Surely One of the traditional functions of a ball or dance has been to enable acquaintance with a wider circle to be made, in a respectably organised setting, specifically on the expectation of varying one's partners for the occasion; even in the case of married couples attending.

See Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Love's Labour's Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, and the many distinguished novels from Jane Austen to Rosamund Lehmann and E M Delafield, in which dancing with various partners figures largely both as plot-developer and social symbol.

~Michael~