Well, you really shouldn't be promising all that many dances anyway. It's been noted that we don't use dance cards anymore. You don't have to schedule your dances for the evening and no one really expects you to do so. It's generally better to just take things as they come and not promise too many dances. A few is fine, like if you ask someone for one dance but they're resting so you agree on a different one instead. People can usually keep a promise or two in mind. Do try to keep the promise if you made one, of course, but try not to fault people too much if they forget. There's almost always another you can do with them later if they forget you asked them for the next one. And sometimes people just do forget or didn't realize you meant it as a promised dance. My ballroom dance web page has some links to pages with notes on etiquette and a page of my own notes on the subject. I don't know if they're quite what you're looking for here, but I'll give you the URL in case you want to check it out: http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall/ballroom.html I hope this helps.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall