Hey!
I am helping set out a plan for music for a particular event, and it calls for dance music from old movies.
I need songs for:
Regular & Viennese Waltz
Rumba
Bolero
Tango
Quickstep
Foxtrot
East & West Coast Swing
Cha Cha
Mambo
Merengue
Hustle

I will need roughly 5 songs for each dance style- please give me any suggestions you have for old movie music!

this is a standard chainstudio event - dancing from Hollywood (or Broadway - another popular event) that is the usual 'showcae' situation.

The best thing is to have the participants bring in the music. Believe me, you'll NEVER have enough time or resources to do this by yourself - and then you have yto have the participants LIKE what you have found.

Having people bring in the music has the potential problem of going against a major DJ rule: never play anything you haven't listened to (evaluated for danceability) first.

Good thought. However, I thought it was not only a given that the recipient of the music would hear it, but so would the proam teachers.

If it is for a social, then I assume you'd get these weeks in advance....

Well, how about

Beautiful Maria (either Bolero or Rumba) from Mambo Kings?

There are a couple of good mambos on that CD, too, just can't remember the names.

One of my favorite waltzes is "Lara's Theme" from Dr. Zhivago, but there's no soundtrack from the movie (I don't think so, anyway). There are probably a lot of versions of it, though.

Jive - What about "Yesterday's Hero" from Strictly Ballroom?

There are all kinds of good hustles from Saturday Night Fever.

There was a soundtrack ablum for Dr. Zhivago. However you can find Lara's theme on some dance CD. It's actually a viennese waltz, not a slow waltz (the melody is slow, but you are actually dancing to a more subtle underlying rhythm at viennese tempo)

For your slow waltz there's always Moon River, or "a time for love" from Romeo and Juliet. Actually a lot of recent movies have themes or major numbers that have been wonderfully re-recorded as slow waltzes by dance orchestras (the soundtrack versions are often a little outside comfortable tempo): Dances with Wolves, Cider House Rules, Shrek, Pearl Harbour, the Patriot, Moulan Rouge, Gladiator, and many more.