Christopher England wrote:

Quoting a previous Alan Milewczyk
<http://www.anoraknation.com/tags/people/Alan%20Milewczyk> contribution:-

I'm no expert on the matter but didn't people do folk dancing in
mediaeval days, not to mention the traditional dancing round the
maypole
stuff, Morris dancing, etc? I suspect whoever first came up with a
tune
that had a tappable rhythm would have been one of the pioneers of
dance
music.

How did I know this would go off this way? Heh heh!

Surely there must be a time in the 50s/60s when modern dance music
'started'?

Of course cave men danced to sticks clicked together (as do aborigines today).
People danced to Rock n Roll and to similar things before and after. You can call anything with a beat dance music. Here's the legal definition from the Criminal Justice & Public Order Act, 1994 ... amplified music 'wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats' ...

OK, do I win the 'I can be more pedantic than you' competition Alan? :-)

Going back to my suggestion, I would call 'modern' dance music that with an electronic element, so I would put the start in to the mid 70s.
Andy