Up

I finally got to see "Up" last night, and it was excellent. If you haven't seen it yet, do so. Michael Giacchino's soundtrack (Amazon | Lala) was also good, especially if you sit through the end credits to hear all the danceable parts.

The Up With End Credits track starts off with a waltz (the main Ellie/house theme from throughout the movie), blends nicely into a mellow cha cha, then something kind of bluesy, then a quieter, slower return to the waltz. You could probably edit out specific dances, but it might also be interesting to just dance it as a 7.5-minute medley.

The Spirit of Adventure is a fun little one-step-able (110 bpm) song. Or if you take it as 220 bpm, you could make a fast charleston or something out of it. It's amusing, and also happens to be the song that comes on when the music credits show up (which is always interesting to notice).

The Married Life has another 4 minutes of the waltz theme with some different tempos and moods. It could perhaps be edited a bit and used on its own, or maybe spliced into the waltz from the end credits? I haven't tried playing around with that yet.

Waltzing with the KGB

KGB is a trio from Seattle that plays music for contra dances, English country dances, and couple dances. If you're in the SF bay area, you should come and hear them live this Saturday, the 10th. They'll be playing at the Oakland Friday Night Waltz (yes, on Saturday) and doing a mix of contra dances and couple dances. It'll be great.

Most of their albums have a lot of contra dance music on them (which is great), but they also just recently released a new CD with a solid hour of original waltz music: The Red Light of Evening. It's a lovely album, with a nice range of tempos for different types of waltzes. Richard Powers played a couple of them at FNW in December, though I don't recall which ones. These are some of my favorites after my first listen:

• Speak of the Deverills - Rotary waltz, 162 bpm
  I like the way this one slides between different moods.
• A Field of Shooting Stars - Cross-step waltz, 126 bpm
  Might be good to slow this one down a tad, though I haven't tried actually dancing it yet.
• Birdsong Spring - Rotary waltz / Redowa, 165 bpm
  This one really does spring along in a very birdlike way in places. It would probably be fun to redowa to.
• The Clock Stopped - Cross-step waltz, 112 bpm
  This one is actually on their "Contra-Intelligence" album, but it's worth including here as long as we're talking about KGB waltzes. If you go to FNW around here, this is the tune that's always played for the cross-step mixer.

Update: The dance on Saturday was fantastic. If you ever get a chance to dance to KGB, take it.

Laura Light

Laura Light is a fiddler, singer, and composer from Virginia, to whose music I had the pleasure of contradancing a few years ago. (She snuck in a swing tune as well, which was a fun surprise.) For those of you in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, she'll be out here again this weekend, playing at the Palo Alto Contra Dance on the 29th. Come dance off the extra calories!

I've got her album No Gravity (Amazon, eMusic, iTunes), which has a lot of good fiddle tunes and a few good couple-dancing tracks to call out:

• Two Rivers - Cross-step Waltz, 121 bpm
  This is probably my favorite of the batch. Really lovely.
• This Was Meant to Be - Swing, 145 bpm
  "How can I explain this incredible feeling? / Feet on the ground, I'm dancing on the ceiling...."
• Mid-Winter Waltz - Rotary Waltz, 174 bpm
  A great Larry Edelman tune that I remember from one of the first cassettes of "real" music I ever owned.
• The Last Waltz of the Millenium - Cross-step Waltz, 111 bpm
  Probably won't be relevant again for a while, but it's a waltz, nonetheless. :-)

Also, in the process of writing this post, I found that she has another album, called Katchemak Bay Waltz, which is entirely waltzes. Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere to buy MP3s -- it looks like you can only buy a CD here. So I haven't listened to most of it yet, though there are a couple sample MP3s on that page. (Including an interesting version of "Scarborough Fair.")

