I am a little frustrated that there is virtually
nothing on "the art of promising a dance during
a social dance."

Sure, websites do tell other topics on social
dance ettiquette (like declining a dance, monopolizing, floorcraft, what not to do on a
social dance floor, etc.), but not on how exactly
to promise a dance to people in the social dance
milieu.

Just give me some good websites and I will look it
up.

Charles Smith
cjsmith2@uiuc.edu
http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~cjsmith2/Charles_Home
Page.html

I don't know of a website...but do you have a specific question? What I've always seen is, someone says, "Would you dance the next waltz with me?" or "I can't do this one with you, but maybe the next one?" Dance cards aren't really used any more (although I like the idea of them!), people just keep it in their head. They forget sometimes, but it usually works out pretty well.

For Example, I go to vintage/costume balls, which happen to be ran by different groups.

At one, they post the whole playlist for the night, and since it's such a huge hall and hard to find anyone. Dancers will arrange their partners well in advance and have a general meeting area. Generally, it's accepted that if the song has gone a bit and the partners haven't found each other, they get a new partner to finish the dance. Problem is this makes it hard for new people to grab a dance with the experienced regulars.

At the other, playlists aren't posted, but it's a smaller hall so it's easier to find your partner quickly. Dancers, typically, will just promise the next waltz or polka, with someone they really want to dance with. But here, it's a little bit more frown upon if you monopolize a partner.

But most conversations go this way:
(Waltz playing)
A: Would you like to waltz?
B: Sorry, I'm unable because sitting this one out, but how about the next one?
A: That would be great, meet you by that post?
B: Terrif.

But if you promise a dance, remember that promise, because if you don't, you might have lost a future dance.

Hope this helps.
-TheDitz

If you decline a dance (for whatever reason), be sure not to forget yourself and jump up and dance with someone else if they ask! I had declined a swing with someone (just resting), and then later on in the song, the host (a previous instructor) put out his hand--and I was dancing. OOPs! I didn't see the other gentleman till a week later, when I apologized. He didn't even realize it (until I told him!). He's now a good dance friend. I know it's difficult to tell a host "No" but they'll understand.

Well, you really shouldn't be promising all that many dances anyway. It's been noted that we don't use dance cards anymore. You don't have to schedule your dances for the evening and no one really expects you to do so. It's generally better to just take things as they come and not promise too many dances. A few is fine, like if you ask someone for one dance but they're resting so you agree on a different one instead. People can usually keep a promise or two in mind. Do try to keep the promise if you made one, of course, but try not to fault people too much if they forget. There's almost always another you can do with them later if they forget you asked them for the next one. And sometimes people just do forget or didn't realize you meant it as a promised dance. My ballroom dance web page has some links to pages with notes on etiquette and a page of my own notes on the subject. I don't know if they're quite what you're looking for here, but I'll give you the URL in case you want to check it out: http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall/ballroom.html I hope this helps.

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