Dance

Dance is the umbrella genre for popular music composed expressly for dancing, whether in ballrooms, clubs, discos, raves or at weddings and festivals. Its defining features are a steady, physically emphatic pulse — most often a four-on-the-floor kick drum or a syncopated funk-derived groove — tempos matched to the body, and arrangements built from repetition, extended mixes and breakdowns designed to sustain movement. The term spans a century of changing technology, from the dance orchestras of the 1920s through disco, house, techno and contemporary electronic dance music, and functions as the parent category for dozens of club genres.