Vermillion Lies

Vermillion Lies is my latest jackpot find from my random Last.fm browsing. They're one of those bands that has such a delightful variety of styles and sounds that you never quite know what you're going to hear next. Their press page talks about their "unique brand of beauty, silliness, and creativity," and "songs ranging from lyrical folk ballads to raucous circus marches." I've been listening to their two albums on repeat for the last day or so, and I was also glad to find a number of danceable songs, so here they are.

• I Should Fly (Rotary waltz, 160 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  And if you can't fly, you should waltz. :-) Good contrast between verses and chorus, which is always nice to have for dancing.
• Shady (Polka, 130 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  Nice mandolin part in this one. Would need some shortening and maybe a little slowing down for dancing purposes, though.
• Blue (One-step, 112 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  One of the sisters can do a vocal style that reminds me of Ingrid Lucia (of the Flying Neutrinos), or maybe Billie Holiday, which gives it a very vintage sort of sound with the swing guiter. Plus, there's a kazoo!
• Done Wrong (Polka, 122 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  Similar style to "Blue," but the instrumentation makes it sound more polka-y.
• Bone Yard (Cross-step waltz, 118 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm
  Sort of a dark one, and with a lot going on the arrangement which could potentially muddy things, but I think the piano keeps the beat consistently enough to dance to.
• Global Warming (Rotary waltz, 155 bpm) - Amazon MP3, Last.fm (free download!)
  This one is probably better for listening than dancing, but I wanted to include it just for general amusement and silliness. "Everything's going swimmingly."

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:

Stanford Dance Weekend

This past weekend was the 2008 Stanford Dance Weekend, a total immersion in social dance — "waltz, swing, salsa, vintage dances, club dances and more." In addition to learning new moves and dancing with nice people, we also picked up some new songs to waltz to!

• Tsuumi Sound System - Tuulin ja Hannun häävalssi (Wedding waltz) (140 bpm) This is a lovely Finnish waltz which Lilli Ann Carey played in her class on musicality. It has some nice syncopations which I imagine would work well for canter pivots.
• Peter Gabriel - Down to Earth (117 bpm) (Amazon | imeem) This new cross-step waltz comes fresh off the soundtrack of Pixar's new film Wall-E, which opened last Friday. Richard Powers played it for the first time this weekend in his cross-step classes. There's a few bars in 4/4 time in the middle which need to be edited out, and it's too long to play as is, but otherwise it's a fun new song to dance to.
• Kepa Junkera - Santimamiñeko Fandangoa & Ioaeoe (130 bpm before editing) (Amazon | last.fm) New to my collection, though Richard's been playing this lively, cheerful waltz for a while. He speeds it up and plays it as a rotary waltz which also works for redowa. I haven't tried it editing the song yet, but it probably needs to be shortened even after increasing the tempo.

Redowa II

Last month I shared some favourite redowa songs, but if you attended Friday Night Waltz in Palo Alto last week you may have noticed that we didn't play any of them! Here are the ones we did play:

• Nordman - Stormens Öga (170 bpm):  I love this song.  It lacks the extra-salient percussion that graces some redowa tunes, but it's so energetic that you'll probably want to redowa anyway.  The link is unfortunately to Swedish iTunes store, which probably isn't very useful, so you can get the album on Amazon or listen to a full preview on YouTube
• Mango Groove - Two Hearts (150 bpm):  At a much mellower tempo than the other two, this up-beat Afropop hit let's you stretch out those long steps on beat two.  Though fairly obscure to American listeners (I couldn't find the song by searching for the lyrics when I first tried and also turned up no full previews online), the band is apparently a "household name in South Africa."
• Winifred Horan - Giants Fall (180 bpm) (Amazon | eMusic | YouTube) New to us a few months ago, this is a fast waltz -- I recommend cutting it down at least a minute or it'll tire out most dancers.  Love the fiddle and the driving beat!

