High five and change partners : ritual interaction approaches to risk and trust in social dancing

High Five and Change Partners

Ritual interaction approaches to risk and trust in social dancing

How is trust established and maintained in social dancing? I study dance classes and parties of both lindy hop and kizomba dancy styles in Amsterdam, doing participant observations and conducting in-depth interviews. I find that interaction ritual chains can be fruitfully applied to explain how trust arises in three distinct steps, from the trust by association that is inspired by teachers, through trust in themselves and the fellow students, to trust in the broader dancing community. With regard to maintenance of trust, I find there are a multitude of ways this is done, during class and in parties, and both on and off the dance floor. Lindy hop dancers are less vocal than kizomba dancers, who are more likely to voice their complaints. By introducing emotion and the taken for granted into dancing research, and by stressing trust as ingredient in interaction rituals, greater understanding of risk and trust in social dancing can be reached.

By Johan Wester, B.Sc., 10248544, contact at johan.wester@gmail.com.

Master thesis for the Research Master Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Supervisor: Dr. Patrick Brown. Second reader: Dr. Christian Bröer.

17th _{of August 2016}

Introduction

It is a tuesday night in Amsterdam, and we have never met before. Regardless, and without even introducing ourselves, we spend the next five minutes sharing a physical and emotional connection while dancing. This otherwise unusual behavior is taken for granted here and many people come back every week to participate, despite the fact that opening up to this connection necessarily also leaves you vulnerable to bad experiences: unwanted advances, rejection and sweaty partners are all very real risks that need to be managed to enjoy the social dance scene.

In this study I will investigate these risks, and the impact they have on dancers’ experiences. To manage and overcome the risks, trust is required: both in their own abilities and the partners they dance with. I will detail the establishment of this trust as dancers become introduced to the dancing scene, and the ways in which specific risks are addressed and in which trust is maintained. The research question I am to answer is how trust is established and maintained in dancing. To answer that question I investigate the precursors, circumstances and outcomes of successful dance interaction.

contrasting cases. First of these is lindy hop, a swing dance originating in 1920’s New York. Lindy hop is a very energetic dance with lots of movement, and generally does not involve much physical contact beyond the hands, arms and back regions. Kizomba is a slow and sensual dance originating in 1970’s Angola. Though not formally a latin dance, they are commonly grouped together, and there is much overlap in the practitioners. In kizomba, the energy of the dance is very much turned inwardly, and in some cases elaborate hip movements are part of the dance. Lindy hop has much more outward-facing energy, taking up more space, and would not generally be described as a ‘sexy dance’.

Both lindy hop and kizomba have a growing presence in Amsterdam, where the research was conducted, with mutiple dancing schools offering classes and weekly parties or social dances being organized. Classes tend to be weekly sessions of 1 hour, organized into blocks of 8. The demographics of the two dances differ markedly, with lindy hop predominantly made up of a white, higher-educated and relatively young crowd (most between 25-35). Kizomba dancers more often have an ethnic background, and there is a larger spread of educational levels, but they are also mostly young. However, these demographic characteristics have not been shown to have any impact on risk and trust in dancing, perhaps due to the cosmopolitan nature of the city of Amsterdam.

In the following two sections, I will review the literature with regard to dancing and trust respectively, and detail Collins’ interaction ritual chains that will form the basis of my analysis. Then I elaborate on the research design and the observations and interviews I use to conduct this research. In the section after that, I specify my findings, starting with what people enjoy about dancing and the perceived risks. Next, I describe the process by which dancers build up the trust required to dance, and the ways in which trust and risk are explicitly managed both in classes and parties, and on and off the dance floor. In the final section, I detail the theoretical contributions to both dancing and trust literature, and give suggestions for further research.

Context of dancing

There have been other social scientific studies on dancing, from at least as early as the 1960s when Cottle (1966) looked at the class differences between dances and dancers in various dance halls in Chicago. Unsurprisingly, as these classes were both assumption and conclusion of the research, he found that dance is strongly stratified along class dimensions. Cottle also spent a lot of time on the physical form of the dance, and how this changed over time (again along class lines) (1966). Later Hanna (Hanna et al. 1979) developed an anthropology of dance, in which she identified the relevance and avenues for researching dance from multiple theoretical anthropological strands. She defines dance as “human behavior composed – from the dancer’s perspective – of (1) purposeful, (2) intentionally rhythmical, and (3) culturally patterned sequences of (4a) nonverbal body movements (4b) other than ordinary motor activities, (4c) the motion having inherent and “aesthetic” value” (Hanna et al. 1979:

316). Like Cottle, Hanna focuses mostly on the physical form of the dance, in which the (communicative) meaning of these movements can be studied in various ways (Hanna et al. 1979: 316). In partial contrast, my research focuses more on the social precursors, outcomes and circumstances of dance.

More recently, Ericksen (2011) conducted a study of ballroom dancing in the United States, revolving around the purchase of ‘instant intimacy’ - quick intimacy, public display, and physical connection – by older female dance students from younger male professional dance teachers. Ericksen does not centre solely on the physical movements, but also addresses, for example, the economics that permeate the ballroom dance world and the emotional labor performed between the dancers, both in classes and on the competition floor. Recent research on salsa dancing similarly aims to explore economic considerations behind dance (Hewer & Hamilton 2010). Underpinning these studies are various assumptions regarding the conscious conception of emotions (e.g. trust) held by the dancers. Ericksen (2011) in particular, adopts almost rational choice/game theoretical considerations: ‘I take students to the competitions so I have enough money to compete with fellow professionals’. Although these conscious considerations indeed play a role in establishing and maintaining trust, more often trust happens subconsciously and emotionally. Even though Ericksen describes examples of this (students who fall in love with their teacher, or are hurt when they leave), she maintains the analytica orientation towards conscious emotional labor. In Hewer and Hamilton, the aim of the paper is to take consumer actions “out of the grey mundane of calculative and rational action into the possibilities of emotional economies” (Hewer & Hamilton 2010: 113). However, by putting emotion into economic considerations, they have yet to go beyond the rational in their conception of the emotional. My sociological interest is especially in the routine and taken for granted nature of dance practices and trust.

