Category Archives: Music and Dance

Posts that are about music as it relates to dance and dance as it relates to music.

Music and Dance

What are Your Favorite Song to Dance Bachata?

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A number of people have pointed out that my attempt to generalize the “rules” that I use to pick Ballroom music, especially slightly edgy ballroom music have caused the social music parts of the music4dance catalog to veer a bit (or more than a bit) off course.   One way to solve this is to spend some time on each of the social dances and see if I can get some more concentrated people knowledge to help contribute to a better list.

And since I’m going to be taking Bachata lessons for the first time starting next week, that seems like a great place to start.  I’ve pulled together a couple of the albums that the teacher recommended and some Bachatas from a few other sources to get an initial list together here.  What do you think?  Am I anywhere close to a decent list?  What am I missing or what is on this list that you absolutely wouldn’t dance Bachata to?

The other thing I noticed is that it looks like Bachata has a broad enough history that it may make sense to either split them up (like I did with Tango) or maybe more reasonably start tagging them by sub-style?

Please feel free to respond to this post with song ideas or more general suggestions.  You’re also welcome to sign in to the site and start voting on songs.  And if you’re not a Bachata expert, that’s all right, there is plenty of room for improvement elsewhere in the catalog.

Music and Dance

Top Songs of 2015 — And what to dance to them.

What better than a top 100 list to end the year?  Since music4dance is about the intersection of music and dance, I’ve taken the Spotify top 100 songs of 2015 (for the USA) and cross referenced it with the music4dance catalog.

About of a third of the songs were already in the music4dance catalog and had been matched to dance styles.  Most of the others were songs that I could imagine partner dancing to, although some were a stretch.   I made a lot of use of the “Unconventional” tag to try to show that many of these songs don’t exhibit all of the traditional attributes of the music that these dances grew up with.  But that’s part of the fun of this project, and dancing in general – testing the limits of how music and dance fit together.

And of course, not all music is particularly suited to dancing of any kind.  So my version of Spotify’s top 100 list ended up being only 87 songs because those were the songs that I could match any kind of partner dance, even stretching the traditional definitions.

Here’s a link to that list.  You can build this link yourself (and try some variations) by going to the Advanced Search Form, clicking on the brown pencil (other) tag button in the “include tags” row of the form.  Then choose tags to include – in this case I chose “2015” and “Top 100“.  Clicking the search button will show the first page of the top 100 (errrr 87) songs and what dances I and others have matched with those songs.  Check out the documentation for more details.

One fun variation on this search is to add the tag DWTS (for Dancing With The Stars) to this search.  You end up with 21 songs that were both used in the last couple of seasons of DWTS and are on the Spotify Top 100 list for 2015.  Another fun thing to do is to add your favorite style of dance to the search,  if I added West Coast Swing to the Top 100 list, I’d end up with these 25 songs. (at least today – if other’s vote up songs as West Coast Swing, that number may change),

Do you disagree with my choice of dances for any of these songs?  I would love to see what you have to say.  Please feel free to comment on this post. Or register or log in to start tagging and voting on songs yourself.

Next year I expect that we’ll have enough activity to generate a top 100 list directly from the songs that you’ve chosen.

Music and Dance

The “Dancing with the Stars” solution

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Update (January 2024): Unfortunately, Spotify deprecated the feature that allowed me to create arbitrary playlists at the bottom of each search page some time ago. The rest of this post is still accurate, but the Spotify tip will no longer work. If you are specifically interested in DWTS playlists, please send feedback and I will consider writing a feature to generate them.

I learned to dance in part because Dirty Dancing made me want to be Johnny Castle.  Or at least dance like him. And my first dance partner was similarly moved by Strictly Ballroom.  These days So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars are both inspirations for aspiring dancers.

Since one of my goals with the music4dance project is to build a catalog of music that inspires you to dance, it seems appropriate to make sure I’m folding in the songs that the choreographers from these shows have found inspiring.  I’ve started by adding in the songs from (season 20) of Dancing with the Stars since that is currently airing.

All of the Dancing with the Stars songs that I’ve cataloged can be found at this link.  You can refine your search to a particular episode by clicking on the episode number and choosing to include that episode.

One fun side effect of this is that you can click play on the Spotify Player at the bottom of the page and play all of the songs from an episode (or you can follow the individual links to iTunes or Amazon to purchase the songs). Here’s an example of the spotify player for DWTS Season 20, Episode 1:

What other movies and shows have inspired you to dance?  Did they include specific songs that really make you want to get up and move?

Before you go, I’m continuing to gather data on how people group dance styles and would appreciate your input.  More information about that is available in this post.  Or just go directly to the survey.

Music and Dance

The Pink Martini Solution

Not all artists are created equal when it comes to creating dance-able music.  For instance, one of my favorite artists of all time is John Coltrane.  Do you see him well represented in the music4dance catalog?  Absolutely not.   Because a consistent tempo just isn’t a core part of his music.  Which is part of the appeal when listening, but doesn’t work particularly well when trying to Lindy Hop.

Towards the opposite end of the spectrum, sits Pink Martini.  They are a band that plays a combination of original works and updated covers of classic melodies.  Many of both types of song are in a musical style that co-evolved with a partner dance.  Take “Let’s Never Stop Falling In Love“, which is a classic Tango if I ever did hear one, but still has the unique Pink Martini flare.  Or “Amado Mio“, which has a extremely dance-able Rumba beat.  And don’t forget “Hang On Little Tomato“, a wonderful Foxtrot as long as you can dance through the lyrics without cracking up, or possibly tearing up.  That little tomato has quite a challenge ahead of him!  And if you are up for a challenge yourself, try to West Coast Swing to “Hey Eugene” while keeping a straight face.

Pink Martini’s catalog is both broad and deep and most of their songs are well suited to partner dances.  Check them out on music4dance.net and if you like what you hear, let me know and I’ll catalog some more of their songs.