Question for SwingerMD on Dancing Eyes

[MadMaxx]

I have a question for Swinger since none of my friends dance, so I can\'t ask them for any input. I have been doing my salsa lesson for about 6 weeks now, and what I am wondering, is there some kind of unwritten rule about eye contact when dancing? Are you supposed to make full-on constant eye contact with your partner, occasional contact or what? A lot of the women I have to dance with will not make eye contact at all, but I figure that is just because they are too nervous,or shy,or uncomfortable since people don\'t always know each other so well at the lessons sometimes. On the other hand, I have some that seem to get a bit lost in my eyes, maybe DIHL\'s I guess. These tend to be the ones that are really comfortable with dancing with me, or actually really like it I guess. I am laced with pheros every time I go by the way. Mostly SOE, copulins, and a little JB. Things really took off after I added the copulins!
Here is the most important part of the question. What sort of eye contact does your instructor make with you, (if she is female)?
One day I showed up and had a really hot new instructor. I was the only one at the lesson that day, so we had 90 minutes together. This woman almost stared through the back of my head with her beautiful brown eyes every second that we were pair dancing. I had serious trouble concentrating. I had two thoughts; 1) I thought maybe this is what partners are supposed to do, so, since she is an instructor maybe she is just doing the right thing. 2) On the other hand though, I couldn\'t help feeling like there was just something going on, it was just a vibe I was getting, and her smiling and eye contact just blew me away. I am still not sure which is the case. I have two other female instructors and it certainly doesn\'t seem the same with them.
Any thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

You didn\'t ask me, but here\'s my two cents re the instructor: she was asserting dominance.

[SwingerMD]

Hi MaddMax,

Good question! Dancing is a very social activity. Personally I tend to think of it like dating (in fact it parallels dancing in many ways. Commmnication or connection with your partner is very important. Eye contact is an important part of this. Asking a gal out to dance is like asking them out on a date. When I\'m out dancing with people the beginners tend to look at your feet (Usually tease them about this [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] ) and the more advanced dancers tend to center on the eyes and face. For follows, looking your feet tend to mess them up when trying to follow moves. When doing Lindy basics (Lindy Hop is a circular dance) and spins, it helps to focus on your partner to keep from getting too dizzy. Now with that said I do notice that the ones that really like me (before I started wearing mones, and ones that I can tell the mones have hit them) do look me in the eyes. Hmm . . . so things really took off with copulins. I guess I\'ll have to try some later.

As for my instructors they come in pairs (male lead and female follow). Right now I have two sets of instructors that I tend to take lessons from. There\'s Steve & Nina and Amy & Scott (not their real names of course). Both lead and follow instructor do rotate in with the students to see how they are doing. I was taking Balboa with Amy & Scott just recently. I was also testing out various levels of APC in my hair throught the entire class session. I\'ve known them for about a year and Amy is the friendly outgoing type of person, but throught this session she has gotten more touchy feely with me (!?), given me spontaneous hugs (!!?), and started to call me \"honey\" by the last class in front of her SO [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/blush.gif[/img].
When I first got pheros (PI/m) I started to use them after Steve and Nina\'s class. When taking classes from them Nina seemed fairly cold and distant. I first tried PI/m at a dance after class. Nina approached me and congratulated me on my first time in a Lindy competition. The whole time she was DIHLing at me. Hope this helps. And keep on dancing! [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[MadMaxx]

FTR,
Thanks for your two cents. Your two cents are always interesting.
I don\'t know whether I agree with your take on this one though. Of course, you weren\'t there, so I can\'t expect you to read things spot on. I didn\'t detect a dominance vibe, if that makes any sense. I would describe it as more flirtatious than dominant, not that it was necessarily super flirtatious. It seemed to me more like she was trying to show me how beautiful and sexy she could be, and what a beautiful smile she had.

\"You didn\'t ask me, but here\'s my two cents re the instructor: she was asserting dominance.\"

[camusflage]

The best thing for you to do would be to watch her with other students, paying attention to how she behaves with them as compared to you. There\'s one instructor I dance with who will bore through the wall behind me with her gaze. The really odd thing is that it\'s not something she does with anyone else. She also jokes around, laughs with, and touches me a lot more than anyone else.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

MM - right. Beauty/desirability is the basis of female power and extended eye contact definitely means something, so that\'s how I put that together. It will be interesting to see what you note about whether she\'s different with you than with others. I\'m looking forward to hearing more. Sounds like it\'s fun, at any rate!

[MadMaxx]

Camusflage/FTR,

Thanks for the response. I just got back from my dance class.
Today I took the time to observe her with the other students. I can\'t be completely sure about what I saw or did not see, but I think I noticed a difference with how she is with the other students. Then again, maybe I saw what I wanted to see. The lesson is in a bar which is quite dimly lit, but what I thought I observed was that when she was dancing with someone else she would alternately make eye contact and look lower down at their face or maybe chest. From my position in the dim light it seemed that at least half the time I could see her eyelids, which would mean she was looking down somewhat.

When dancing with me however, she kept up the same thing as before. Her eyes are wide open and riveted to mine at all times.
Another thing, after lessons everyone usually tries to dance with her for a bit for practice. As for me, I often like to practice past moves with her so that I don\'t forget them. It seems that when I dance with her after class it is really \"close\" and \"intimate-like\", with the great eye-contact as usual. It seems that her and I dance closer than when she is dancing with someone else, but then again that could be my doing just as much as hers. Actually, all the other men are Asian and they aren\'t so comfortable with the closeness thing and contact thing. I on the other hand am not afraid to get touchy and feely and make physical contact. At least not with someone like my instructor!

