All music is dance music. But when people think of dance music, they think of techno or just house. Anything you can dance to is dance music. I don't care if it's classical, funk, salsa, reggae, calypso; it's all dance music.
Afrika Bambaataa
Holland is to dance music what Nashville is to country.
Afrojack
Most music that comes out of Holland is basically the harder part of dance music - hip-hop, drum'n'bass.
My debut album, 'Forget the World,' is all about not listening to the negativity around you and to continue to do what you love, no matter what people think. I love what I do. Dance music is my passion, my life. There is no greater feeling than being one with my fans, partying to the music we love.
Holland is a really small country, but with a very strong club and festival scene. Dance music has been huge in Holland since the late eighties. So there were a lot of opportunities for producers and DJs to release records and play live.
I think the most important thing about dance music is the connection. If you put 80,000 people together, no one knows each other, and once the music starts, everyone loves each other. That doesn't happen with a lot of genres. If you go to a hip-hop club, it's not like when one songs comes on that everyone suddenly loves each other.
I'm a DJ who makes dance music who got to play with Sting.
Telling people that I wanted to make dance music, or be on the radio, they looked at me like I was crazy because there was nothing like that in Lichtenstein when I was getting started. That's why I went to Germany, because there is industry there.
Al Walser
I actually have been really influenced by dance music.
Anne-Marie
I love music, and I loved dance music immediately. So I bought some equipment and started making my own. When I started this, I didn't say, 'okay I'm going to do this step and then this step' to become popular. I just created music that I loved.
Armin van Buuren
Holland was one of the first countries to adopt dance music into their culture, and we were the first ones to have really big raves. I grew up in that atmosphere in the early 1990s, and I was very interested in how dance music was made.
In '92 - '93, I was at that age when I was looking for my identity and that's when I found dance music and I really fell in love with it.
Dance music is like a virus: it has affected so many different genres.
Avicii
I have been a huge fan of Major Lazer for a long time and they have done a phenomenal job in redefining dance music across the globe.
Badshah
I think every Dutch person has a connection with dance music.
Bakermat
I think New Order have got their own sound. But what we like to do is experiment, using dance music and other things.
Bernard Sumner
From the beginning, I wanted to make dance music with a human element to it.
Beth Orton
Yeah, I always listen to both classic and newer folk-influenced music. Singer-songwriter, alternative music. I also listen to more experimental dance music.
Brad Delson
Dance music cannot compete with a really great rock n' roll song. There ain't no DJ that's gonna play something that can take 'Mr Brightside' or 'Don't Look Back In Anger.'
Brandon Flowers
I'm a big fan of electronic dance music.
Brendon Urie
There's only so much you can do with a male voice in dance music.
I do a one-hour workout called Drenched, a cardio-boxing fitness routine, Monday through Friday. There are usually between twenty-five and fifty people there - everyone from stay-at-home moms and professional martial artists to teenagers and seniors. They play great dance music. When I can, I take two classes back-to-back.
Jazz in the 1920s and '30s was dance music, teenage music for parties, for being wild and young. There's this punk feeling I really love. It was something so radical and different and new and not codified. People didn't have a definition of what they were doing.
'90s fashion is awesome. Best of both worlds - you had power pop, like the Spice Girls and Shampoo. But then you had Nirvana and Hole. And you also had '90s dance music like N-Trance, who kind of blended both.
I love that way dance music can put you in a trance.
There's a great club in London called The Secret Sundays, and it's on a Sunday afternoon and it's outdoors, and it's mainly Italians that go, and they all look great, and they're dancing on the tables, and life's a party, and they're totally into the music, going mental, and that's when dance music is really fantastic, I think.
Dance music is about having a good time, and a lot of dance music is very serious now. When progressive house and progressive tech came along, it was kind of serious, but it's all context as well.
I do love dance music. I love Daft Punk. I mean, I was a child in the '80s, so bands like the Eurythmics and just so many great '80s bands were dance bands, but they had the whole soul thing happening, too.
Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It's become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.
I am trying to walk a tightrope; trying to keep the DJ community happy while trying to spread the message about dance music to more people. That is the mission that I am on.
So dance music is now pop music. So now, as a dance producer, what do I have to do? So I'm starting to do alien music, because pop is not pop anymore; we need to go alien to be independent.
New York feels like the whole city is into dance music. That's not how it felt when I was younger. There was more of a hipster scene.
Dance music is so interchangeable. There's not a lot of face to it. It's a bunch of Dutch DJs with the same haircut.
When I'm running, I like to listen to dance music and hip-hop.
New York has a deep culture of house and dance music, and to be able to tap into that is my way of shutting off. I go to friends' parties and local spots around the area: places I can go to, have a dance, and forget about being an actor and the attention.
Even before I auditioned for 'X Factor' the second time, I was doing a lot of dance music.
For me, I actually come from an electronic dance music background: house music, electro house, trance music, even. When I was coming out of school, basically, I discovered Brain Fever, Flying Lotus, J Dilla and all that. That was when I got excited about hip-hop and when the Flume project started.
I don't think I make dance music. It's not even 4/4. And it's slow.
There are so many things and so many aspects to gay life that I've discovered and so many things to write about. I have a new life, and I have a new take on dance music because of that life.
The fun image is what we project onstage, because our music is dance music. But it's not what the group is about We're very serious about our music and the band and producing good quality songs.
Dance music doesn't care where you live. It doesn't care who your friends are. It doesn't care how much money you make. It doesn't care if you're 74 or if you are 24 because... 74 is the new 24!
We were introduced to a lot of dance music that we were blown over by. Kidnap Kid we love, WOZ, and Rudimental.
Dance music is Madonna's base. It's what she likes, it's what she listens to. It's not anything other than that. She doesn't read what's on the charts. And if it's on time, great. This is who she is.
I love that Euro-pop dance music, but with girl power. I also listen to Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. I have a Beatles song tattooed on my foot. I'm all over the place.
Because it's dance music, you can't really have a lot of changing in there. It's really not for me because there's too much repetition. I like more diversity.
Gay nightclubs offer better dance music.
Bristol is known for having quite a good success rate of music - Massive Attack and Portishead, that drum and bass, dance music scene. I never listened to that stuff when I was a kid, but my parents did, and my parents knew some of those people.
I just like the lineage and the heritage and the fact that British dance music is still progressing. I'm from London; I love London, and I wouldn't know how else to show that love in musical terms. There's something about British stuff that's a bit faster, a bit harder-hitting. Just tough.
I don't hate on the whole EDM thing happening in America because, although the music is not of my taste - a little bit brash for me - I think it's also introducing a lot of young people to dance music, and then they're discovering better dance music through it.
I have this romanticized idea of dance music in the '90s because, obviously, I was way too young to be a part of it. So I have this rose-tinted idea of it. I have this idea of it being a very special time. But I still don't know that much - I can never remember any names of seminal artists.
