“Resting Bitch Face”
When I was first starting to dance, I was just warming to the idea of asking people to dance who had significantly more experience than I did. There was one dancer in the community that I thought was great and after a few months of salsa dancing, I finally worked up the courage to ask her to dance.
Throughout the dance I could tell that she was bored, and I was devastated. We exchanged "thank you"s and I sat out for most of the rest of that night.
It was about 3 years later that I asked her to dance again. I felt much more confident at this point, and I hoped that this dance would be an improvement compared to the first dance we did. When I asked her to dance, her response was "of course! It's been so long since you've asked me to dance!"
As we walked to the dance floor I told her how I'd been intimidated and how she looked bored when we danced before. "Oh, that's just how I look when I'm thinking. It's the RBF." As someone who's been told that I generally look unhappy when I dance, it finally clicked for me that sometimes we can have a great time dancing with someone, even if we don't show it on our face. I'd learned that about myself, but hadn't been able to see that when I was dancing with others. That second dance with her was great, and we've had many more great dances since then!
Jon Skelton, Salsa dancer for 8 years~
