly do any of the other dances at all. This is the sort of night where I end up alone for the last waltz. I spend 80-90% of the time loitering at the edge of the room, wondering why I am there at all, what delusion might have led me to believe that I belonged there. My emotions after such a night tend towards exhaustion, depression, and self-recrimination.

I can usually tell within the first twenty minutes which of these three buckets a particular Jammix is going to fall into. Like most such outings, Jammix has a distinct sense of momentum, and you can feel it in your bones when it isn’t going your way. As a result, one question I’ve asked myself is why I don’t simply get the hell out when I can feel the situation (and my mood) heading south.

One reason is that it can feel even worse to quit than to have a bad experience, but I think this is ultimately pretty silly. I’ve realized of late that cutting your losses when you’re not enjoying yourself is usually an act of maturity and self-awareness rather than one of weakness. Another reason is the hope that the momentum of an evening can be turned; this is rare, but it does happen.

The biggest reason of all, however, is that even the most depressing of nights can be rendered worthwhile by a single moment, such as the question I received on Friday from a particularly experienced dancer who approached me at about a quarter to midnight:

“I remember you’re an awesome dancer. Would you like to waltz?”