How long does a barndance last?
That’s partly up to you. We’ve done dances as short as ten minutes, or as long as five hours, but the ideal is obviously somewhere in between. If you consider that a single dance takes around 15-20 minutes to explain and then perform, you really want at least four dances in a set. The ideal would be something like two sets, each of an hour to an hour and a half, with maybe half an hour’s break in between. We can tailor the timings to fit in with anything else that’s going on during the evening; speeches,buffet, raffle and so on. We’re sometimes asked to play some background music during the dinner, which is fine, but don’t expect live music all through the dinner and then a long dance as well; the band will be worn out and the guests will have heard more than enough of us by the end. We can play for longer than that, but experience shows that even in the best of circumstances, enjoyable exertion will eventually turn into boredom and exhaustion if you try and stretch it out too long. Fo
