Easy Whole Set Dances With a Hook

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I’ve lately ended up calling a bunch of parties and I’ve been happy with calling mostly longways whole-set dances. These are ones that are shaped like a contra dance in terms of having two lines facing each other, each person across from their partner, but your role doesn’t matter and you’re not grouped into hands-fours (“minor sets”). I want to be able to teach it in a single fast-paced walkthrough, match it tightly to the musical phrase, and be able to drop out after a few times through. This means I need most of the figures to be very simple, and a low piece count.

On the other hand, if I build every dance out of the same small number of building blocks (ex: reshuffles of Galopede), dancers will start to feel “haven’t we done this one before”? So I also like dances that have a “hook”: an interesting figure that we don’t do in the other dances. Some examples:

In Jacob’s Potato the whole set circles (well, potatoes) left and right.
In the Low-Backed Car each line takes a turn dancing around the other.
In Charge and Drag the top and bottom couple each arch over one of the lines, and then additionally charge towards each other and drag to the bottom.

Other hooks I like include lines weaving between arches and the whole set casting to the bottom (“peel the banana”).

I was looking for more dances like this, especially ones that fit in small spaces (no down the hall) and aren’t too picky about the number of couples (5 − 8). I asked the Trad Callers mailing list for ideas, and got back a bunch. After looking through them I added two to my repertoire:

Witch’s Reel (thread the needle)
Falling Masonry (arch over lines; cascading sashay)

Of the ones I didn’t add, I think the zig-zag poussette figure in Wee Willie II would be fun to adapt, but the dance as written takes more space than I often have. I’ll probably look for another dance with that figure (or write one).

I also saved two simple duple minors where roles don’t matter, for when the crowd is ready for something slightly more complex:

Riverside Jig (simple duple minor with lines of four arching down over the whole set)
Quandranella (simple duple minor with petronella)