I was in a dance with a similar sequence just last weekend. Please bear in mind I'm piecing together memories from the middle of a dance weekend. The caller was either Mary Wesley or David Eisenstadter and I can't recall enough context to decide who it was. The part of the dance I remember went like this: ladies 4 steps in, balance wave R, L gents in as ladies out, balance wave L, R two gents allemande L half way, swing neighbour I'm pretty sure I danced gent for most or all of this. I thought that balancing left felt fine. It didn't seem to be too unidiomatic, and it did make the allemande left better. Some parts of the line were a little shakier on the left-first method but overall it worked quite well. It helped me that the caller pointed out that the balance was toward the gent in your current foursome first -- "you're still working with that neighbour". In your case, it sounds as if the waves are where you meet a new neighbour (or perhaps a shadow), and describing it as your first interaction with that person might help make it feel more idiomatic to balance toward them. (But as others have pointed out, the allemande right before the balance is another wrinkle to consider.) Peter On Wed, 2017-11-08 at 14:07 -0500, Maia McCormick via Callers wrote: