The Asking Economy: Who Starts the Dance?

When you’re at a social, you’re trading within an economy; an economy in which people trade attention, eye contact, proximity, status… you name it.

But when ratios are uneven — as they so often are at socials and festivals — the waiting strategy in the asking economy gets expensive. Math is math: if there are more of one role than the other, and the smaller group does most of the asking, someone is going to spend a lot of the night watching.

An honest question

If you mostly wait to be asked at socials – especially socials with uneven ratios that go against your favor -- here's a question worth investigating: why?

Think about it -- really, think about it.

When people get honest about it, the reasons tend to sound like these:

• I don't want to seem too eager with someone I really want to dance with — and if they said no, I couldn't hide my disappointment.

• If I ask and get declined, I have to walk back to my seat in front of everyone. And my ego won't let me sit down right away, so now I'm asking someone else just to save face.

• Being asked makes me feel wanted. Asking doesn't.

• I genuinely dance better when the other person initiated — I feel off my game when I did the asking.

• When they ask, I know they mean it. Once I asked someone and got a "yes" that wasn't a full yes… and I spent three minutes dancing with someone who didn't really want to be there. Never again.

• Honestly? Enough people ask me. My cup gets filled. Why change anything?

• If I start asking, maybe people will ask me less — or assume I don't want to dance unless I approach them.

• I run things all week. At the social, I just want to show up and be swept along, even if that means one dance all night.

Do any of the above examples resonate with you? None of them are wrong – they’re all legitimate feelings. But notice what most of them have in common: they hand the keys to everyone in the room except you.

Your night becomes a function of the DJ's set, other people's energy levels, who you happen to know, the ratio at the door — a long list of variables that might influence whether someone else wants to ask anyone, let alone you – and one of which you control.

If you've genuinely made peace with that trade, wonderful. But if you find yourself going home disappointed regularly, it might be worth asking whether the strategy is serving you — or whether you're just resigning yourself to a fate that you have the power to change.

This isn't only about uneven ratios, by the way. Ask the people who do most of the asking what it's like, and you might hear the following:

• Being the one to initiate all night takes energy, which I don’t always have. Choosing who to approach, hour after hour, can be tiring! If I’m completely honest with myself, a lot of the time, I’m scanning quickly and choosing from people in my immediate vicinity.

• Sometimes, I’m not choosing at all – I just want to dance, and if there’s someone nearby I’ll ask them.

• I want to feel desired, too! I dance noticeably better when I know the other person wanted this dance enough to come to me. It feels exciting to be asked, especially when it’s someone that I love dancing with that I ask to dance often – or someone that I’ve never danced with before.

Just like anything in community-building, I think the asking economy works best when everyone (or the majority of people in a community) contributes.

What asking actually gives you

Something unexpected happens when you start asking: information.

You learn who lights up when approached. You learn who politely prefers to do their own choosing. You learn — sometimes hilariously, sometimes painfully — that some people would rather perform an elaborate pantomime of being busy than simply say "not right now, thank you." They suddenly become obsessed with what’s in their bag. Fan away at themselves, shaking their head – and then put down the fan and run to ask someone else to dance. They slowly rotate away from you as you approach. Avoid your eye gaze. Get up and start walking briskly in the opposite direction. Give a nervous smile if you make eye contact and look hurriedly away.

If you’re sensitive to body language (congrats if you are; it’s a power and a curse!) and you see things like the above in your asking journey – because you will, especially if you start asking people to dance – try to remind yourself that it’s not about you. Their body language is a reflection of their level of discomfort with saying no -- in that particular moment. Many people were never taught how to decline gracefully, so their body improvises – and usually not in a subtle way. Different cultures treat frankness differently, too. Their reaction may be their way of being respectful, or it might even be an anomaly (maybe they don't have the energy to decline gracefully).

Growing a thicker skin isn't the price of asking. It's the product of asking. You come out the other side harder to embarrass and easier to please.

EQ on the dance floor

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is often described as four capacities: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and relationship management. The simple act of asking for a dance exercises all four:

Self-awareness — What am I actually feeling right now? Is my hesitation about this person, or about my fear of rejection? Am I waiting because I want to, or because waiting is just my default setting?