Trust and the taken for granted

Palmer (2005) studies two activities which he conceptualises in terms of rituals of trust, in which trust and trustworthiness are simultaneously demonstrated. Palmer defines trust simply as ‘the confidence that the other person will act as expected’ (2005: 147). One of these activities is a form of dance that appears rather violent to some onlookers: moshing. Using ‘costly signaling theory’, Palmer argues that this volatile dancing puts the dancer at risk of harm by other participants (which is ‘costly’ in terms of risk), but that this cost is what lends weight to the demonstration of trust: “the only credible signs of [trust] are those that are costly to fake” (Palmer 2005: 148). In addition, by participating in the dance, the other participants are simultaneously put at risk of harm by the first actor, which is why the ritual simultaneously demonstrates trustworthiness.

exist that govern what is normal and acceptable. Some of these rules refer to specific behavior and are explicit, but in addition there is a general unspoken ethos that is shared among participants and informs both the existence of the ritual and the related rules. The explicit rules are enforced by all participants relatively strictly, and there might even be ‘pit leaders’ who take a prominent role in this. The ethos is much harder to enforce, and new participants who are not infused with the original cultural attitudes are seen as problematic (outsiders, rulebreakers, untrustworty) by old-timers. Palmer concludes that for the ritual to be successful at promoting trust relationships, there needs to be pre-existing trust, and the ritual must be governed by spoken and unspoken rules (Palmer 2005: 147).

The above ritual approach to trust will be applied in the study presented below. However, Palmer approaches these rituals not only as having trust as their core mechanic or requirement, but also as their primary result. This means that little mention is made of the other outcomes of the ritual (which might be closer to the personally experienced intentions of the participants), or the pre-existing trusting assumptions that are necessary to even begin the ritual; two things that are also of interest to me. Additionally, I am interested in the interplay of other emotions with trust, and in the embodiment of these by the dancers: what physical effects do these emotions (and trust in particular) have? For these reasons, rather than Palmer’s costly signaling theory, I will make use of a more general approach to ritual interaction: interaction ritual chains, as described by Collins (2005).

For Collins, importantly, the focus of sociological research is not the individual or the structure, but the microsociological situation. It is in situations that individuals are constructed, not vice versa (Collins 2005: 5). Collins builds his work in interaction ritual chains on prior work on rituals and interaction rituals by Durkheim (1912) and Goffman (1955/1967) respectively. A short and sufficient definition of ritual given by Goffman is “a mechanism of mutually focused emotion and attention producing a momentarily shared reality, which thereby generates solidarity and symbols of group membership.” (Collins 2005: 7).

Collins builds on this definition by specifying more ritual ingredients and outcomes, and the processes that happen in between. These ingredients are (1) group assembly (bodily copresence), (2) a barrier to outsiders, (3) mutual focus of attention, and (4) a shared mood. The outcomes are (1) group solidarity, (2) emotional energy in the individual, (3) symbols of social relationship, and (4) standards of morality. The process in between is “the process in which participants develop a mutual focus of attention and become entrained in each other’s bodily micro-rhythms and emotions” (Collins 2005: 47-48). Although I am not particularly interested in the creation of symbols, all other elements of Collins’ approach fit well to dancing interactions. Although Collins leaves room for the role of emotion in his rituals as an ‘ingredient’, trust is most prominently discussed as an outcome of interaction rituals, while the trust required to initiate the ritual is (also) a large part of my research. More needs to be said about the relation between emotion and trust for an integration of trust as ingredient to interaction rituals.

Trust played a central role in the study of trust and choice in healthcare environments by Brown and Meyer (2015). Central to their conception of trust is that it is a situationally structured process: not something that is required in a single moment when a choice is being made, and thereafter is only of secondary importance (as the consequences of the trust unfold), but rather that trust is something that is processual. At first instance, only enough trust to enter the interaction is required, and this trust can be confirmed or violated as the interaction progresses, which in turn can be acted upon. This approach to trust combines well with Collins’ interaction ritual chains, they themselves being nothing but situationally structured processes, and I will integrate it into my research.

Additionally, Brown and Meyer draw upon a theory by Hirschman (1970) that, briefly stated, distinguishes three types of response to negative experiences and violations of trust: exit (withdraw from the relationship), voice (attempt to change the relationship by communicating the complaint) and loyalty (remain in the relationship despite a negative experience). Brown and Meyer find that violations of trust and even distrust in a healthcare context don’t necessarily lead to more exit or voice behavior, but play an important role in shaping the experiences of participants (2015: 741). Hirschman’s typology augments Collins’ interaction ritual chains with a conceptualisation of what can happen when the ritual fails or is disrupted. To include this perspective in my analysis, I will incorporate Hirschman’s response types in my research.

Finally, for a definition of trust that is more comprehensive than that of Palmer above, Barbalet (2009) makes a theoretical examination of trust and related concepts. He understands trust in terms of “a) acceptance of dependency in b) the absence of information about the other’s reliability in order to c) create an outcome otherwise unavailable” (Barbalet 2009: 367). Central to his characterization is that trust is based on emotions, specifically feelings of positive expectations, safe dependency and confidence: “the feeling of confidence in another’s future actions and also confidence concerning one’s own judgment of another” (Barbalet 2009: 375). This conception of trust expands and elaborates the role of emotion in the interaction ritual chains that give rise to trust. In this way, it allows more easily for trust to be described as an ingredient rather than an outcome of interaction rituals. It is this conception of trust that I will utilize for the rest of this research.

In summary, the foundation of my research will be using Collins’ methodological framework of interaction ritual chains to study the establishment and management of trust in dance classes and parties. The specific ‘case’ or ritual that I focus on is the trust established between two individuals as they meet each other, dance one or more songs, and disconnect when they move on to new partners. Every interaction in the dance (both during the class and the party) follows these steps rather closely, and for every interaction a trust relationship needs to be established and maintained.

In addition to these successful one-on-one interactions, there are dances that do not happen because one of the dancers makes themselves unavailable or specifically avoids the other. Dancers also

frequently talk with each other about other dancers, both in positive and negative terms. During the classes, there are teachers who play a different role altogether, responsible for not just teaching the moves, but also socializing the students in the local environment. They manage the ‘risky’ situation of physical and emotional proximity that dancing entails, but also aim to emotionally charge the students: with trust in each other, love for the music, and enthusiasm for the dance. This broader context of the whole dance floor is of great importance to understand the micro-ritual between two persons as they dance, and it must be taken into account in addition to the particular interaction ritual chains.

Design, data & ethics

I compare two different dance styles to investigate if what I find is specific to the genre of dance or whether trust and intimacy are managed in the same way across genres. I picked these particular styles because they are both partnered dances, with kizomba being associated with a different genre of dancing (latin dances, versus swing for lindy hop) and having a much more sensual or even sexual reputation. I study all the above by analysing both participant observations and in-depth interviews with dancers.

Aside from the background experience of intensively dancing lindy hop for close to a year, for this research I conducted participant observations, paying specific attention to the issues of trust and risk. These observations serve as a starting point for developing lines of inquiry for the interview and analysis stages of the research. Although it is difficult to literally see intimacy happening from a distance, participant observation allows a degree of access to undisturbed behavior that can later be delved into in interviews. Conversely, observations make it possible to check interview answers with actual observed behavior. In the case of lindy hop, I did this by attending weekly social dances, or ‘socials’, for about 2 months. Before the free dance-with-whomever party starts at these socials, a taster class is offered to beginning dancers, where they are familiarized with some basic lindy moves, and I observed both the class and the following party. In the case of kizomba, I took a block of 8 weekly classes for absolute beginners, and then attended two kizomba socials, making observation reports of every event to detail the development over time.

