My experience at house parties is that there are always plenty of people who are happy to (stand around and drink and) chat, so the situation may just take care of itself. On Jan 22, 2014, at 9:23 PM, Leslie Gotfrit wrote:

Could you ask couples to bow out when they get to the bottom or top, and let an idle couple join in.  The idle couples could be in a queue so that they rejoin the dance after leaving. ________________________________ From: Leslie Gotfrit <lgotfrit(a)me.com> To: callers(a)sharedweight.net Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 10:23 PM Subject: [Callers] Is it possible to have more 2s than 1s in a pinch? That is, in a pinched space. I don't know how else to phrase it. Is it possible to wait out an extra turn or two at the bottom so that the number of couples actually dancing is smaller than the number of couples in the contra line? (I couldn't look up the question in the archives because explaining it is wordy.) Has anyone tried it? Are there other methods for dealing with not enough room? Background: I'm calling a house party contra with room for one contra line of 16-18 dancers but need 24 paying participants (to cover the band and me). Given that some people will be late, others chatting around the food, there won't be four extra couples dancing but maybe one or two or maybe none. There is a "waiting area" off to the side that doesn't take space away from the contra line. thanks, this forum has been invaluable to this newbie caller Leslie Gotfrit _______________________________________________ Callers mailing list Callers(a)sharedweight.net http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers