Don't dance-oriented genres tend to be more limiting than some other types of genres?

There are a lot of problems with making these generalizations, I admit. For one thing, it's not very clear how to fairly pick genres or sub-genres of the same size, in order to make comparisons.

but rock n' roll, punk, doowop, funk, hip hop, reggae, synth pop, indie-dance, house, techno, disco, garage, jungle, dancehall and heavy metal must all conform to this vague notion of recurring rhythmic patterns in order for people to dance to them in large congregations. of course you can TRY dancing to free improv...

i think the limitation is on what i hear when i go out to dance to house; hearing stuff like "the jump-off" on a regular basis is a new thing.

And there is a fine art to creating the right effects within narrow conventions.

And dance genres with limited rhythms can do a million amazing things with textures.

I hope you realize that I haven't said that it does render dance music "inferior," and I've tried to avoid impying it either.

To me any genre that always uses the same instruments is just as noticeably limited as a genre that always uses the same beats or structures.

I haven't found electro difficult to dance to. I think electro favours a fleet-of-foot, twitchy kind of person who like to use their feet. I was a boxer when I was a kid, and I suddenly realised one night that I use my boxing technique, especially the footwork, when dancing to electro! For this reason perhaps I've always thought of electo as warrior music. It hits the feet. House is more pelvic. I think we need to take account of tempos when having this discussion, incidentally.

With elongated drum sounds, perhaps? That would make for a smeary-streaky, slow-time dance experience, like dancing on the moon.

But anyway, I wanted to say that the unstated qualifier here is obviously "for listening purposes." I think that's the thing. When I'm dancing, there's no issue, but when I am sitting about my apartment, there's less reason to stick with those limits (though sometimes I still want to hear it, and sometimes it brings back some of the same feelings I get from dancing). That's all. For the purposes of dancing, music made for dancing is excellent. For other purposes, I sometimes find it unsatisfactory, but then again, not always.

(It's probably all just a personal issue which can be solved by my: listening a little less often to the Latin music I like.)

Also, I like tangent the thread has gone in, even though I don't know what electro sounds like enough to completely follow.

see ppl dancing to the "Space" portion of a Dead show