One more thing, we often have little exchanges of conversation and will touch or hit each other on the arm, but there has been less of this lately. This is my take: there are many guys at the lesson, and I think that maybe she feels that she has to behave professionally, and that she has to share her time with each student equally. Basically, the more guys there are, and if there aren\'t enough women to keep them occupied, she behaves cooler toward me. Would this make sense?

[SwingerMD]

<blockquote><font class=\"small\">In reply to:</font><hr>

This is my take: there are many guys at the lesson, and I think that maybe she feels that she has to behave professionally, and that she has to share her time with each student equally. Basically, the more guys there are, and if there aren\'t enough women to keep them occupied, she behaves cooler toward me. Would this make sense?

<hr></blockquote>

Yes that would make sense. I would guess that it also would depend on their personality. Amy is definately a very friendly and outgoing person under normal circumstances. It is very easy to tell the difference between me and the other students. As for Nina, she is a lot more subtle. Plenty of eye contact, but nothing else overt. Lately I have been wearing a lot of SOE around Steve and Nina\'s classes and has contributed to making the classes a lot more loose and funny.

So you thinking of pursuing your instructor? [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[MadMaxx]

Swinger,

In answer to your question, yes I am thinking of pursuing my instructor.
I think she\'s my type of woman. This week may be a good test to see whether she has any real interest or not. She does not speak English, and I used to tease her about her pronunciation, so for 2 or 3 weeks she was always joking that she is my dance teacher and I am her English teacher. I thought it is either an attempt at superficial interaction, or some kind of hint. So, yesterday I asked her if she wanted an English lesson this week. She said alright and said she would give me a call to set something up. My plan is to exchange language lessons for dance lessons. Anyway, if she gives me a call I will take that as a positive sign, and if she doesn\'t I will take it as a mistake on my part on the way I am reading her behavior. And if that\'s the case I will be able to live with that. It will be good to know what the situation is either way.

[SwingerMD]

Sounds like a good plan! Good luck! [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/cool.gif[/img] As for me, I\'m not interested in pursuing my instructors. Both I believe have SOs and I\'m in pursuit of someone that I met in L.A. . (Sigh) Long distance relationships, don\'tcha just love\'em [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] .

[SwingerMD]

Almost forgot, in one of your posts you mentioned that you are living in Japan. Have you seen the movie, \"Shall We Dance?\". I highly recommend it for those starting to learn any kind of dance. And since you are learning how to dance in Japan, this movie is even more fitting for your situation. Just out of curiosity, your instructor is Japanese, right? Anyhow good luck or should I say, \"Ganbate! [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[SwingerMD]

Bump! [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[MadMaxx]

Yes, she is Japanese. Most of the instructors are. There are some Cuban guys, but they either are not good teachers, or they don\'t tend to teach beginners.

[proteus]

MadMaxx you made this comment \"I am laced with pheros every time I go by the way. Mostly SOE, copulins, and a little JB. Things really took off after I added the copulins! \" . I was curious about what the specific difference you noted when you added the copulins. I\'m testing PCC right now and just wondering whether the observations that I\'ve noted are similar to yours so could you describe what effect adding the copulins had in terms of the behavior of women there towards you.

[MadMaxx]

Proteus,

I have a pretty detailed answer to your question on the EW thread posted recently. First of all you have to keep in mind that I live in Japan where the people are not socially outgoing, do not make eye contact, and are not comfortable with physical touching. Add to that the fact that I am a big, blond, blue-eyed foreign stud, and you can imagine that the women who I have to dance with who are strangers to me may be a bit uncomfortable. It is very subtle, but I would say that at least half of the women or more, but not all, are simply more comfortable with, or in fact very comfortable with me, more open, more apt to look at my face rather than at their feet, more apt to be comfortable letting me get as close as necessary and get on with the dancing, the way it should be carried out. What a guy often has otherwise in some cases is the feeling that he is dancing with a wooden robot who wants to keep more physical distance than is appropriate in order to do the dancing properly. I also find that on commuter trains I seem to have more women around me, but I am not 100% sure about this observation. I will need more time for it.

[proteus]

Thanks for the reply MadMaxx as it was very helpful. This observation you made jives exactly with what I\'ve noticed when using copulins as women are definitely much more comfortable/familiar with me when I have pheros on, and so it\'s very interesting that you described exactly what I\'ve experienced.

[BassMan]

<blockquote><font class=\"small\">In reply to:</font><hr>

Thanks for the reply MadMaxx as it was very helpful. This observation you made jives exactly with what I\'ve noticed when using copulins as women are definitely much more comfortable/familiar with me when I have pheros on, and so it\'s very interesting that you described exactly what I\'ve experienced.

<hr></blockquote>Yup. Back in the \"Lucky Pants\" thread, I noted the same thing about EW - the one night I had the nads to actually wear the stuff in public, women seemed to be more sexually open to me than usual.

Interesting side note (boy, this one is going to get me in trouble...): women are stereotyped as being more graphic when talking about sex with other women than men are when talking with other men. That was the feeling I got on the EW night - like the graphic content of the sex talk was noticably increased.

[MadMaxx]

I envy you guys. I have been in Japan 10 years and not once have I had a Japanese female talk to me about sex, except my girlfriends of course. Now, some Australian female friends I have had; that is a totally different story! They\'re much more vulgar than any male friend I\'ve ever had.