Allison,
Thanks for your answers. They were exactly on target at addressing the spirit of my
questions and were quite informative.
Thanks for clarifying that the issue about Mad Scatter was anxiety about not finding new
partners, and not about anyone being fixated on some idea like "I want to do the last
[set] dance with my favorite partner, darn it!" I presume the lost and (not?) found
issue was largely a result of people making large "blobs". Not only is it more
likely for people in a big blob not to naturally pair up, but it's even possible that
someone looking for a partner could more readily grab another leftover person from an
adjacent group than find the one on the far side of their own group. Then the remaining
non-partnered people could be quite far apart. One of them might even give up and sit
down. Etc. And how could you have even guessed that it might be useful to teach
strategies for coping with the situation if you didn't anticipate the big blobs in the
first place?
Best of luck with your next dance.
--Jim