[Callers] Fewer than 6 dancers - Ideas?

[Kalia Kliban via Callers]

On 10/4/2016 2:37 PM, Winston, Alan P. via Callers wrote:
> Its really tempting to cancel a contra if you only have a few people,
> but  you don't want to punish the people who showed up - they may
> have foregone other options for their evenings.  And there's a sense
> of triumph if you can show them a good time.  I think its important
> to have options ready to go, so you can start on an energetic note
> and keep things happening, and if any new person shows up they see
> something going on rather than nothing and maybe stick around to get
> in the next one.

This is reminding me of a dance I did last year.  I had hauled my way 
through 2 hours of grisly Bay Area traffic and got there just barely in 
time, completely frazzled, set list in hand, to find 3 dancers plus the 
dance manager.  (Bay Area folks will know about the Canyon Contra, which 
ran for many, many years in the 1-room schoolhouse in Canyon, CA.  Teeny 
but cool.)  Just as I was about to pull out a couple of 2-couple English 
dances one more person showed up, so I danced in and we did a couple of 
triplets, then a waltz-time 3-couple English and a bouncy 3-couple 
English.  I was mentally riffling through my triplet collection again 
when 3 more dancers showed up.  Hooray, I had a dance for 9 (Pride of 
Dingle)!  We took a little break after that, got 1 more dancer on the 
floor and did a few teeny contras, then another waltz-time dance for 3 
couples.  After the next break the manager had to go do manager things 
and we lost a couple of early-to-bed dancers so we did Domino 5 (I 
dearly love that dance), another triplet and ended with a goofy 
French-Canadian dance called Le Brandy.  The folks who were first-timers 
were impressed that there were dances in "so many different shapes," and 
the experienced dancers were impressed that I was able to find ways to 
keep us all dancing.  It ended up being a really, really enjoyable night.

A couple of years ago I took all of the dances I use for one night stand 
gigs and put them into a single document with ultra-compressed notation. 
  I've sorted them by numbers, style, level of difficulty and a few 
other ways.  That document has saved my butt a few times.  If you've got 
a handful of go-to dances for odd situations, it's worth putting them 
all onto one easy-to-grab page for those times of need.

Kalia