BPM: Is there a "dead range"?

[Yakov]

Thinking about slow blues on the other forum made me think about this... especially as my taste in slow blues has gone more towards slower -- I once liked to blues at 95 bpm, now I can barely get into it if it's over 85ish. (That's a big difference.) Anyway, I've found that, unless there's something very special about a given song, I don't find it appropriate for dancing if it's between, say, 88 and 110 bpm. You can't blues and you can't lindy. Has anyone else found this to be the case?

[julius]

There is no tempo range that is inappropriate for dancing.

Unless you are concerned about what dance you are doing.

So I would say: just dance.

[voilsb]

I don't find it appropriate for dancing if it's between, say, 88 and 110 bpm. You can't blues and you can't lindy. Has anyone else found this to be the case?

Actually, dancing blues to more uptempo music can be quite an experience! There's a lot of blues music in the 120-140bpm range that's a thrill to dance to.

Likewise, it's sometimes fun to groove lindy or even westie in your "can't dance" tempo range. I'd say it's much more about how the music feels, rather than how fast the music is. Some songs at 120 feel slower and more mellow than stuff at 105. Some stuff at 160 feels "blech" and totally unmotivating to dance to. Some stuff at 88 just screams to be danced. Some stuff at 150 makes me wanna blues, and some stuff at 100 makes me wanna lindy.

On the side, it seems kinda funny that your tempo range (88 - 110) is generally felt as the "sweet spot" tempo range for WCS music.

[Yakov]

i'm not saying "can't dance" or that i'm concerned about what i'm dancing, just that sometimes it's hard to get into a groove at that speed.

[Lawrence]

There is no tempo range that is inappropriate for dancing.

Unless you are concerned about what dance you are doing.

So I would say: just dance.

Wow. See, we DO agree on some things.

I don't think there's a dead zone at all, although I suspect I would want to choose my partner carefully if the tempo gets under 55 BPM. (The word "tantric" suddenly comes to mind.)

[Ron]

I wouldn't say there is a dead spot, Yakov, but I would say that slow blues at about 85 BPM is about perfect, but blues dancing songs at 100 BPM can work well, too.