Capital Dance

Capital Dance

Capital Dance (styled Capital DANCE) is a national digital radio station in the United Kingdom, owned and operated by Global and run as a spin-off from Capital. The station broadcasts from studios at Leicester Square in London alongside its siblings Capital and Capital Xtra. The station predominantly plays contemporary and current electronic dance music.

Capital Dance broadcasts its own breakfast and drive shows Monday to Friday, followed by an evening show Monday to Thursday. The on-air lineup is headed by DJ MistaJam, who had stepped down from his BBC Radio 1Xtra and BBC Radio 1 shows in September.[1] In addition to hosting on Capital Dance on weekdays, Mistajam also gained a weekend evening show on the main Capital network, which is simulcast on the Dance station. The other presenters on Capital Dance at launch were drawn from the network’s Ministry of Sound-backed weekend late evening strand The Capital Weekender, with these shows also now being simulcast on Capital Dance. A dedicated weekday breakfast show for the station was introduced at the start of 2021, with a lunchtime/early afternoon programme (running Tuesday to Saturday) following to complete the daytime schedule in July 2021.

The launch of Capital Dance follows the establishment in 2019 of Global’s Heart Dance as an older-skewing classic and contemporary dance and rhythmic music station.

Exactly one week (and two hours) after the launch of Capital Dance, BBC Radio 1 launched a BBC Radio 1 Dance stream on BBC Sounds – the BBC’s plans for this had been announced prior to Capital Dance being revealed.

The establishment of Capital Dance follows the decision to reorientate Capital Xtra back towards predominantly playing Black and urban music genres: in the period following its national relaunch, Xtra had played a broad mix of electronic and rhythmic music (with the tagline Dance. Urban. UK.) but has since shifted back to a style more similar to its predecessor, Choice FM.

Capital Dance broadcasts nationally, transmitted on Digital One in the DAB+ format, and online. To enable the addition of the station to Digital One, several other Global stations on the platform, including Capital UK, Heart UK, Capital XTRA Reloaded, Gold and Heart 70s, saw a reduction in their broadcast bandwidth.

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