Hi Serendipity
About the guy who could go "for eight sides without repeating". It's not valid to say that most of his routine will never be seen.
What he probably meant was that he has several groups of figures that he's comfortable to dance as the need arises. If he's about to do 3-fallaways down the floor and there are 2 couples blocking his path, he can go into another set of figures...and so on.
In any case, putting several different figures together in many different ways is good for improving technique.