The interviews, then, are used to gather dancers’ accounts of their own lived experiences. After a general introduction, I asked specific questions regarding both intimacy and risk, and then spent time on the role these topics topics play while dancing. Finally, I asked about the process by which their conceptions of intimacy and risk in dancing had grown over time. I conducted 10 in-depth semi-structured interviews of around 1 hour each, split relatively evenly between lindy hop and kizomba dancers, teachers and students, and men and women1_{. I interviewed both my lindy hop and kizomba}

teacher-couples, which proved valuable since I was able to compare my own experiences with their

accounts. In addition, I interviewed fellow students from both lindy hop and kizomba, to compare my own experiences with theirs. With one exception, I was already familiar with the interviewees before I contacted them, to greater or lesser degree. Finally, I convinced a very inexperienced dancer to join me in going to a taster class and party, which enabled me to do a pre- and post-experience interview, allowing me to say more about expectations and fears going into dancing.

Although I approached most of my interviewees for their involvement in a single style of dance, almost all of them were involved in other dance styles as well. For the lindy hoppers this was most often charleston and balboa, but they all also had experience blues dancing (a slower dance than lindy hop, with a much closer physical connection). For the kizomba dancers, this was mostly salsa, bachata and merengue, but also West Coast Swing (which is itself an offshoot of lindy hop).

The interviews were transcribed in full and analysed. Already mentioned briefly, the combination of observations and interviews as sources of data allow for triangulation in the analysis (Bryman 2008: 379). It is possible to check the findings of the one source with the findings of the other, to investigate whether self-reported accounts correspond with observed behavior, and conversely to ask for clarification of meaning and intention behind what is observed. The timing of the interviews themselves was interspersed with observations and transcription, so these could benefit from constant comparison: I could take insights from the interviews into account in my observations, and vice versa (Bryman 2008: 542). In the case of kizomba I conducted the interviews after all 8 classes had been finished, so my relation with the teachers would not be influenced by them seeing me as a researcher foremost.

Regarding ethics, I did not ask express permission before doing observations, however when prompted I was open about who I am and what I was doing. In this way I have attempted to limit the amount of reactivity in the behavior of the dancers, for fear that this would have interfered with the study. Because I do not have the informed consent of the observed people to use their names, I have anonymized all information and attempted to remove any personally identifiable information as far as possible (Bryman 2008: 406). In the case of the interviewees I have done the same – even though some had no objection to being personally identifiable – because their identity might be enough to identify others in my study.

Findings

The interviewees2 _{reported a multitude of reasons for enjoying dancing, with striking similarities}

between them. Mentioned most often is a love for the music itself, and the ability to express themselves to the music. This aspect of improvisation and interpreting the music was valued highly, and sometimes

2 In the rest of the article, I will illustrate my findings mostly by quotes from the interviews. This should not be taken to mean that I didn’t find anything while doing (participant) observations. On the contrary, the observations informed me a great deal in what brings all the data together, and how I should understand the answers given in the interviews.

contrasted with other dances in which this is less possible (e.g. rock'n'roll versus lindy hop, ballroom versus salsa). Second came the social circle of other dancers: over time, friendships are built around the dance, and a network of dancers is established that together is called the scene. This social factor can become so strong that even when someone does not really feel like dancing, they will go to the social anyway, to meet friends and share a drink. Another reason that was mentioned mostly by kizomba dancers was the ability to relax on the dance floor, and to use dancing as an outlet for daily worries and stress.

A factor that was mentioned less often but seems very integral to the dancing is the connection with their partner:

Vincent (male kizomba teacher): On the dance floor I am only concerned with my dancing partner. That we’re one together, that’s the most important thing for me.

Philip (male lindy hop teacher): the story you can make with someone, on the dance floor,

transformed into movement and rhythm. You have a kind of dialogue, actually, and that’s possible on a very limited or a very high level. I think what really attracts me is the social aspect, because you have to share something with the two of you. Also physical contact is a large part of dancing. You’re touching someone, and that has a certain intimacy.

Having this type of connection and intimacy requires that there be some vulnerability in the dancers. This can be as subtle as a dance that was not as enjoyable as expected, or as plain as an unwelcome touch on the body. The fact that dancers surmount these vulnerabilities implies that dancers have a certain level of trust in their partner. Almost all interviewees consider trust an important part of dancing, even though sometimes they use different terms to describe it:

Mia (female WCS & kizomba teacher & dancer): Any good dance should be intimate because you’re engaged with each other, and only with each other and the music.

On the relation between intimacy, trust and physicality:

Ron (male lindy hop student): … maybe in a lot of cases, or at least in this case, intimacy is just another word for a feeling of safety or trust/familiarity. And there is a sort of specific part of that trust/familiarity and that safety, that also goes toward physical intimacy.

This distinction between physical and mental intimacy was made by almost all dancers when discussing this topic. When asked to describe what he understands to be intimacy in dancing, Piet struggles to formulate this:

Piet (male lindy hop student): … well in my opinion that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a lot of physical contact. Or a lot, but you should have.. Among other things there should be trust, in each other. Eh, but also the physical contact, and.. Those two combined I think. […] I think that

those two combined form the basis for intimacy or something, with each other. And that you need them both when you go lindy hopping. […] I would most like to keep searching for a definition, but I think those are the two most important parts of intimacy, and those need to be there when you lindy hop.

Mia (female WCS & kizomba teacher & dancer): To have a good connection with someone you have to be open to it, both physically and in your head. So if you really want to dance together that’s a pretty intimate thing, even though you might not have intimate [physical] contact. […] there is a difference between physical contact and intimate contact, because I would not likely ‘become intimate’ on the dance floor, in the everyday sense of the word.

In summary, the dancers report that interpretation of the music, the social circle of other dancers, and the release from everyday stress are the most important reasons for enjoying the dance so much. In addition, they describe that intimacy and trust are vital components of a good dance. In the next section, I will discuss some of the things that could go wrong while dancing, and for which trust is required.

Risks

As briefly mentioned above, engaging in a partnered dance necessarily involves a degree of vulnerability on the part of the dancer. I understand this vulnerability in terms of risk: that there is something to fear, some action (or lack of it) that we expect another person not to take. In the interviews Considering the connection between risk, trust and intimacy, we can see that the closeness of dancing is both key to the fun of dancing as well as the risks. I found that most of the dancers do not regularly think about risk in assocation with dancing, even though trust and intimacy were very much connected to dancing. However, when prompted most interviewees recognized at least some of the following risks, with one in particular standing out as the most stereotypical.

