I have been in on many angles of this issue.

I started squares and then rounds with other students from several colleges in Baltimore, Maryland. Mixing and mingling and changing partners was the norm. After two years, I moved to Boston and long-story-short co-founded Tech Squares at M.I.T.

Much to my continuing amazement, I cued Tech's 35th anniversary dance last year. Mixing and mingling and changing partners is also the norm at Tech. Parallel to Tech, I taught rounds in my own workshops for 20-some years and all of my workshops had a systematic rotation of partners. If we had uneven numbers, those without partners were interspersed evenly with the couples when we started and then all were in the rotation, so that nobody was sans partner continually. Sometimes after working on a figure or sequence with partners, we'd "half rotate" so that everyone was dancing his or her part 'sans' partner -- a useful exercise which also reinforced the idea that each person must take responsibility for holding his/herself up and know what to do.

We also stressed partnering, which includes leading and following, because I don't want anyone to be in the dark about how they should move.

Often I joined in the rotation, dancing whichever side was needed -- which meant that sometimes I was cueing ahead, from the floor, while dancing the man's part, with a perhaps uncertain partner. I still do this occasionally when I am teaching at Tech but not to the extent I did in my heyday.

Many couples came once to my workshops and never returned. Some of them made a point of telling that while I was a great teacher they just didn't want to dance with anyone but their partners (usually their spouses).

The dancers who stayed with me had a reputation for excellence. There was a time when persons would be recognized by their dancing as "one of Veronica's."

Changing partners, to some extent, relieves the tendency of couples who only dance with themselves to become a pair of crutches. Even though the individuals in a group may interpret the instructor's words a little differently, by changing partners and sharing all those interpretations, there's a chance they will experience something closer to what the instructor meant. My dancing with them helped too.
I never had the numbers I could have had if we were a couples workshop, but I had interaction and results that I could never have had with couples, and for me that was more important.

So here's one description of how we kept people dancing even when there were uneven numbers. Generally the rotations need to be sooner rather than later, and if there is even one person who is significantly behind the overall level of the group, this is very important. No one wants to be "stuck" with such a person, although the teacher may stay with that person a little longer. Frequent rotation also prevents jealousy if it appears that someone got more time than another with a very good dancer.

Interestingly, I have done three-session workshops with dancers from the contradance, English country dance, Scottish country dance, and international folk dance communities. Many of them arrived in couples, but changing partners is the norm in the environments from which they came. Some of the couples were in a quandary -- they came to my "couple dance" workshop because they wanted to learn how to dance better as a couple, and yet we were continuing the practice of changing partners. They naturally took the floor in their established couples, and then we began dancing and rotating. But I always invited them to return to "first partners" for the last segment which included a wrap-up / review of the session, and they seemed okay with this. The singles who came were also okay with this and seemed to empathize with the couples, understanding how they would appreciate starting and ending together with the partner rotation between. However, these were only three-week commitments. I don't know how it would have worked over a longer period of time.

I was single for over ten years and then dating exclusively for a long time, before being married. The whole time I was working in this singles-friendly way. But after more than 20 years of 15 to 30 nights a month facilitating other people's dancing, with less and less dancing that was specifically for me, I burned out and tried to retire as a round dance teacher.

Talk about an identity crisis! Tech held on to me, enticing me to cue or teach for them sporadically. We have evolved into a mutually supportive place (but I think they are supporting me more than the other way round) which is absolutely wonderful for me. And then, after shedding most of my round dance teaching and cueing, I became single again -- and I don't have the energy to attempt to break into rounds as a single any more. The couple-ness is overwhelming.

Now I am in contradance, English country dance, Scottish country dance, vintage dance and colonial dance communities where the norm is to dance with a variety of partners. In all of these venues, if there are more of one sex than another, the abundant sex partners up. Meanwhile, at Tech Squares, a significant number of round dancers dance either part, and take it for granted. Thus one might see all the variations at one time: the usual couple, the usual couple trading parts, two women, and two men dancing at the same time. In this situation, it really is about the dancing!

Oh well, I've meandered enough for now. I trust if you read this far, you found it interesting!

Roundly,

Veronica
vmcclure@rounddance.com

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