I was programming a contra evening earlier today, taking into consideration the abilities of the dancers in that particular dance community.   When I finished, I  looked back at two previous programs for the same venue.  The dance evenings were about six months apart.

It turns out that more than half the dances I chose today were repeats from the previous evenings, and I subsequently reprogrammed the evening.  (I usually look backwards before programming, and this was an experiment.)

I tend not to repeat dances at evenings that are close in time and/or location, but I must acknowledge that occasionally the best choice for a particular slot may be a repeated dance.

The question I have is what is a tolerable level of repeating dances from one evening to another.  

When I began calling contras, this was a bigger concern to me.  I had four dances in CT in four weeks, and a dancer challenged me to avoid duplicate dances.  I accepted the challenge and mostly succeeded.  Anyway the dancer, who was at all four dances, latter told me that he was only joking.  He went on to say that each evening had a different band, and that he danced with a different partner for each dance, and that in reality they would have felt very different to him even if I had repeated them.

Any thoughts?

Rich Sbardella
Stafford, CT