Social awareness — What is this person signaling? Open posture and wandering eyes near the floor might mean "ask me." Deep conversation, closed body language, or the fourth consecutive water break might mean "not now." Learning to read the room is a skill, and asking is how you practice it.

Self-management — Can I hear a no and not stiffen up, feel embarrassed or rejected? A decline is data, not a verdict. The dancers who handle a "no thank you" with a genuine smile become the safest people in the room to say no to — which, paradoxically, means they get asked more.

Relationship management — Can I create the moment, not just wait for it? The invitation is the first move of the dance. Confidence in the approach, warmth in the connection, and then — if it's your style — the beautiful contrast of initiating boldly and then melting into the embrace. The magic doesn't have to start when the dance begins; some of the dancers I admire most have a way of asking that is practically an art form in itself.

A boundary worth borrowing

Here's my practice and boundary, which changed my Brazilian Zouk social dance life for the better: the three-song rule.

If someone says yes to a dance but needs a moment — water, shoes, a friend — wait up to three songs. Then release it, without resentment, and go dance. Three songs is roughly one great dance you could have had with someone else.

People get swept up; rooms are chaotic; the person who said "let me grab water" and vanished might be an asshole, or they might be easily distracted and forgetful – who knows! In the end, it doesn’t matter more than your peace of mind. The rule is about your side of the commitment: you keep your word, you honor an agreement for a reasonable window, and then you return to the reason you came — dancing. No exceptions needed, no villains required. C'est la vie, back to the floor.

Reserve the longer waits — if you make them at all — for the rare connections that genuinely warrant them: the people whose dances make you feel special, who you know treasure dancing with you. Choose those people intentionally; don’t base it off of whether they’re a dance professional, whether they seem to be popular, or even based on word of mouth. Community means giving everyone a fair shot at having a wonderful dance with you, and vice versa – and not jumping to a judgement set in stone based on one dance, either. I promise you that as you dance with more people, your perception of people can evolve, your use of different techniques with different people will surface -- and eventually, that gap between your satisfaction from an incredible dance with a professional with decades of experience compared to dancing with a newcomer will shrink, and shrink, and shrink. You'll start to discover the things that dancing with a newcomer has that dancing with a professional can never match: their excitement for the dance, for the music they haven't heard before, for an embrace they haven't experienced. Their inherent, unintentional creativity that hasn't been trained out of them. Those are just a few reasons out of many.

Some people’s tastes become more discerning as social dancers over time – they specialize, and they specifically want experiences that only a subset of the community can satisfy (in their minds). Some people’s tastes become more diversified – they become even more curious and intrigued by the unfamiliar or want to experience more variety over the course of a night.

Obviously, I’m biased toward the latter; I want you as the reader to know that this path exists, if you want it. It’s rarer to see (and I suspect it might take more effort if it doesn’t come naturally), but it exists!

Give it a try

Waiting to be asked is a valid way to spend an evening, and for some people it's exactly the experience they want. But if the waiting has stopped serving you — if you keep leaving socials with the list of people in mind that you wish you could’ve danced with but didn’t ask — consider this permission you never needed: your happiness at a social doesn't have to live in other people's hands.

You can dwell on the injustice of ratios, biases in society, etc. – there will be others on the floor that have it ‘easier than you’, yes – but you also don’t know how they got to where they are. Ultimately, your happiness and peace of mind matters more than sabotaging yourself, dwelling on hard cultural truths that you may even be in a position to change.

I’ve gone through some serious lows in my dance journey and I believe it’s worth it to get to the other side. I used to ask people to dance nearly 100% of the time – and now, depending on where I’m dancing, it can be the complete reverse, or exactly the same. I understand (through a heck of a lot of observation, reflection and interactions with a ton of social dancers over two decades) that environmental factors and the asking economy plays a huge role in the rate of being asked, if you’re in the majority.

If you take care of hygiene, put in some effort to ask people to dance (and be ok if and when they say no) you’ll find that the work will pay off in other parts of your life, too.

Ask people you've never danced with before, that you've never seen before on instagram... especially ones that you see time and time again.

One of the best feelings in the world is finding more hidden gems, year after year -- for as long as you’re willing to try. Your circle of people that you love to dance with will grow, shrink, grow... but overall, grow.

Embrace the mystery... it's a huge part of the beauty of social dance. <3