Some guys try partner dancing (salsa, swing, etc.) as a component of their game, and I’m one of them, but I’ve found the results to be mixed… whether you should do dance classes depends a lot on you. If you’ve got lots of tasty chicks queued up and a good pipeline, there’s little reason to start dancing unless you’re a guy who really likes it, or unless you’re in a small town without good day game opportunities. The highest-value guys and chicks rarely or never show up at social dance venues… which tells you something important.
The reasons for dancing are many and we’re the dancing species, so dancing is in line with our evolved propensities… it’s hard to fight evolved propensities. Guys with good game are almost always aligned with what chicks find attractive, and guys who can’t align themselves with what chicks find attractive struggle. I didn’t make the rules bro, evolution did. The reverse is also true… talk to a girl who is fat or old and see how much fun dating is for her… she is not aligned with what guys are primed to desire.
I get the impression a lot of guys starting in pickup, the game, and the Red Pill have bad social skills and are starting from bad places, with no queue of chicks, no pipeline, and a lifetime of videogame, sugar, and pr0n habits to fight against… these guys don’t have the social skills to apply cold-approach pickup and, even if they try, find the process so daunting as to be almost impossible. For them, social dancing (and improv) are good ways to start making small, consistent forward progress… every day you can make progress or regress… you only see the tip of the spear.
Social dancing and improv are structured ways of meeting new people and building concrete skills without the thumbs-up / thumbs-down aspect of proposing dates and sex to new chicks. When I was younger I was sometimes nervous about sexual rejection, but now I realize that when a girl gives me a firm “no,” or when I take anything apart from “yes” as “no,” that is an advantage to me because I can quit feeding her attention better targeted elsewhere. Guys without a chick pipeline and without masculine identity and presence often find “no” to be devastating, a blow to their whole identity.
After college I lost some of the environmental and ecosystem practices that had led me to good solid lays, and this seems true of a lot of guys. I thought I was a player… turned out I was just in a good environment and a little bit less of a p***y than most guys, and that was sufficient to get a bunch of lays. Oh, if I knew then what I know now……….
So I tried some social dancing. It was fine. It led to a few lays, but a lot of hours spent. It was also more fun than a lot of what my friends considered fun (video games). This girl was an ultra-long lead from that period. Good-looking 8 who had become more attractive over time, evolving from a stick-thin girl to one with the right curves (not all girls peak at 18 – 22). And she is pretty monogamous overall… I encouraged her to have some fun when she was out of town and her boyfriend was otherwise disposed… no go. A guy asked me about where monogamous-leaning chicks are, and I don’t really know (churches?), but they pop up in my life now and then.
Game advice is tough because game is contingent on who a guy is, where a guy lives, and what his starting conditions are like. Guys with bad starting conditions will often find advice suitable for better-positioned guys to be unrealistic or even outright unbelievable. Guys with good starting conditions will find some advice for beginners to be unfocused, ineffective, or just plain unnecessary. Where you are affects how you receive the message and the message’s relevance to you. This post targets guys at an introductory level.
If you’re a guy looking at some empty nights and you’re not a hard-core cold approach guy, learning social dancing is probably better than not. Social dancing is a very “safe” activity that sublimates its sexuality and gives guys a structure and a skill to practice… this is also what makes it less fluid than daygame or even nightgame. You can practice dancing and talking (a “dance” consists of a bunch of dancing, obviously, but also some hanging out by the drinks table or taking breaks).
Regulars at a social dancing event will get reputations, so it’s not a good place to ask out a bunch of chicks the first night you attend. Game at dances is indirect. Most nights, social dancing will be kind of boring, and when I was doing it I didn’t even see many 7s. Some, not many. But it’s better than a night playing video games or watching porn, and even rudimentary dancing skills can be useful at weddings, nights out with friends, etc. Dancing can be a useful warmup for strolling the streets at night and chatting up chicks who are between bars (“gutter game”).
People who get really into dancing go to other cities to attend exchanges (and ideally DNA) with people in the host cities.