Unwanted intimacy

The typical risk that is associated with dancing is that the dancing partner has other intentions than just dancing; that there is some romantic or sexual interest that is not reciprocated:

Vincent (male kizomba teacher): Some people, if you’re already in the scene a little bit, you see from some men – and also women, it’s from both sides – that they’re just not out to dance. You can just see it, with some of them. And if you don’t see it, you experience it. As a man you experience the woman really tries to find full contact, she can really hump you. As a man these are things I’ve seen myself with salsa and bachata. That some men will really touch the women, that kind of thing.

Mia gives an example of the blurring between the physical contact of dancing, and physical contact of a sexual nature:

Mia (female WCS & kizomba teacher & dancer): Well certainly as a woman you will notice that. Kizomba is a particularly good case for that, where you sometimes feel more than you would want to feel from a man. Some men don’t understand that the dancing position involves no contact in the hip area. So sometimes you can feel that a man is becoming a little more enthusiastic about the dance than you might have expected, on the dance floor.

The answers in the interviews seem to confirm the common sense notion that this type of behavior is found more often in kizomba and latin dances than in lindy hop and swing dances (including blues). When prompting lindy hop dancers for specifics, they referred to a specific case of a man who would show disproportionately much interest in young and inexperienced dancers, whereas the kizomba dancers acknowledged that this was something that just happens, seemingly too frequent to warrant specific examples. On the other hand, Mia and Robert, kizomba and lindy hop dancers respectively, noted without any prompting that they thought the prevalence of this type of behavior was not unlike that in other social venues, like a bar.

However, there is a still a qualitative difference between a bar and a dance party, also in terms of risks like this:

Ron (male lindy hop student): In dancing, putting your arm around someone has been given a special function, it almost got a safety label, like “Don’t worry, this arm is used for dancing” […] And then it’s sort of double the impact if you want to cross that all of a sudden.

Mia (female WCS & kizomba teacher & dancer): I think the unwanted behavior is closer in some way to [the accepted behavior].

This means that even though similar boundaries might be drawn between wanted and unwanted behavior in dancing and non-dancing contexts, in the latter case it is harder to see the unwanted behaviors coming: the boundary is much thinner. In a bar, any hand placement on their body by a stranger would stand out; in a dancing environment many hand placements would be innocent, even welcomed, but some are still off-limits, and there is less space in between the two. As a result of the narrow boundary, any actual transgression is inevitably of a more severe nature, since unwanted behavior could not be (identified and) stopped before it reached that level.

It is important not to overstate the importance of the risk of unwanted intimacy. Although dancing is relatively unique in this qualitative change to the risk of unwanted intimacy, this does not mean that the dancing scene is rife with sexual predators. The risk is acknowledged by the interviewees, but not experienced as something that is common or particularly troublesome:

Amber (female lindy hop student): You could say “Oh there are risks that you dance with people who have bad intentions or something,” that’s not a risk that I experience or that I’m afraid of or something, because I think that’s really just not an issue. […] Because the lindy hop community is

pretty small and a lot of people know each other very well, I think that in many cases rules out many risks.

I will get back to the impact of the community on risk in the section called maintenance of trust.

Other risks

Beside the risk of unwanted intimacy (either in physical form or not), there are other risks that have a particular relation to dancing. First among these is the risk of dancing with somebody with poor personal hygiene. Hygiene is a consideration in both kizomba and lindy hop, although in lindy hop it is a more pressing concern, since it is a more energetic dance. This also results in there being less stigma associated with it (e.g. it is completely normal to excuse oneself to go change into a dry shirt at a lindy party). Nonetheless, in kizomba this is also a concern, since dancers are that much closer to their partners. In the first kizomba class the teacher specifically addressed the men, explaining they should avoid bad breath or other body odour, wear deodorant and take an extra shirt with them to the party if they need to.

Another risk that plays a larger role in lindy hop is the risk of physical injury. Because of the energy of the dance, it is possible for a dancer to slip and fall, or to run into other dancers and injure them. There are also moves that are more dangerous than others, particularly dips, in which the weight of the follow is dependent on the lead, and aerials, in which one of the dancers gets lifted or jumps high into the air. These aerials can be dangerous not only to those performing them, but also to others on the dance floor. Yet another very physical risk is the risk of illness. Especially in the case of dancing festivals or camps, where many people from all around the world come together, there is a high risk of transmitting a virus through the ample physical contact that people have.

Beside these physical risks, there are other risks that are not as concrete yet nonetheless present in dancing situations. One of these is to dance with people that are either much better or much worse dancers. The first case is undesirable because the other person might feel let down:

Mary (female lindy hop teacher): You do notice, the risk of am I dancing well enough, that’s

something I recognize myself. So that I, especially if you’re dancing with someone who is very good, that you really want to dance well, but that doesn’t help you at all, so that’s very frustrating.

The second case is undesirable because it can be boring/uninspiring:

Amber (female lindy hop student): I can really imagine that it’s annoying to dance with people who are much less good, because it just bores you quicker, and you get less input from the other side.

Getting bored may not sound like a serious risk, but when viewed from the perspective of interaction rituals, and considering the better dancer came to the party specifically to enjoy the dance and load up on emotional energy, it becomes clear this can be a real concern. A specific case of this is the risk of

being the worst dancer in a class. As a lindy hopper expressed right before his first class:

Piet (male lindy hop student): I can just imagine that I look like a fool or something. That I pick everything up very slowly, and that everyone just thinks “what an incredible [stupid newcomer]”. Yeah, that.

This was the main reason he initially did not want to join the class. A final3 _{risk that is associated with}

dancing at parties is the risk of not being asked to dance. It is very hard not to take this personally, especially considering the above risks: maybe you are being avoided because you are not good enough, or you are too sweaty. A kizomba dancer relates her experience of going to her first parties:

Kim (female kizomba student): “the parties after [the first party], [taxi dancers] weren’t there, so I have nobody to dance with. And those men don’t approach you so easily. That was frustrating, so I didn’t like that.”

When comparing the risk profiles of lindy hop and kizomba, it appears most of the risks play a role in both dances. The physical risks take a more prominent role in the case of lindy hop, especially with their bumping into each other and doing aerial moves. The more intimate and emotional risks take a more central role in kizomba. Especially the unwanted intimacy is much more frequent at kizomba parties. The risks discussed above apply to both dance parties and classes. The question now arises, in what manner do dancers manage these risks and build up the trust required to engage in dancing?

Establishment of trust

After I addressed the dancing histories of my interviewees, including a discussion of intimacy and trust, I inquired into the buildup of trust over time, from their first class to this moment. Ron answered in a way that was very close to what I had theorized as I started the fieldwork, and which fits the experiences of other dancers (including myself) very well. He described the establishment of his current level of trust in three steps.