Vienna Teng

A lot of us Stanford-types are fans of Vienna Teng. If you're in the area, she's performing in San Francisco this Friday and Saturday (details). Here are some of her songs you can dance to:

Waltzes:

• Anna Rose (121 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  A lovely cross-step.
• Between (135 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  Blue Caravan (136 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on last.fm
  A couple in-between tempo waltzes. You might slow "Between" down a tad for cross-step, or just deal with it (especially if you want to keep the title accurate). "Blue Caravan" might sound good sped up slightly to rotary tempo. I haven't actually danced to it yet.
• Recessional (145 bpm, sort of) - Amazon, full preview on last.fm
  The tempo is approximate because it has a lot of fermatas and ritards and tricky things like that. Beautiful song, and a good challenge for paying attention to the music.
• Drought (157 bpm) - Amazon, full preview on imeem
  An honest-to-goodness rotary waltz.

Rhumba:

• Unwritten Letter (140 bpm) - Amazon
  Not being a rhumba-er myself, I'm taking this one on faith. :-)

In addition to the Amazon links above, some (but not all) of her albums are available on eMusic.

Ray Bierl

I'm back from my latest travels, so here's some traveling music for you all. Ray Bierl (a member of The Hillbillies from Mars) came out with a great new solo album last year, entitled Any Place I Hang My Hat. It's full of songs, as he puts it, "about hitting the highway, riding the rails, lighting out for the territory," and is overall an excellent piece of work. I have several favorites, but for dancing, I recommend the following:

• Down and Out (buy | listen) - Swing, 145 bpm.
  "Brother, can you spare a dime? Buck for a beer wouldn't be too bad...."
• Tramps and Hawkers (buy | listen) - Moderate waltz, 137 bpm.
  Five minutes long, but worth it.
  "Like ghosts we roam without friends or home, these tramps and hawkers and me."

If you're in the Bay Area, there are lots of opportunities to hear him perform live as well.

Redowa I

Apologies for the delay between posts -- Graham's been out of the country and work has been keeping me quite busy.

Notes on some of the redowa music from Richard Powers' Social Dance Discography:

E.S. Posthumous - Nara (152 bpm). You can hear a full preview on their website. If you've been to a Jammix or Friday Night Waltz you've probably heard this. It's a great redowa in terms of both tempo and musicality. I love the tension in the piece and the way it builds in great swells of music. The original, however, is almost five minutes long, which is tiring for a redowa. I'd suggest cutting it down to 3.5 minutes or less for social dancing, unless you have strong calves and good endurance.

Dae Jang Geum - Yun Bap (160 bpm). The link is to the CD on Amazon because I could not find anywhere to download an mp3, but you can find a WMA version linked from here. I first heard this song, which is from the soundtrack of the Korean TV drama Dae Jang Geum (or Jewel In The Palace), in Richard's "History of the Waltz" social dance class at Stanford. It has a fantastic percussion section which just begs for redowa. I spent hours and hours trying to track down an mp3 version online and eventually resorted to creating a membership on a special-interest "Asian OSTs" site so that I could access a private download link on their forum. I'd suggest using the WMA link above or asking me to send you the mp3 rather than duplicating my quest. But back to the song: it's quite dramatic and has cool eastern-sounding instruments that I can't identify (how crass).

The Corrs - Erin Shore (160 bpm). The "last waltz" at Jammix. This is the only full instrumental piece on The Corrs' album Forgiven, Not Forgotten, though it isn't the only waltz. It's based on a traditional Irish tune which is often sung with lyrics about "Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore." I found a number of different versions of the lyrics online, but here's the chorus of the one I like best:

So, fare thee well my own true love
I'll think of you night and day
A place in my mind you will surely find
Although I am so far away
And when I'm alone, far away from home,
I'll think of the good times once more
Until I can make it back some day
Here to Paddy's green shamrock shore

Like both previous tunes, this needs a bit of editing to be good for dancing, as the original is over four minutes long. I think Richard cuts some of the build up to the extra-redoway drum solo.

Idan Raichel: Mi'Ma'amakim

I've got Tali to thank for introducing me to The Idan Raichel Project. Idan Raichel is an Israeli keyboardist and vocalist who works with many other artists on his "project," mixing Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, and other styles of music.

