At least one dance that I attend does a couples dance at the beginning for just that reason. It gets the music started. It gets people warmed up, even if there's only one couple ready to dance. And it lets people outside know that the dance has started. It's usually (always?) a polka as the first dance at the Nelson Monday night dance, at least for the past few years.
On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 3:10 AM, Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing < wins...@slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > Callers -- > > I called last weekend (St Patrick's Day, and a very rainy night) and the > dance > was very slow to get started. By about 10 minutes after the starting time > we > had something five or six couples, with two first-timers among them. > > I let the first two dances run normal length, consciously, because I > wanted the > first-timers to get the experience of getting the dance long enoug to get > it > and no longer need calling. > > I think I was successful in that goal, but I heard that the experienced > dancers > were pretty bored seeing the same faces over and over. (By the third dance > more people had turned up and it wasn't so much of a problem.) > > How do y'all handle this kind of thing? > > -- Alan > >