Step 1

As we go through our daily lives, we have a level of baseline trust in all other humans, without which life would become exceedingly difficult. This is the very minimum level of trust required in other dancers as students go to their first dance class. In addition to this, there is a necessary level of trust in the teacher. We trust that, although we do not know exactly what is going to happen, there is an authority figure that does know this, is benevolent, and has control over the situation. The trust students have in the teacher transfers on to the fellow students, and it becomes acceptable to dance with them:

3 Of course this is not a comprehensive list of the risks faced while dancing. As Mary (female lindy hop teacher)

humorously put it: “yeah what kind of risks, God knows, you could think up all kinds of theoretical risks, that somebody is carrying a knife in his pocket, but that’s nonsense.”

Ron (male lindy hop student): I think it starts with a sort of trust by association. The fact that somebody else that you trust – and actually not because you know him or her, but more because, well it’s the teacher so it’s probably okay – that this person says something, and therefore you think “Apparently this is the intention, then apparently this is okay” and so you do it.

The fact that the teacher instructs them in what to do assuages not only fears that they might personally have – like “I don’t know what to do?” – but also fears of judgment from others.

Ron (male lindy hop student): But at the moment a teacher says “and now we’re all going to stand like this,” that’s really gone by definition because it’s almost imposed from above. So that’s it really, it’s almost not my movement. Coincidentally it’s my hand, but I didn’t do it.

This conception of trust in dancing corresponds closely to that of Palmer, starting with the baseline level of trust, with additional spoken and unspoken rules (Palmer 2005: 147). In this case, one of the unspoken rules that every dancer is imbued with from the moment they join the class is to do as the teacher tells them. The spoken rules are whatever the teacher chooses to make explicit. This allows for trust in the exact way Palmer describes: to have ‘confidence that the other person will act as expected’ (2005: 147). In addition to stating these rules, the teachers can use exercises to kickstart the iterative process of building up trust by accumulating positive experiences, corresponding to Brown and Meyer's processual view of trust (2015). Vincent explains the effect of these exercises:

Vincent (male kizomba teacher): I always try to create a safe environment and situation, especially with the first class. And in this case we’re talking about kizomba of course, especially with kizomba.

For kizomba, the importance of this step is even greater than in lindy hop, since the normal dancing position is so much closer. When I took my first kizomba class, we started out by giving each other hugs:

Vincent (male kizomba teacher): Everybody just gets a hug, and then you make a joke in between, that kind of thing, as you experienced yourself. And honestly, that’s one of the most beautiful moments always in my kizomba classes, I love that moment. People who are very serious become so relaxed in that moment. And they will say “Wow! Ah can’t be just keep hugging for a little more?”, “No, we’re getting started!”

In my first blues class (a dance style with an similarly close connection) I experienced this as well: the teachers used a multitude of analogies to accurately (but discreetly) describe the way in which we should be standing against each other4_{. These explicit instructions made it very clear what is okay to do,} 4 The posture was explained as having just jumped and landed. The location of the connection was explained as if the

follow wears a cardigan and the lead wears suspenders, and the follow wants her buttons to line up with the suspender of the lead. The fact that the hips should be tilted back somewhat was stressed again by mentioning that we should keep space for baby Jesus in between our hips. Finally, another student contributed with a hint, which is to imagine there’s a

which both removed worries I might have had about whether I was doing something right, and also would have made it easier to speak up to someone else if I felt uncormfortable because they are not acting as instructed. Despite this, it still took about two rounds of rotating partners before everyone was fully comfortable with the new position, and the awkwardness of slight worry had subsided.

In my research I have only come across one account of a case in which the teachers failed to provide this level of safety to their students. This was described to me by Amber outside of our interview, but I took notes while she recounted her experience. It took place in a blues class, which involved first dancing in closed position (familiar to these students), and then getting into the physically closest connection: close embrace. In this position, the dancers stand connected belly-to-belly, with only a slight lateral shift so their noses do not collide. The students in this case were unfamiliar with this position, but the teachers did not spend any extra time addressing it, aside from describing it briefly as I did here. They added that all the moves they had gone through in the first part of the class could also be done in closed embrace, and let the students take it from there. The result was a lot of awkward half-close embraces, because most of the dancers did not realize the step change between these two types of connection, and did not feel comfortable commiting to the connection without the express instruction of a teacher.

Amber felt uncomfortable with this half-embrace, because bodies are much more likely to rub against each other than in a fully close embrace. Because the teachers had not been very explicit in their instructions, it was also hard to determine what the leaders’ intentions were: it is harder to correct someone on proper posture when this has not been explicitly explained. This case reinforces the idea that the students have a firm trust in the teachers that extends to their fellow students, but that if the teachers do not use this by describing even the ‘intimate’ parts of the dance in detail, the results can be very uncomfortable.

As can be seen from my own experience in the blues class, the explicit instructions stated by the teacher do indeed help with the establishment of trust, as described by Palmer (2005). Even so, trust is best understood as a process that takes time to grow, and this too became apparent in the blues class. Amber's experience, in turn, shows what happens when the teachers do not spell out explicit rules for the students, as well forgoing to kickstart the process of trust buildup by specifying specific exercises. What results are failed interaction rituals, and an unpleasant dancing experience that lacks trust and intimacy.

Step 2

In the second step, the trust in the teacher is transformed into trust in themselves and their fellow students. Because students come to several classes, they become more familiar with the moves that they are learning, and the people they do them with:

Ron (male lindy hop student): At some point you say “these sorts of movement are trusted/familiar, I’ve done that a number of times before and nobody got angry, I wasn’t sent away,” and for followers it is “I wasn’t groped all of a sudden, and I didn’t have to do any strange things, so this is apparently a move that I think is ok”.

Kim confirms this when I ask her why she always feels safe in the classes:

Kim (female kizomba student): Because you regularly dance with each other for a while, I think?

Because there were some people newly joining the group in my second kizomba class, the contents were nearly identical to the first, and the majority of the people were still the same. This provided the unique opportunity to compare how the first class had already changed us, and familiarized us with the intimacy of the kizomba connection. I found that whereas there was still some hesitation in the hugs in the first class, by the second class we had become familiar enough with the physical contact (or realized the futility of trying to keep our distance, given the rest of the class) that this hesitation had almost completely disappeared. This observation was confirmed by several of my interviewees, who suggested that this type of close connection takes about two classes to become familiar and comfortable.

