Hey dancers of various swing-genres, what are your preferred (or standard) tempos for Lindy? For Bal? For Charleston? For Blues? Also, are you a beginner, intermediate, or advanced dancer?
Hmm. I realize this probably isn't helpful, but I don't have as strong preferences about tempos as I do about styles. I like dancing the range of slow to fast tempos for both lindy and blues. I don't dance to super fast stuff in lindy or charleston, but that's more due to a lack of endurance than a lack of wanting to do so.
I'm not sure I have a final thought on this yet, but I've been thinking about it too lately. I'm finding my home base for lindy around 180 bpm. Anything below around 140 bpm and the tune needs a lot of drive for it to work for me. I also like an evening of dancing to get up to around 220 bpm at some point, but that doesn't happen a whole lot in Chicago.
Anna (and other djs), what tempos do you like to DJ at for the different styles?
For faster tempo songs there are definitely technique things that can help a lot, but I've found the quickest fix to be waiting about a minute or two into the song to start dancing.
Based on watching the floor as I DJ at Fizz and elsewhere, local lindy-hoppers seem comfortable in the 120-180 bpm range. Of course, it depends on who is there at any particular dance--some people like to dance faster, some sit down if it is over 150. The 150-180 range is special because that is the overlap area where both lindy and 6-count swing dancers (esp. brand-new beginners) can do their thing really comfortably. Faster lindy and charleston works in the 180-220ish range, at least around here.
For blues, tempos range from sub-60 to 180+, but most of the stuff I play at dances (and think of as "blues music") is in the 75-120 range. I'll leave it to folks who DJ blues dances more regularly to give a more definitive answer here.
When I DJ, my goal is usually to provide a variety of tempos, styles, and moods, dipping down below 100 and above 200 in the course of a 1.5- to 2-hour set. For examples of tunes at any of these tempos, graphs showing the distribution of tempos I play in a given set, and how those tempos change over the course of the set, check out my blog: http://pustoblogsky.blogspot.com/
