Hi Will,

A favorite triplet of mine is Melanie's Triplet by Melanie Axel-Lute.  
It's on her website:

http://www.maxellute.net/triplet.html

A simple dance for three couples starting in a circle goes:

A1  Circle left, circle right
A2  Right hands across star, left hand across star
B1  Couple with lowest hands, lady ducks under to swing partner, then  
middle-hands couple, then top, so all are swinging partners
B2  Promenade around the ring

If there are just two couples, many simple contras can be done by  
just treating your partner as your next neighbor (and so the axis of  
the dance will rotate 90 degrees each time).

In addition to couple dances to break things up, some simple ceilidh  
or whole set dances might work; and if you have exactly nine dancers,  
how about the fun square Nine Pin?

Good luck!

Richard

On Oct 14, 2008, at 9:56 AM, Will Loving wrote:

> As a new caller, I’m looking for advise and/or suggestions for  
> events with a
> very small number of dancers, 3-6 couples. At a dance I called in  
> August
> (granted a slow month) we had at most five couples and that was if  
> I and a
> couple of people who came to play music danced. I threw away my  
> carefully
> planned program and wound up doing a number of triplets (thank you  
> David
> Smukler) and a four-on-four that I modified so that it stayed  
> together as a
> set and resulted in a change of partners each time through. It was  
> a little
> clunky but it mostly worked and gave us some variety.
>
> I am of course trying to avoid the scenario of people spending half  
> the
> dance as neutrals when there only four couples in a set, and I’m  
> not really
> ready to take on learning some squares in the next few days which  
> would be
> the obvious choice. I am hopeful that there will be more people  
> this time,
> but in case I’m in the same situation again, I’m studying more  
> triplets, a
> couple of dbl-progression dances for 4+ couple sets (so that no one  
> waits
> out at the end for long) and looking for other ideas.
>
> Levi Jackson Rag is a possibility, but I’d still like to have some  
> other
> options in my pocket. It did occur to me to suggest an extra  
> couples dance
> or two just to break things up if we’re doing lots of short dances  
> with 3-5
> couples.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Will Loving
> _______________________________________________
> Callers mailing list
> Callers at sharedweight.net
> http://www.sharedweight.net/mailman/listinfo/callers