It is in describing this step that Collins’ interaction ritual chains become increasingly relevant. It’s possible to understand every dance between two people as an interaction ritual. I will consider the four main ingredients or initiating conditions described by Collins (2005: 48) in turn. Group assembly is part of the very definition of a partner dance, and in this case this bodily co-presence is part of the conscious intention of all the ritual participants. The barrier to outsiders is very present in the case of a dance class: only those who have signed up and paid for the class are allowed to take part, and between those people everyone is equal: they need to participate in the class or otherwise they should not even be in the same room, lest they distract or embarrass the students. That a mutual focus of attention is required for dancing seems straightforward: to be able to dance both partners have to be focused on the music and each other. We have already seen how seriously dancers take this connection and intimacy. Finally, the dancers share a common mood, or more specifically an emotional experience. This emotional experience consists of the individual joy of dancing, as discussed above, but becomes particularly strong when it involves the interplay of the two dancers and the music. As Collins describes, the mutual focus of attention on each other and the shared emotional experience work together in a positive feedback loop to create what he calls rhythmic entrainment between the two dancers (which is a particularly apt name in this case), or what Durkheim called collective consciousness (Collins 2005: 48).

It is when we look at the outcomes of such a ritual that the salience of Collins’ framework becomes clear5_{. The first outcome, emotional energy in the individual, I believe is a large part of the joy} 5 It is only the outcome of symbols of the social relationship that I find to be missing in the case of social dancing. One

of dancing that the interviewees expressed. The fact that nearly all interviewees described the source of their joy in dancing to be the music itself (focus of attention) and the ability to express themselves and create something together (rhythmic entrainment) fits very well. I also believe it is this energy that helps put their daily worries out of their head, and relax into each other. The second outcome, group solidarity, is also confirmed by our interviewees: the other people at the dance were a prominent source of joy. It is in the form of this group solidarity that the build-up of trust happens. Through the dancing interactions that have been supported by the teacher as an external stimulus to the focus of attention and shared mood, over time trust emerges as part of the group solidarity. It is in this way that the second step is completed.

Step 3

The final step in dancers’ establishment of trust consists of a transfer of the trust in themselves and the moves they have been learning toward a trust of the broader dancing community and even moves they have not learned yet.

Ron (male lindy hop student): And then comes the hardest jump, because then you have to make the jump to going to socials, and you’re going to get into new situations that haven’t happened before yet.

This step involves going from classes with a fixed group to attending social dances in which there is a relatively stable (but much larger) group of fellow dancers, with some new people showing up every time. It also means going from knowing all the moves their dance partner also knows (especially in the case of followers this makes dancing much more predictable) to dancing with people who know more or certainly different things.

This step, too, can be appropriately described in terms of Collins’ interaction ritual chains. The ritual outcomes are virtually the same, only the group to which the group solidarity refers becomes larger. Rather than a relatively sheltered group in which the barrier to outsiders is well protected, as the dancers become more confident in their own abilities, this barrier is less necessary. At a social dance event theoretically anyone could walk in at any time, however there is still a guarding of the in- and out-group as a result of the physical skills that take time to acquire. All others dancing at a social dance have gone through the same socialisation, and this is enough basis for trust to engage them in a dance and reinforce this trust. In this way, dancers become member of the community proper.

Regarding the trust in moves that are entirely new, Ron describes the ideal case:

Ron (male lindy hop student): … slowly your trust in certain moves, your familiarity in certain

argument, and it doesn’t provide an explanation for kizomba. Another class of symbols might be the dance moves themselves, and this sounds more plausible, but still does not convince me. It might just be that social dancing is a more (physically) transient ritual.

moves is translated to trust in the social context, trust with “this is a certain social contract,” to use that word again, “that we have with each other. Lots of things could happen, but within a certain framework, and I can rely on this framework, I can base my trust on it.”

This expansion of the group with which it is comfortable to dance can also lead to the emergence of preferences:

Amber (female lindy hop student): “[to start with] you think what you learned in class is good, and everything else is wrong. But of course that isn’t true because there are lots of people who are better dancers but dance in a different way, which is much better than the people you dance with in class. So I think over time I developed a more specific image of what kind of people I like to dance with, and what kind I like less. And together with that, I also learned how to handle that, how I can avoid the people I don’t like so much, and seek out those that I do. And also that I’m more conscious that I want to make a good impression with people that I like, and I don’t care so much about the

impression I leave with people I don’t like.”

Amber's description of her development takes us from the emergence and establishment of trust into the maintenance of trust. In principle, after going through the three steps described above, continuing to dance should be enough to continue the interaction ritual chain and maintain the trust in fellow dancers. However, there are many ways of explicitly addressing the trust associated with dancing, and the maintenance of this trust in particular comes with many nuances and techniques that can be employed to manage the myriad of complex situations that come up over time. It is this explicit managing and maintenance of trust that will be investigated in the next section.

Maintenance of trust

During the classes

In classes, the teacher takes a leading role in mediating and managing the risks inherent to dancing. As we have seen above, my kizomba teacher gave explicit instructions to pay attention to personal hygiene. In another class, the teacher warned against becoming too physically intimate, by describing the torso as the United States, the legs as Mexico, and there being no way to cross the border without a green card, implying that although we should have a connection with our torso and legs, there should be no contact in between. In the section on step one of establishing trust I already discussed the elaborate way in which this same connection was discussed in my blues class.

In general the risks that get explicitly addressed in the classes correspond to the risk profiles given by the interviewees: in kizomba more attention is paid to the question of intimacy and being safe, and creating and maintaining a safe space for all the students. In the case of lindy hop most attention is paid to the physical side of matters, but that is not much of a risk in the classes themselves, since they

are much less crowded than during the parties.

What is interesting are the risks that are not explicitly addressed in either class. This is the fear that Piet had, of being the worst in the class, or being judged by fellow students in general. It is important to note that because most people choose a single role (lead or follow) and stick with that, students only dance with about half of the group, and this is not the half they want to be comparing themselves with. If students want to get an impression of how they are doing compared to the group, they will have to peek at their neighbors as they dance, or ask one of the opposite-role dancers for their opinion on the matter. I clearly remember both when I started out in lindy hop as well as with kizomba that I would keep my ears peeled for any clues that would indicate how I should compare myself to my fellow leaders.

Beside this risk of being a bad dancer (which I think is more pronounced in classes than at parties, where dancers do not stand out so much), the risks encountered during classes are very limited. The teacher helps attenuate the risk both of being the acting party (since it was ‘imposed from above’) and that of the receiving party (since if it is inappropriate, the teacher will intervene).

During the parties

While dancing

The first way that risk is managed while dancing at a party is in an implicit way. There are ways to stop a partner from getting too physically close without explicitly addressing this:

Vincent (male kizomba teacher): So, ladies, if you’re dancing with a gentleman that pulls you into him. I teach them tricks of what to do with their arm, how can you put your arm in between there, how to gently keep distance.

Mia: … we found a very nice trick for that. So you put your hand, instead of on the shoulder you put it before the shoulder, so you can push someone away. So you don’t say anything but you are

physically very clear that you really don’t appreciate this.

