Brits say American clubbers too serious on dance floor

So this British girl jumped on my back on the dance floor. I twirled her around, giddily but confused. I could see Pete Tong DJing 5 feet away. Near him, a gent from the BBC snapped pictures of us.

That's when the security guard admonished us with his angry, Super-Mario-mushroom-man eyebrows.

I put the jumper-woman's feet back on the dance floor at Encore Beach Club. It was an afternoon under a desert September, a glorious day to be alive.

To be honest, the jumper girl wasn't a complete stranger. Like any man clarifying a foreign lady atop his personhood, I haven't told you the whole truth yet.

Her name was Juliet Cromwell, advertising director for Mixmag in the United Kingdom, where the queen lives.

Cromwell was here at Encore Beach Club to see for herself how Vegas is the new Ibiza, Spain, and the American capital of DJ music.

Serendipitously, moments prior to her sneak-back-attack, she had just been telling me how much more carefree and animated British clubbers are, compared to Americans.

"I find it quite surprising how no one really lets go" on the dance floor in Vegas, Cromwell said.

And then, for real, she began dancing by kicking her legs forward, chopping her arms around, and appearing generally to be a European clubber gone half-wild.

By contrast, American dancers around Cromwell were barely moving, as animated as fishing bobs, occasionally fisting the air, while looking around to see how others viewed them.

Cromwell had traveled to Vegas with a comrade, Mixmag Associate Editor Nick Stevenson, and he backed up her observation that Americans don't dance-dance.

"In the U.K.," Stevenson said, "they don't mind making a mess of themselves -- getting completely off their face and making an ass of themselves.

"In the U.S., they want to be seen -- showing off and putting their best side forward. They don't want to make an idiot of themselves. Whereas in the U.K., making an idiot of yourself is what the weekend is for!"

I told them that women on dance floors in Vegas often look as if they're waiting to be discovered while scrunching their faces in a fashion similar to the male model Zoolander.

But the truth is, assuredly, women here dress to impress other women (the high heels, the too much makeup, the other things men don't care about), while possibly hoping to hook up with men, but only possibly.

And men only want to have sex with these women, so they try to match their clean and reserved demeanor.

Cromwell and Stevenson said they think clubbers in the U.K. hook up romantically as much, if not more, than Americans do -- and they don't stay all gussied up to do it.

So isn't that a kick in our pants? In the movies, British people are often portrayed as having a stick up their bums, but when comparing club scenes, it's Americans who are all puckered up.

"I ran into a girl yesterday" at a Vegas club, Cromwell said. "She said, 'Where do you put your lotion and your makeup?'

"I said, 'I don't carry any with me.' That was shocking (to the American). No, it's about the music and the fun!"

Stevenson said a different girl at a club gave him a funny glance because he had rolled up the bottoms of his shorts.

"You look like a 15-year-old girl!" she told Stevenson.

"This is how we wear them in the U.K.," he informed her. This explanation remained unimpressive to the American woman.

"I unrolled them today" to fit in, he said.

Cromwell listened to Stevenson's dance floor confession about unrolling his shorts and laughed at him, "Ah, you're givin' in!"

Then she jumped on my back unannounced and rode me like a hyena.

Doug Elfman's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Contact him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.