Assuming 25 participants:
- Ahead of time, cut 24 pieces of 5-foot long elastic string (eg http://bit.ly/preferentialAttachmentString) and number the pieces from 1 to 24 with folded pieces of tape as a label
- Line up participants offstage and distribute the strings to the participants according to their position in line but skipping the first person (ie the second person gets string 1, third person string 2, etc...)
- Send the first two people onstage and ask them to hold string #1 between them
- Send the remaining people onstage one at a time, in order, and ask them to:
- call out a random number between 0 and the number on the string they are holding
- Ask the two people holding the string with the called-out number to play rock-paper-scissors (or other random selection method) and then have the winner raise their hand
- Ask the person entering the room to walk over to the winner and create a link by handing the winner the other end of the string the entering person just carried in with them.
Note:
- As new links are added, you can ask the people in the growing network to try to space themselves out as much as possible and try to minimize string crossings.
- If elastic string isn't available, you can use standard string - it just might be harder to layout
- You could avoid using string altogether and just assign numbers to participants. As people enter the room, instead of handing one end of their string to the winner, they would simply reach out and hold onto the winner as a numbered directed link. This may be more closer to the dance / movement you're interested in.
- You can see an example of the same algorithm at work with a circular layout at http://agentscript.org/models/prefattach.html.
-Stephen