What is the general feeling amongst ballroom dancers about same-sex dance partners, especially at social dances?

As others have posted, it appears that you see women dancing together more often than men dancing together, but you do see both. I usually go dancing with a primarily college age crowd and for the most part no one really seems to mind. Sometimes people get a kick out of watching it. In particular, I knew two brothers who would dance quickstep together and change lead/follow roles in the middle so smoothly you wouldn't even see it. One moved away from the area though, so we don't see that much anymore. There are two male friends who regularly dance Viennese waltz together though and they also switch lead/follow roles in the middle. We seem to be in the semi-unique situation of having more men than women at times (no, no one here can really explain why), so we may see a few more male/male couples just because of that. Sure, I'd rather dance with women, but if they're all taken or have chosen to sit out and another man wants to dance, I won't turn him down. Perhaps different groups of people view it differently, but at least with our college crowd people seem to take the same sex couples in stride.

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James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall

While I would much rather follow than lead (especially since I can't lead very well), there are times when there are just not enough guys to go around. I dance with my female friends all the time, and I see other people doing the same. As people have said already, guy/guy dancing is more rare, but it still happens enough so that it is not a complete shock to see guys dancing together.

Of course my background in dancing is in swing, and it might be different in the ballroom community--I cant imagine same sex latin dancing and ballroom dancing seems so formal and everything.

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Trees are people too!
¡Viva los árboles!

I don't see many same sex partners socially- 1 male/male couple occaisionally comes to our studio's social/practice party. I see many female/female partnerships at collegiate and amateur competitions (? lack of male partners). Towards the end of our studio's social/practice parties, I sometimes dance the lady's role with one of our male instructors. Most people get a kick out of it, but I do notice a few people are offended.- that's why I wait towards the end. Personally, it doesn't bother me to see a same sex partnership at socials/comps.