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Monday, December 19, 2005
Newspaper Clipping....Dec 18, 2005
Eye for a guyGaze into someone's eyes for three minutes - no talking, please - and you may just find yourself falling in love By June Cheong
SAN Francisco-born Michael Ellsberg got tired of trotting out the surface details of his life to strangers he met in bars and clubs in New York after he moved there.
So the 28-year-old bachelor decided to throw out the social niceties of first dates like small talk, and created a new way of dating - eye-gazing parties.
Like speed dating but without the polite chit-chat, singles in eye-gazing parties sit across one another and look into their partners' eyes for three minutes.
After three minutes of silent gazing, they switch partners and begin looking into another person's eyes anew.
Each eye-gazing session lasts 30 minutes and the singles lock eyes with at least 10 others in one go.
In a recent phone interview with LifeStyle from New York, Mr Ellsberg says the concept of eye-gazing parties was inspired by the salsa dance.
The freelance book editor and part-time salsa instructor explains: 'I realised that if you lock eyes with your salsa partner, it raises the energy level of the dance.
'I felt like I had a deep interaction with another person in a brief amount of time.'
He adds: 'Then it suddenly clicked: You can meet a special someone through eye contact.'
To test the efficacy of eye gazing in a social context, he hit the streets of New York.
For three days, he looked into the eyes of random passers-by - men and women - and found most people willing to have a quick eye-to-eye connection.
'It's not staring. You're looking into another person's eyes for just long enough to be able to determine eye colour.
'After that experiment, I wanted to create a space where meaningful eye contact can happen without aggression or hostility,' he says.
And so the inaugural eye-gazing party was held at a bar in the East Village in New York two Wednesdays ago.
It attracted 26 single men and women, all of whom were professionals in their late 20s and early 30s.
Lest you think eye contact is nothing but a natural though perfunctory way of communicating, Professor James Laird of Clark University in Massachusetts, 68, explains the apparent connection between eye contact and romantic interest.
He specialises in a field of psychology that explores the origins of human feelings.
In an e-mail interview, he says: 'Our feelings are perceptions of our ongoing bodily reactions.
'Mutual gazing is a behaviour that people do only with romantic partners.'
He adds: 'Sharing your gaze in an experiment is acting like you are romantically attracted to someone so you end up feeling that way.'
For detractors who feel eye gazing is a pale substitute for conversation when it comes to getting to know someone, Mr Ellsberg says: 'After the party, people told me eye-gazing got them into a heightened state of awareness as if they were hypnotised by the other person's gaze.
'It's such an icebreaker. People were more bonded after that and conversations were a lot deeper.'
Love at first sight, anyone?
