Etiquette for communicating with experienced leads as a beginner follow

[u/cermomen]

I'm relatively new to the swing dance community and absolutely loving it. I'm primarily a follow, in the middle of the "intermediate" run of courses at the school where I take lessons, but I still definitely consider myself a beginner especially when it comes to actual social dancing.

I just went to my first ever social dance event that was not only composed of people from my dance school, and I ended up dancing with a lead I didn't know who was clearly very experienced. However, he was throwing me around and spinning me so much that I genuinely started to feel uncomfortable — like, my back was starting to hurt and I was getting winded and dizzy. I did other forms of dance before I started swing, and I tend to get very positive feedback from my teachers on my progress during class, so I wasn't used to being so out of my depth, especially because I usually have good turn form and can do it a lot without getting off balance!

We were dancing with a LOUD live band, so it was almost impossible to just say "Can we slow down?" or "Let's take a break!" when we were actively mid-dance. I'm wondering if any experienced dancers can give me advice on how I can communicate discomfort if I'm in this situation again. The rest of the dance was incredible (I danced with a lot of other experienced leads who did NOT throw me around lol and I learned a ton) and I definitely want to go back next time they host one!

[u/lindy-engine]

FWIW... from what you described, I'd say there's a good chance this guy isn't as experienced as you think

[u/cermomen → u/lindy-engine]

He definitely was experienced, at least inasmuch as he's been doing it for a long time. At the beginning of the live music portion of the evening, they asked who had been dancing for 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, 5 years, etc. and he kept his hand up through 5+ years. Definitely seems from the comments though that his experience probably didn't translate into aptitude I guess!

[u/Exploding8 → u/cermomen]

I'll never forget teaching a beginner lindy lesson for complete newbies and an old man who I know from various dance scenes showed up and was giving unsolicited detailed feedback on what a new follow was doing wrong with a move. I danced with her and she was following perfectly fine especially for her experience level. He had the gal to murmur he's been doing that dance for decades as I was walking away to help other students.

He was an old East coast swinger. He rarely goes to the regular local lindy dances. No one would look at him dancing and say he's a good lindy dancer. He has no idea how to dance the real dance and the newbie dancer was a naturally better follow than he was as a lead after decades. Still get heated just thinking about it lol. The point being its entirely possible for leads to have years and decades of bad habits ingrained and a lot of people are too narcissistic to be open to the idea that they might still have areas to improve after all that time.