Scottish dances can also be a good source when you're short on numbers. And if you have internet, you can look them up when you arrive at the venue, as the abbreviated instructions for many of them can be found at http://my.strathspey.org/dd/index/ (you can filter for set size using the menu: Extra > Complex Dance Search). At least for the quick ones (jigs and reels, not Strathspeys), the step doesn't really matter.
There are many dances for 2 couples in a longwise set (which could be as short as 2C or 3C if that's what you've got). And they are almost all proper, so you don't need to worry about swapping sides each time through. And they don't (ever?) feature interactions outside your group of four for that time through the dance. There are quite a few triplets (3C in a 3C set), but they'll be different from the standard repertoire of contra triplets. Most of the dances are for 3C in a longwise set of 4C (1s lead from 1st place, repeat from 2nd place, run away to the bottom as the new 1s start), so in a 3C set you will need to make the 1s run to the bottom every time. This often happens in Scottish dance groups (one of my local groups is often seven couples, so one set will have to make this adjustment), so it should be pretty feasible. If you're trying to fill a whole evening, you could teach them a figure or two that you don't get in contra, to widen your choice of Scottish dances. For instance the Allemande (not the hand-turn contra figure!) - two or three couples, depending on the dance, promenade round half way and the ladies spin round back to their own sides, basically - is quite a common progression. Edmund Croft, Cambridge and Worcestershire, UK Michael Barraclough wrote: > There are many, many 2-couple English Country Dances. Yoyo Zhou wrote: > Proper dances make the 2-couple progression easy. Jacqui Grennan wrote: > I recently called at a contra dance where we had exactly 6 dancers for almost > the entire evening… > 1) Do you have any dances you can share that would work for 4 or 5 dancers? > Or also dances for 6 dancers that are not triplets (have plenty of triplets).
