Box of [Fast] Ghosts

Brave Combo has been to Stanford once or twice to play for a Dance Week, and they're an absolute hoot to dance to. A partial description from their website:

Brave Combo is America's premier contemporary polka band, and a Grammy winning one at that. In the same breath, to name some but hardly all of the colors found on Brave Combo's musical palette, one can describe them as a groundbreaking world music act, a hot jazz quintet, a rollicking rock'n'roll bar band, a Tex-Mex conjunto, a sizzling blues band, a saucy cocktail combo, a deadly serious novelty act, a Latin orchestra, and one of America's dance bands par excellence.

One of their albums I particularly like is Box of Ghosts (Brave Combo's store | Amazon MP3), a collection of famous classical pieces, rearranged for accordions, horns, and dancing. A number of the tracks are danceable, but here are my favorites:

• Mozart - Rondo a la Turca - polka (160 bpm)
  Pretty fast. Richard pulls this one out when he's teaching people to do a turning two-step polka (as opposed to galloping) to fast music.
• Chopin - Waltz in C Minor - waltz (203 bpm)
  Any of you classical types out there will recognize this as Op. 64 No. 2, which is actually in C-sharp minor, but nobody else will probably care. If you thought that last one was fast, try this one. I love it.
• Rossini - William Tell Overture - polka (108 bpm)
  Okay, okay, here's one that's not so crazy fast. In fact, I'd probably speed it up a bit for dancing (and trim some of the ending as well).

Redowa III

Looking at the categories on the right here, it's clear we've written more about waltz music than any other type.  However, since the last three posts have been other dance music, I figure it's time for another set of good redowa songs.

• Hevia - Entremediu (152 bpm)
  I first heard this at Big Dance in 2006. It's a bit like the Corrs' "Erin Shore" (featured in my first redowa post) in that it's dramatic, Celtic, and has an energetic percussion section perfect for redowa. What "Entremediu" has that "Erin Shore" lacks, of course, is bagpipes :). The link is to the Spanish iTunes store, which probably isn't very helpful, and I'm feeling nice because I spent forever trying to find this song and ended up buying the CD online, so here's an easier option.
• Kevin Burke - La Partida (161 bpm) - iTunes, eMusic
  Picking up the tempo a bit, here's an instrumental waltz tune which Graham introduced me to. It's very bouncy and has some fun syncopated parts which lend themselves well to redowa and pivots. Mary Lea also has nice version, and I just found out from her website that this is a Venezuelan waltz, and YouTube further informs be that it was originally a piece called "Queiro ser tu sombra" (I want to be your shadow).
  
• Chantal Kreviazuk - Time (170 bpm)
  And now for something completely different. Well, okay, not completely. I love waltzing to this song, and while it's a bit on the fast side and doesn't have an obvious 'redowa break,' the energy is high enough to support a bit of leaping. I'd suggest, however, cutting it down by about a minute.  Take a listen and see if the opening measures don't just make you want to waltz: