Good points, Peter. If the dancers are happy - from rapper to excruciating hornpipes - the musicians have done their job well (even if under protest, like Jackie). If dancers aren't involved, why worry about dance tempi?

I like tunes at any speed provided they are well played. I enjoy listening to good players playing at insane speeds that I could never manage, just as I love listening to the old Clare fiddlers playing reels at around 95 bpm.

Mind you, as a possibly irrelevant aside, I have heard music played by established players so slowly and deliberately that it becomes irritating - or ridiculous. The most extreme example came one night when, in a state of altered consciousness (brought on by fatigue - tired, but not "tired and emotional"), I put on a CD of a well-regarded piper playing tunes solo at a snail's pace and wringing them dry of every tight triplet and crann imaginable. The effect was electric - it was musical theatre of the absurd, and to me, at that moment, hysterically funny. The music was lost among the grunts, belches and assorted squeals and borborygmi the piper was labouring so hard to produce...