I noticed that come of the songs posted for several of the dances are below the NDCA recognized tempos. I just want to ask if this site was made for social dancers or for competative/professional dancers. I think a distinction should be made in the tempos for both style of dancer either way.

ProDance NM. I think you will find that since the recomended tempos were given there have been some changes. The the recomended can not keep abreast with the way top leading competition orchestrers play their music. They in turn change with flow. I don't know what the recommended tempo is for the International Rumba according to NDCA,
probably between 28 to 32 BPM. The recordings coming out now on the disks is about 25 BPM. The reason being that there is much more use of the hips, which is the first thing to go if the music is too fast. Might say speed it up or slow it down. Most of us can do that. But then if it has a vocalist the singing can be destroyed. This again introduces another story. More and more disks are vocal. This is what the buying public want. And so it goes on.

My experience is that slow waltz and foxtrot tempos are 28 or 29 rather than the 'official' 30BPM. Just talking off the top of my head, i would imagine that dancers are in general taller than they were 50 years ago, and it's much nicer for a tall couple (i.e. 5'10 or over) to dance slower than 30BPM and it makes for better dancing.

Phil. I doubt if any demonstrator would dance a Waltz faster than 28 bpm. The tempo's suggested in the books are already out of date. As you said it is harder to dance to slower music, more balance is required. Gone are the days where speed took the place of balance. Just as a matter of added interest Alex Moore who wrote our book. His expertise was from a dance which for a while was popular. It fell into history part reason was the music played was so slow and required perfect balance. The Blues in the early 20's had their own World Titles of which Alex was one of the tops.

Check out http://www.burnlounge.com/starstuddedmusic Its a lot better than iTunes. Theres a lot of great music on there from major record labels and individual artists all over the world. the songs are only 99 cents