I'm always on the lookout for ways to "sell" the traditional dances to dancers -- IMHO, if I present a traditional dance but it's not fun, then I'm not really doing much to keep the traditions alive. I came up with something that worked the other night, so I'm passing it along.
One of our long-time dancers sent me a link to this video of Dudley calling a dance in the mid-1960s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZubTju7g_s I figure I must have come across this before (likely via this group), but I did not remember it, and certainly watched it a lot more closely this time around. I noted that even though audio track of the music and calling don't change, after the first half of the video a few different dances are shown, including Petronella and Money Musk.
So last week, I brought a laptop to the dance (the fact that we have wifi in our hall simplified this a lot). During the announcements before the break, I mentioned the video, said I would show it during the break, and announced that the first dance after the break would be one of the dances shown in the video. I set the laptop next to the snack table and started the clip going just as the waltz ended. It runs about 7 minutes, so running the video twice through was about perfect for the break. Lots of people stopped to watch at least some of the the video -- there were always at least 20 people clustered around the laptop, watching intently. Then we came back into the dance hall and did Petronella (though unlike the video, we did the 'modern' version with all four participating in the balances).
End result: not one complaint about a dance with no swings and multiple positive comments. Added bonus: our piano player was a Dudley dancer in the early 70s and was thrilled by the video, which he had never seen.