I tend to the opposite conclusion about playing for dance - these days, in a typical ceilidh, there are very few moments when the sound of the dancers' feet contributes anything. But the dancers *do* listen to percussion, if there is any, more than they do to the melody. So drums have a useful role when playing for dancing.

Which has consequences for the *style* of percussion playing you use. Scottish ceilidh bands use a percussion style mainly derived from the military, with some jazz and rock influences. It places strong emphasis on the downbeats, and the patterns used reflect the phrasing of the tune (i.e. you'll beat out exactly the same eight-bar phrase twice if the tune repeats that way). The tune will often give precise cues for figures in the dance, and the percussionist's role is to emphasize those (no matter what the instrument - when I play percussion it's the washboard). This is equally true for English dance. For some tunes, the percussion beating alone would identify them to an average dancer ("Petronella" or "The High Road to Linton", say), if the percussionist was playing in a sensible way.

But that way of playing is NOTHING like what you get in Irish tune sessions, where the beat pattern is in the same time signature as the tune, but beyond that, does nothing at all to emphasize its structure. I don't do Irish tune sessions so I don't have an opinion about what ought to happen at them - but neither do opinions based on that setting have much to contribute to the direction the OP was going in. I have seen advice like "don't track the rhythm of the tune or you're kill it for the melody players" in Irish bodhran tutors - when trying to give the beat to a large hall full of ceilidh dancers, that advice could not be more wrong.

I would suggest that a tipper is not the easiest way to get the precise phrasing you want for dance, though. Frame drums are used for dance all over the world, but nearly always played with the fingers for anything complicated.