I love the sound of the whole album, but my favorite track just happens (surprise!) to be in waltz time, at a zippy 180 bpm: Mi'Ma'amakim (Out of the Depths). (Download from Amazon, eMusic, or iTunes; hear a sample; see a video). It has gorgeous Hebrew lyrics, interspersed with parts of an Ethiopian song called Nanu Nanu Ney (for which I'm unfortunately unable to find lyrics or translation).

Of course, at nearly 6 minutes long, it needs a bit of editing so you don't die dancing to it. After (regretfully) hacking it up a bit, I got it down to about 3:30. I removed a duplicate verse and associated chorus, one of the three consecutive choruses at the end, some of the bridge, and some of the intro. The cuts were trickier than I expected: while the song seems to have a pretty consistent sound, the background vocals and instrumentation are actually changing enough to make it easy to introduce discontinuities if you're not careful. Anyway, I got Bob to play it at Faster Polka this week and it worked pretty well. The lyrics on the verses anticipate the beat a lot, so you have to be careful to follow the bass and percussion there, but overall it's good, and fun practice for fast waltzing.

Idan Raichel's Wikipedia page says there's actually a whole album titled "Mi'Ma'amakim," but I haven't been able to track down any other info about it.

An excerpt from the translation of the lyrics:
Who is it that calls to you tonight, listen
Who sings aloud under your window
Who stakes his soul just for you to be happy
Who'll lend his hand to build you a home
Who'll lay his life down under your footsteps
Who like the earth at your feet shall live on
Who'll love you better than all of your lovers
Who'll save you from the rage of the storm
Out of the depths

Rowyn's belated St. Patrick's Day Picks

I picked these last week but didn't have time to write them up until today.

Altan : Tommy Bhetty's Waltz (moderate waltz, 145 bpm)
Altan is one of my favourite Celtic bands, and they don't play many waltzes, but this one is lovely. The song was written by Tommy 'Bhetty' Maguire, a fiddler from Kinawley, County Fermanagh, and was in the soundtrack for the movie Good Will Hunting, though not on the official CD release. The whole album, The Red Crow, is also available on eMusic.

Emer Kenny : The Chase (cross-step waltz, 120 bpm)
If you've been to a Jammix or Friday Night Waltz, you've probably heard this played. It's based on a traditional Irish tune, the Foxhunter's Jig, but updated with new-agey vocals and a steady, trance-like beat which makes it very danceable. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good download source, so the link is for the album on Amazon.

Clannad : Caide Sin Do'n Te Sin (cross-step waltz, 120 bpm)
Even though this is the same tempo as "The Chase," it has a much mellower feel. The Gaelic refrain "caide sin do'n te sin nach mbaineann sin do" translates to something like "what is that to anyone else." Apparently the tune is in a 'hexatonic' scale, which has six pitches per octave. Again, no good place to download, so the link is to the CD. You can hear Altan's version of the song, which is very different, on last.fm.

Ronan Hardiman : Siamsa, Cry of the Celts (polkas, 118 and 126 bpm)
Both of these are polkas from the Lord of the Dance soundtrack -- hardly traditional, but Irish-inspired. "Siamsa" is bubbly and infectious and great fun to dance to. The feel of the beat changes a few times (I don't know enough music theory to describe this more accurately), but that's part of what makes it exciting. "Cry of the Celts" is also catchy and energetic, with some nice fiddling. It's the tune Richard Powers plays -- heavily edited, of course -- for the Kerry Polka Sets he often teaches around St. Patrick's Day.

Graham's St. Patrick's Day Picks

In honor of the day, here are some danceable Irish tunes and songs. Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

Niamh Parsons: Blackbirds and Thrushes (fast waltz, 195 bpm)
This is a great waltz, made even more interesting by the phrasing, which switches between 5-bar and 7-bar phrases (there may be some other types in there, too). Some folks might like to slow it down a tad, though.