So I personally haven’t seen much in the way of hot chicks at social dances, or lays from social dancing… but I’m also glad I did it… doing it will put you in a more social and sexual frame of mind and spirit than many other activities. For a long time I haven’t had many involuntarily empty nights and for me social dancing hasn’t been a great source of direct lays, so I don’t do it anymore. Chicks are impressed with my “dancing skills,” which are awful compared to good dancers but great compared to most chicks, and they come from like the two years I was taking lessons. Some dancing events will also have a nerdy, loser guy wandering around with an expensive camera shooting pictures, and if you can snag some of those pics, they’re better than average for online dating profiles.
Just getting out and interacting with other people is far superior to being on the Internet, playing video games, etc. Depending on where you are with gym, fitness, and diet, dancing can be superior or inferior; that’s going to vary too much by the individual to generalize. Dance scenes are also somewhat close-knit, so it’s easy to soil a reputation there. Guys who don’t have basic masculinity and social calibration are going to struggle there, but those guys are probably going to struggle anywhere. Dance classes don’t seem like an optimal use of time for guys who want to rack up lays and have the skills to do so. They seem like they can be pretty useful for guys who aren’t quite there yet.
Rakish Love said, “Although the dance (or whatever) scene isn’t the best for pickup since you might have a low-sexual-market value in the eyes of veteran girls there, it adds to your SMV to regular girls on the street, which makes it a good value delivery mechanism.” He’s right but, with consistent and deliberate practice, dance SMV can become fine with a few months of practice. It’s going to suck at the very beginning (beginner’s hell) but everything sucks at the very beginning of the effort, including game, dance, learning an instrument, etc. Being really optimized for picking up chicks at the venue itself may take a long time, and I didn’t properly emphasize that.
I don’t now if there are social skills coaches or therapists but if there aren’t there should be, particularly in this new age of phone-based social retardation. Seriously, ask to see the Apple screen time app for chicks under age 25. Many of them will check their numbers then be too ashamed to show you. They should be ashamed because they are spending their whole lives looking at other people’s Instagram. Guys who need to build their social skills need to get out into the real world and interact with real people. Improv, social dancing, volunteering, etc., are good ways to do this that are pretty low pressure, but coaching and therapy would be good too. If you’re a guy with strong social and game skills already then your sticking points are elsewhere. This seems to the minority of guys and especially the minority of guys starting out.
The Red Quest 
As a long time dancer, I agree with some points made in your post about high value women at dance venues. They are often taken by good dancers. The venues tend to be closed circles, so don’t expect quick results. There’s the Salsa crowd, the ballroom crowd, and so on. It helps to know several dance styles so you can move between groups.
What I have found is women watch your skill on the dance floor, so if you want high value women, you better be a decent dancer or you won’t get a second chance with them (after the first sympathy dance).
Dancing is a skill. I take lessons to improve myself. Why do something half-assed; don’t bother if that’s your context. Do it for yourself, and anything else is a bonus.
In addition to dancing being better than sitting at home playing video games or watching TV, it provides a great option for a date. Get her out, active, moving to the music, and in close contact with you. Just realize there’s a big learning curve in dancing before becoming anywhere near half decent. I’ve seen so many men take a stab at it, claim something about having two left feet, and quit. That eliminates a lot of your competition.
From the woman’s point of view, I’ve been told (by women) that it’s much harder to find a good male dance partner than a boyfriend/husband. Which means she’ll work harder to hang on to you if you fit that category (being a good dancer). She can rustle up another boyfriend quickly, but good make dance partners are rare. Don’t be another half-assed dancer, be rare.
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Great points all.
I think it comes down to cost-benefit too.
A guy needs to like dancing for the sake of dancing to make it worthwhile over the long term.
A guy who is mostly interested in women… will probably find dancing not the most effective way to seek them.
There are so many vital questions about the individual guy that are necessary to understand what an individual guy should do.
He shouldn’t be doing a lot of TV, porn, social media, and video games, though. And dancing is low stakes enough that almost any guy, even socially isolated ones, can get started doing it.
