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View Full Version : Music for Socials: Interleaved or Sets?


Chris Stratton
06-26-2004, 12:03 PM
How do people like to have contrasting styles of music at dance socials arranged?

Interleaved - standard, latin, standard, latin, with the occasional alternate dance (hustle or WCS or salsa in our case) throw in? (usually also with a fast/slow alteration so you don't pair a jive and a quickstep)

Sets - 4 or 5 dances in one style, then swtich, then switch back?

Mega-sets - an hour or more of one style, then switch to a different style?

Personally I first encountered per-song interleaving, and tend to rather dislike any other system. Given I sit out most of the latin and social numbers, on average I'm trying to dance very other song, which is a very comfortable pace. Wheras with 10-15 minute sets, it seems like I can't really get the full benefit of all of my favorite music due to it being clustered with no break or time to find partners, but then end up sitting out a long time waiting for the latin set to end.

I do suppose though that someone who liked all styles equally and also preffered an every-other-dance pace could find per-song interleaving annoying in that they'd tend to get stuck aligned with one style and have to dance or sit out two in a row to switch. Occasionally when I will dance one of the latin numbers I notice this, but it doesn't seem too bad. (two on two off is preferable to four on four off in my mind)

etchuck
06-26-2004, 01:47 PM
Playing around for a bit, it seems to me that people prefer sets over here. When I've organized the music for our social dances, the advanced dancers wanted sets (while the beginning ones naturally didn't care).

Now I usually do four-dance sets of standard/smooth with rhythm/Latin followed by club (ECS/lindy, salsa/merengue, WCS/NC2S, and other). Of course, I also know when I do a strictly swing dance, they prefer mega-sets of varying tempi: ECS/lindy/bal/jitterbug, WCS should not be mixed but have a separate set.