I'm a middle school orchestra director here in Connecticut/USA(ages 10-14), and twice a year my orchestra does a fiddling unit for about a month ... then puts on a country dance night. We hire a caller and the community comes and dances in the school cafeteria. When I started doing this about twenty years ago I had smaller groups of about 10-18 students ... and so I felt a need for a PA to bolster the sound. I have still been running the PA as the groups have gotten larger, even though there is now never less than thirty on the risers for any tune being played.
   This thread has really got me thinking. Things have been getting extremely boomy in the room during the last few years. This coming dance on March 10th I'm debating whether I should cut back to a little 40watt amp just to power up the caller a bit and give my lonesome guitar a little support. A more conservative option would be to set up the whole system as usual but just keep everything lower. When the kids are spread out on the shallow but wide risers I might still need the two PA speakers to keep the tempo from flying away on the fringes of the group.
   I'm really thinking, though. As it was said earlier, the booming PA really encourages a rambunctious reaction in the crowd, and God knows the kids have enough energy without that.
   I'll let everybody know what I end up doing.