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As a long time dancer, I agree with some points made in your post about high value women at dance venues. They are often taken by good dancers. The venues tend to be closed circles, so don’t expect quick results. There’s the Salsa crowd, the ballroom crowd, and so on. It helps to know several dance styles so you can move between groups.
What I have found is women watch your skill on the dance floor, so if you want high value women, you better be a decent dancer or you won’t get a second chance with them (after the first sympathy dance).
Dancing is a skill. I take lessons to improve myself. Why do something half-assed; don’t bother if that’s your context. Do it for yourself, and anything else is a bonus.
In addition to dancing being better than sitting at home playing video games or watching TV, it provides a great option for a date. Get her out, active, moving to the music, and in close contact with you. Just realize there’s a big learning curve in dancing before becoming anywhere near half decent. I’ve seen so many men take a stab at it, claim something about having two left feet, and quit. That eliminates a lot of your competition.
From the woman’s point of view, I’ve been told (by women) that it’s much harder to find a good male dance partner than a boyfriend/husband. Which means she’ll work harder to hang on to you if you fit that category (being a good dancer). She can rustle up another boyfriend quickly, but good make dance partners are rare. Don’t be another half-assed dancer, be rare.
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My town doesn’t really have a place for the likes of improv or stand up, so what do you suggest as good alternative?
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to move
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Some problems can’t be solved. A guy who wants to maximize the game is going to need the flow of chicks to a larger city to get it.
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Move.
Game is about value, value delivery, and environment. If your environment is fucked that needs to be fixed. https://theredquest.wordpress.com/2019/05/20/date-onomics-players-should-go-where-the-gender-ratio-is-good
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I used social dancing as a way to start from zero after a break up and was a very good idea. New people, new things, ignore ridiculous, etc. I lasted one month because I found another activity more interesting (a sports group on the beach), but I remember the dancing as a very good way to start.
On the long term, I think it doesn’t help. There is a clear hierarchy there, teachers on top, then experienced dancers. Even when you are alpha in other aspects, your poor dancing skills put you somehow behind. And as you say, it is like a closed community where reputation is important (women don’t want to be slutty in a place they often go).
The teachers there were predators, fucking every new student who was quite decent. The main guy was surreal on Facebook, he might have 4,000 friends, most of them women, and most of them after him. Of course…he was married.
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Good point. One solution is to become a teacher, over time. Will probably take a year or two of dedicated effort. Social dancing, holding a job, and hitting the gym properly may also not be practical to do together.
You can probably see that I think experienced guys are best served focusing elsewhere but as always it depends on where a guy is starting from.
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My experience in the UK was that females use salsa, and probably other forms of partner dancing, as a substitute for, not a route to, sex. They get endless attention, touch, mild flirting and a physical workout. At the end of the night they go home with many of their needs satiated and still N+0. I have bounced this idea off a few salsa chicks and they all agreed with me, at least to some extent. Whenever I see an online profile with ‘salsa addict’ or something similar, it’s an instant “next”.
And yes, as a beginner guy you are really low on the food chain. I would think it takes more than two years to reach instructor level – it ain’t as easy as it looks.
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The experiences here are also like with acroyoga, or even shibari, very experienced guys that do it for a living could have their pick of the litter (as long as they have game, most don’t). Getting to be very experienced will take a lot of time, consistent practice with people you’re not attracted to, so you really must like it to follow through.
I just competent enough to show both salsa and acro to girls who haven’t tried it, which can be a great way to get physical quickly and escalate afterwards if you click.
Although the dance (or whatever) scene isn’t the best for pickup since you might have a low-SMV in the eyes of veteran girls there, it adds to your SMV to regular girls on the street, which makes it a good value delivery mechanism.
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A good point, and I incorporated your last sentence into the main post itself.
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I did latin dancing for many years in parallel with more hardcore game… like cold street approaches. Looking back, I think for me it was just the right thing at the right time. I’m a natural introvert and probably just needed to get out and socialize, more than anything. This did the trick. Oh, and a few dance moves can be amazing for escalation sometimes.
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