The same kizomba teacher also has a solution for leaders handling followers that try to get too close:

Vincent (male kizomba teacher): And for the gentlemen, of course, I also experience this. When you’re dancing with some ladies, they completely claim you my friend. But how do I deal with that? Well at that time I just try to do exercises in open position. This way you keep having fun and you don’t get frustrated, it’s really about the dancing. Then you’re safe, I’m safe, we’re both safe.

From the interviews I found that in kizomba it is more common to make explicit what is not okay, whereas in lindy hop this remains more implicit. Laura in particular gets straight to the point:

ask them “Hey, would you please put your hand a bit higher?”, and if that happens all the time then we’re done really quick” and “I just say it. I always ask “Hey show a little respect”, and if they don’t listen, or they’re very impolite, then it’s really clear with me. After the third time they get a hand in the face.”

In lindy hop, the most common recourse for dancing with people they would rather not dance with is to avoid them in the future.

It is at this step of the risk management that the theoretical framework of Hirschman as used by Brown and Meyer comes in (2015). This framework typifies responses to negative experiences (like violations of trust) as either exit (leave), voice (complain) and loyalty (stay). Brown and Meyer find that in their case, where trust is interwoven in a complex network of expert knowledge, power and dependency, negative experiences do not necessarily lead to more voice or exit behavior. In the case of dancing, I find that the responses differ between dance styles: in kizomba it is very common to voice discontent and expect the partner to do something about it, in some cases even leading to a hard exit.

Lindy hoppers are less confrontational, and tend to continue begrudging ‘loyally’ dancing even when they are uncomfortable, and to avoid those people from that point forward. What is interesting is that both kizomba and lindy hop dancers act as if their dominant response categories are the only possible or logical type of response, and even then (or because of this) I have to ask several questions before I get to the their actual responses. I have quoted the most vocal kizomba response above, and this how Philip explains what happens if one of the two dancers asks more of their partner than they are willing to give up:

Philip (male lindy hop teacher): Well then you get, then someone doesn’t ask you for a second time, that seems clear to me, then you would rather not dance with them. Right, if there’s no chemistry or if it’s not shared, if it’s only coming from one side, yeah then it’s over quickly I think, then that was the last dance.

In conclusion, I find that response behavior varies from exit and voice to loyalty, but that this is stratified according to style of dance. This difference does not seem to correspond to the physical proximity in the dance, since the same loyal behavior is shown when lindy hoppers dance blues, and conversely the voice behavior persists when kizomba dancers do salsa. This implies it is an effect of the scene, a result of the people who are drawn to these genres, or an effect of the dance styles themselves, but I cannot say for certain based on this research.

A different aspect of dancing with a different associated risk in which the lindy hoppers are more explicit, is that they ask for consent for particularly risky dance moves. Speaking about a class in jumps and dips, and another one in aerial moves, Amber explains:

never do with someone you don’t know, you should always ask before you do it, because you never know, she may just have broken her ankle and she’s dancing for the first time again and then you can really not do these moves.” They were very explicit that you should really not do this with someone you don’t know, without asking first.

The same goes for blues dancing, which some lindy hoppers also do, in which it is encouraged to ask whether the partner consents before moving from the normal closed position to the belly-to-belly close embrace. This does not always happen, as Amber continued:

Amber (female lindy hop student): … but of course that turns out to be different, because there are quite a lot of people who, particularly if they think you’re a good dancer, assume that you can just do certain basic dips and jumps.

It can also have other unintended side-effects, as explained by Ron when he discussed why he always dances blues in the regular closed position:

Ron (male lindy hop student): Maybe it’s also because it almost feels like a charged question to ask.

Another physical risk that the lindy hoppers manage is that of physical injury. Teachers usually reserve some time during a beginners course to instruct the students in what is called floorcraft: the social dance floor etiquette that serves to keep everyone safe:

Philip (male lindy hop teacher): Yes, there are injuries. Also because people bump into each other, and both leaders and followers have no clue about their surroundings. And we very explicitly address this in class: we halve the room, and then quarter it, and then everyone has to dance in that quarter. And then you learn very quickly, because there’s no space. That’s very important, and it’s often noted on large workshops if it’s busy, that people should learn not to do their arms so big, or make a kick backwards. Especially if you have leather shoes with heels, I have seen many people get injured from those things. So definitely a risk. And no aerials on the dance floor, definitely not, because that’s really dangerous.

After learning this in class, this is yet another of the risks that are actively managed and maintained on the social dance floor with active voice behavior.

Outside of dancing

Even when people are not dancing, they are busy managing risk and maintaining trust. One of the core mechanics by which this happens is gossip:

Mia (female WCS & kizomba teacher & dancer): Oh talking amongst each other, a lot. That’s also one of the things I explain when I teach: “hey, if you dance with one person, then keep in mind that you danced with five people,” so that sounds a bit strange. But women for sure, and men too, they

talk amongst each other. If you had a really nice dance with someone, you want to tell someone, like “Yeah I just had such a great dance with so-and-so, that was really cool.” And what happens is “Oh who was it? I’m gonna ask them next,” that also happens. But the opposite also happens, like “I just danced with so-and-so, I don’t know what he was doing, but it sure wasn’t kizomba,” you know. “Ok so what was it?” “Well it was good I was wearing underwear” so to speak, so “Ok, well then I know that if he’s coming my way I should act busy.”

And this sentiment was repeated (even including the ‘if you dance with one, you dance with multiple people’) by several more of my interviewees, and also my own experiences and observations.

The example above directly brings us to the mechanisms by which this newfound information is used for most often: to avoid unwanted dancers. As a dancer becomes more familiar with the broader community and starts attending more social dances, they will be faced with situations in which they do not feel like dancing but also want to avoid hurting the feelings of the person asking them. The first recourse is to make themselves unavailable: this can be done by facing away, sitting a little ways away from the dance floor, or being really involved with another dancer, cellphone or even drink. I experienced a striking example when I once asked a fellow student from my own dance class to dance. She said she could not, because she had just refused someone else a dance for the same song on the excuse of resting for a little bit. If she would then have said yes to me, the first dancer could have noticed and realised she had been lying, and she did not want to do that, even though she did want to dance with me. This was confirmed in an interview by another lindy hopper:

Amber (female lindy hop student): Yeah I recognize that very well, I’ve also said that to people. But also that I, because now when people say “no, sorry, I’m a little bit tired” or “no, sorry, I just want to have a drink for a bit”, that is exactly the excuse that’s used for people you would rather not dance with. And so I became conscious that if people ask me and I do want to dance with them but I really want to just sit at the side for a bit, that I use the excuse genuinely, and I very explicitly add “yeah I really want to dance with you, but just not now, is it okay if I come find you later tonight?” So on the one hand I’m lying, and on the other I’m telling the truth and making it extra clear that I’m really telling the truth this time. Which is a bit strange, because maybe you shouldn’t lie, but that’s ok anyway.

