did the exact same thing at the dances. Just like your experience, what we found was that the attendance to the dances dwindled until it was the same 8 kids (who, frankly, probably had nothing better to do) every dance.

I finally convinced the Stake Presidency that it's stupid to expect kids to wear "church clothing" when they're supposed to be dancing. They decided to experiment and had a "casual dance" to which the youth were allowed to wear casual attire. The only things they didn't allow were shorts/short skirts and other inappropriate things (eg questionable Tshirts, wife beaters, etc.). Not surprisingly, hundreds of kids showed up and brought all their friends from school.

Surprisingly, the SP decided to go back to the other dress code because it "came from Salt Lake." At the next dance, it was the same 8 kids.