Farandole

The farandole is an open-chain community dance popular in Provence, France. The farandole bears similarities to the gavotte, jig, and tarantella. The carmagnole of the French Revolution is a derivative.

The farandole was first described in detail by the English folklorist Violet Alford in 1932. The following description is from the county of Nice: Traditionally led by the abbat-mage holding a ribboned halberd, the dancers hold hands and skip at every beat; strong beats on one foot, alternating left and right, with the other foot in the air, and weak beats with both feet together. In the village of Belvédère, on the occasion of the festival honoring patron Saint Blaise, the most recently married couple leads the dance. Musically, the dance is in 6
8 time, with a moderate to fast tempo, and played by a flute and drum.

Folklorists of the early 20th century (e.g. Alford 1932) interpreted most folk dances as being very ancient, and postulated even for the farandole an ancestry traceable to ancient Greece, remaining more or less unchanged "during its two or three thousands years of life".

Many recent websites, older encyclopedias, and some music history books claim that the farandole is a medieval dance, but never provide an actual medieval quote mentioning the farandole. While there exist renaissance descriptions of chain and circle dances, and medieval and renaissance iconography showing people dancing in chains and circles, there is no connection between these early dances and the recent folk farandole: Arbeau, the most well-known source for renaissance chain and circle dances such as the branle, does not contain any dance with farandole-specific steps and figures. The term "farandole" is not found in dictionaries of Old French or of Old Occitan "farandoulo", and the earliest appearance in the French form farandoule (as being derived from Occitan) is in 1776. Its earliest appearance in English is even younger, 1876. Consequently, the medieval dance researcher Robert Mullally concludes that there is no evidence that the modern folk farandole resembles any kind of medieval dance.

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