The considerations for avoiding the risk of dancing with someone they would rather not dance with have become so elaborate that there is a kind of excuse-inflation going on.

What is interesting in the case of lindy hop is that even outside of the classes, dancers help others avoid risk and maintain trust. When a dancer, and particularly if this dancer also fulfills some sort of official capacity (like a teacher or an event organizer), gets the impression that another dancer is being hassled by someone with more-than-just-dancing intentions, they may intervene to disentangle this person from the situation:

Robert (male lindy hop teacher): … that if you see that at a party, you just approach them, and you just ask the person he’s standing next to to dance, to rescue that person from the situation. Then you offended nobody but you do solve the problem for the moment.

This is another case in which lindy hop dancers prefer not to engage in a confrontation, but rather solve the matter in a more passive manner, by just avoiding the bad situation.6 _{This is in contrast with the}

kizomba dancers, who are normally more vocal. In the case described above though, they do not feel responsible to intervene:

Vincent (male kizomba teacher): No, no, sorry, I don’t do that. I don’t think that’s my job. You’re a social dancer. If it happens on the dance floor during my class or my workshop, then I will say something about it. It’s my responsibility at that time. But if we’re social dancing and I see it, I’m not going to get involved. And if it happens with a student of mine, first I look what happens, how far it’s going, you see? Because I also think, we’re grown up enough to set our own boundaries, I don’t have to set them for you, you can do that yourself.

In the above section, I have described the ways in which trust is explicitly addressed, managed and maintained by dancers. In classes it is mostly the teacher that takes a prominent role in setting the scene for the students. While dancing at parties, a difference can be identified between kizomba and lindy hop dancers, where kizomba dancers are more vocal and lindy hoppers tend to avoid

confrontation. Outside of dancing, there is still risk- and trust management going on, mainly in the form of gossip and avoiding unwanted dance partners. In the next section, I will conclude my research by returning to the theory and the research question.

Conclusion

In the above research, I have applied an interaction ritual chains approach to trust and risk in social dancing. The research question that inspires this research is how trust is established and maintained in dancing - what are the precursors, circumstances and outcomes of successful dance interaction. In answering this question I am inspired by Collins' interaction ritual chains, “the process in which participants develop a mutual focus of attention and become entrained in each other’s bodily micro-rhythms and emotions” (Collins 2005: 47-48).

In relation to the literature on dancing, the main contribution of this study is a shift of focus away from rational and conscious choice behavior as the dominant lense to understanding dancing. Rather, I have shown that emotional and taken-for-granted notions dictate much of what makes dancing great to the participants. Trust, intimacy and connection are vitally important components of successful

6 Although to be fair, I have heard examples in which lindy hoppers did speak up to someone who made others feel uncomfortable at the dance, but this ended up not being very effective. This person ended up being banned from several social dances.

dancing interaction, and they can be fruitfully understood as being both ingredients and outcomes of interaction ritual chains.

I found that the establishment of trust can be described in three steps: from the trust by association that is inspired by teachers, through trust in themselves and the fellow students, to trust in the broader dancing community. The first step is effectively described with the aid of Palmer's pre-existing trust and explicit rules (2005: 147-148). The second and third step are accurately described in terms of Collins' interaction ritual chains (2005). In addition, there are a multitude of ways in which trust is managed and maintained, during class and in parties, and both on and off the dance floor. Here I found that lindy hop dancers are less vocal than kizomba dancers, who are more likely to voice their complaints (Brown & Meyer 2015; Hirschman 1970).

With regard to the literature on interaction ritual chains, I find that interaction ritual chains are an excellent fit to the study of dancing interaction. My contribution is a strong focus on emotion as an ingredient to the ritual, in line with Barbalet's conception of trust (2009: 375). By changing the ritual situation from a one-on-one interaction to the dance scene as a whole, interaction ritual chains are able to explain both the micro connection in a single dance and the trust in the larger community.

Although I feel these are substantial contributions, necessarily there are limits to what can be said based on this study as well. This research focuses on just two dance styles centered around a single city, with ten core informants, mostly conducted over 3 months time: expansion of any of these dimensions would lead to further insight. My experience in kizomba dancing is also inevitably limited since I started it while doing research.

One of the unique strengths of this research is the attention paid to the initial establishment of trust: the initiation into the dancing scene. However, other focuses could also provide substantial findings as related to trust. To suggest a few: the specific pedagogical and conversational styles used by teachers in their classes (e.g. humour, analogy), the non-dancing side of dancing (e.g. gossip, group-formation), the physicality and habitus of dancing (e.g. practice, sweatiness). These, then, are all research paths I would enjoy seeing pursued in the future.

References

Barbalet, J. (2009). A characterization of trust, and its consequences. Theoretical Sociology 38: 367-382.

Brown, P. R. and Meyer, S. B. (2015). Dependency, trust and choice? Examining agency and 'forced options' within secondary-healthcare contexts. Current Sociology 63(5): 729-745.

Bryman, A. (2008). Social Research Methods. 3rd _{ed. Oxford University Press.}

Collins, R. (2005). Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton University Press.

Durkheim, D. E. (1912). The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Goffman, E. (1955/1967). “On Face Work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction.” Psychiatry 18: 213–31. Reprinted in Goffman, Interaction Ritual. New York: Doubleday, 1967. Hanna, J. L., R. D. Abrahams, N. R. Crumrine, R. Dirks, R. Von Gizycki, P. Heyer, A. Shapiro, Y.

Ikegami, A. L. Kaeppler, J. W. Kealiinohomoku, G. Kubik, R. Lange, A. P. Royce, J. D. Sweet and S. A. Wild (1979). Current Anthropology 20(2): 313-339.

Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Reponses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Harvard University Press.

Ericksen, J. A. (2011). Dance With Me: Ballroom Dancing and the Promise of Instant Intimacy. NYU Press.

Hewer, P. and Hamilton, K. (2010). On emotions and salsa: some thoughts on dancing to rethink consumers. Journal of Consumer Behaviour 9: 113–125.

Palmer, C. T. (2005). Mummers and Moshers: Two Rituals of Trust in Changing Social Environments. Ethnology, 44(2), 147–166.

Appendix

Interviewees:

Name Style Role Gender Experience dancing

Mary Lindy hop Teacher Female 3+ years

Robert Lindy hop Teacher Male 3+ years

Vincent Kizomba Teacher Male 3+ years

Laura Kizomba Dancer & teacher Female 3+ years

Amber Lindy hop Student Female 1 year

Ron Lindy hop Student Male 1 year

Kim Kizomba Student Female 3 months

Piet Lindy hop Student Male 1 night

Mia West coast swing, salsa & kizomba Dancer & teacher Female 3+ years