Fresh Fish: Jessica's / Martin O'Connor's Polkas (136 bpm)
A lovely polka set from a great contra dance band. I was very disappointed when I started trying to find links to it and discovered it's out of print and there's nothing to link to. The piano player's website says to "stay tuned for a possible reissue" of the Turning of the Tide CD. Just wanted to mention these tunes anyway, though.

Nancy Kerr & John Fagan: Dance to Your Daddy (cross-step waltz or polka in 3, 122 bpm)
This is some fantastic fiddling here; it's not often you hear a slip reel (in 12/8, the way a slip jig is in 9/8). It's got a polka feel but is still effectively in 3 for dancing purposes, so take your pick, or alternate. You can hear the full track on last.fm.

Off Kilter: Follow Me Up to Carlow (polka, 149 bpm)
You can decide if you want to leave the trick ending and watch the dancers fumble or not. Fun song, though. I don't see a good place to download their music, so the link is to the CD. You can also hear it if you browse around their site (which has frames, so I can't link directly to anything).

Brave Combo: A Little Bit Irish (waltz, 240 bpm)
As long as they've got a song actually about St. Patrick's Day, we might as well include it, though it's so fast they may have been thinking slow jig rather than waltz. You can hear the song (and lots of others) on their site, and I thought at one point they had free downloads there, too, but I can't find them now.

Editing St. Teresa

Joan Osborne - "St. Teresa"
(Hear it on last.fm, buy it on Amazon or iTunes.)

Rowyn gets the credit for introducing me to this great song, but I'm the one writing about it because I recently used it as practice to learn some basic music editing. (It's 5:20 in the original version, which is a bit much at nearly 170 bpm.)

I'd post my new version here and get feedback on it, but I expect it's not altered enough for someone not to make a copyright fuss about it, so I won't. Talk to me privately if you want to hear it, though. Here's what I did, in case anyone wants some ideas (changes arranged from better to sketchier):

• Removed one verse (2nd) and chorus (1st). That seemed the most expendable part, musically, and it kept the transitions easier.
• Removed first part of the intro, so it starts with the mandolin part. As much as I love the solo (oud? steel guitar?) at the beginning, it seemed easier to do this than to break up the long mandolin section.
• Completely changed the ending. Cut off the last chorus and pasted together a few things after the "tell me" bridge, including the end of the mandolin line and the first few bars that got cut from the beginning. I was trying to get enough stuff there to have a fade out such that you get a little of the falling off a cliff feeling from the dramatic "tell me" line, but not so much that it's an unpleasant end to the dance.

Optional: You could also slow it down about 5% if you want, but I wouldn't do more than that.

Shostakovich Jazz/Variety Suite

It turns out that the set of Shostakovich pieces commonly known as the Jazz Suite No. 2 is actually the Suite for Variety Stage Orchestra. Either way, it's got a couple really good dance pieces in it, and a few others that are probably worth trying out. You can get the whole set, plus Jazz Suite No. 1, on Amazon or eMusic. Here's what I like from it:

Waltz 2 (of course). Richard used to play this one all the time, but I feel like I haven't heard it as much in the last couple years. Gorgeous waltz, with good jeté waltzes, redowas, and other variations built right in. Note: The version on the album I linked to above is very fast (210 bpm). I'd recommend instead getting one of the ones from the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack. E.g. there are ones at 176 and 180 bpm.

March. This is the opening piece of the suite, and makes an absolutely delightful polka. It's 3 minutes long, which is probably why I haven't managed to get someone to play it at a dance yet, but it's at a decent tempo (114 bpm) so I don't think 3 minutes would be bad. Again, lots of nice variations, including a bit that would be very good for an extended bout of pivoting, if you like that kind of thing. (Which I do.)

The Lyric Waltz and Waltz 1 are both quite fast (200+ bpm) so they'd need some slowing down.

The Jazz Suite No. 1 has a waltz that's actually a decent tempo (173 bpm) though parts of it really just sound like harmony parts to Waltz 2 of the other suite. There's also a slightly fast polka (134 bpm).

