Laur,

Even with great music and calling it's tough to create excitement when the hall feels empty.  I've tried to think of everything I can do to make that kind of evening fun.  My personal choice is to call a large proportion of contras where the dancers swing their partner not their neighbor.  The logic is this:  If you swing your neighbor in every dance, especially early in the evening, what is there to look forward to?  With partner swing dances only, when you get a new partner you haven't swung him/her 10 times before hand.

In general I usually run contras until everyone has swung their neighbors and then end the dance.  So for me contras with a partner only swing is preferred when numbers are small.

And I include many dances that are in other formations and also take some time to teach and dance.  Here's one.

Dip and Dive for Five (my name)
Formation is a small circle of 4 couples numbered 1-5.  There's sort of a home place but this is not critical.
I learned this from Fred Park and if my memory is correct it comes form the border area between West Virginia and Ky.

Couple 1 swings in the center of the set, others form a square around couple 1.

Couple 1 faces up or down, heads dip and dive- takes 16 beats

Couple 1 faces a side couple, dip and dive....

8 dancers join hands and go forward and back.  Go forward and back again and bring couple 1 back where they belong.

Break
Allemande left grand right and left.  With partner, turn back (5th hand is with partner and is a left allemande).  Swing partner at "home".

I usually call break, figure, break, figure etc.....

Tom



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