Childsplay Waltzes

Childsplay (on MySpace) is a group of musicians covering a wide range of folk music styles, and connected by one thing: they all play a fiddle made by Bob Childs of Cambridge, MA. I don't know how they got the idea (or managed the logistics) to build a band around that, but they did, and it works. Enough members are multi-instrumentalists that they still have a very rich sound (so it's not too fiddle-heavy).

Their first album was called The Great Waltz, and is actually made up entirely of waltzes. The second one is Heaven and Earth, and is more of a mix of stuff while still having some nice dance tunes. (Both albums are also available on eMusic and iTunes.)

I was measuring the BPM for the ones I wanted to mention here and realized that I didn't have any standard tempo rotary waltzes. All the fast waltzes of theirs that I like are right up there at the top end of the range. I like them that way, though some folks may want to edit them for speed and/or duration. I put the BPM in parentheses after each one.

Cross-Step

• Sunday River (114) As much as I like this one, you could probably edit out a time through the tune to make it a better dance length.
  
• Michael's Mazurka (119) Don't be fooled by the name -- there's nothing mazurky about it, but it's a beautiful cross-step. Also quite long (5:28) but totally worth it. One of my favorites.
  
• Enrichez Vous! (122)
• Waltz of the White Lilies (123) Another one on the long side, but lovely.
  
• The Great Waltz of China (124) Lots of pseudo-oriental harmonies to go with the pun.
  

Fast Rotary

• La Valser Di Mezzanotte (180) I like the variations within this one; it gives you plenty to play with.
  
• Tristesse (182) A bit jazzier than the others.
  
• Kuivatusaluevalssi (182) Gotta love those Finnish names. Also the double bass.
  
• Valse De Bethmale (188) This one is probably just too relaxed-sounding for the speed, but if you're really good at efficient waltzing, you could make it a trance waltz. Just felt like putting it on here, but it's probably not for everyone.
  

Ingrid Michaelson Waltzes

Ingrid Michaelson is a talented young singer-songwriter. If you watch television, you may have heard the song "Keep Breathing" in the Grey's Anatomy Season 3 finale, or her hit single "The Way I Am" on Old Navy Commercials. Apparently after Grey's Anatomy ended there was a rush to find her song on MySpace, which catalysed her rise to success. Her songs are melodious and catchy, her vocal style is clean, and her lyrics are clever and introspective. At her concert in San Francisco last month, I found out that she is also quirky and unpretentious.

A number of Ingrid's songs are in waltz time, though not necessarily very danceable. Having never actually tried dancing to any of these, I'm listing them all because they're nice songs. Most of them are at a good tempo for rotary (moderate to fast) waltz.

Potentially more danceable
Breakable (full preview on last.fm)
Masochist (full preview on last.fm; tempo is borderline cross-step/rotary)

Potentially less danceable
Highway (full preview on last.fm)
Men of Snow (unfortunately not available for purchase anywhere that I could find)
Keep Breathing (not for individual purchase, but only as part of the Grey's Anatomy Soundtrack; full preview on last.fm)

New Songs - 24 February

Below are a number of songs I've found and enjoyed in the last few weeks.

If a song is available for legal download, a link is provided. I always pick Amazon over iTunes because it's DRM-free and higher bit-rate. Unfortunately there's a lot of music not available for à la carte downloading, and in those cases I'll try to give other purchase suggestions. If you're stumped finding a song and/or really don't want to spend $15 for a whole CD, drop me a note.

Rotary (fast) Waltz:
Graham Colton - Best Days
Roxanne Potvin - La Merveille

Polka
Zucchero - Per Colpa Di Chi Note: this is the live version; the original, which I recommend, is available on the CD The Best of Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari's Greatest Hits

Polka/Hustle
Mika - Love Today

One Step
Benoît Charest - Belleville Rendez-Vous (from the soundtrack of Les Triplettes de Belleville)