History of the dance
The French name “La Chapelloise” is derived from a village in eastern France, Chapelle-des-Bois: Legend says that André Dufresne was teaching the dance there in the 1970s, and since participants did not remember its original name, the dance got famous by the name of the village where the workshop took place. [1]
The dance was introduced in France in the 1930s by Alick-Maud Pledge. [2] [3] It is often claimed that the dance is of Swedish origin and that its original name is “Aleman's marsj” (Guilcher 1998, [4] Oosterveen 2002, [5] Largeaud 2011 [6] and countless websites). However, the spelling “marsj” is not Swedish (it looks rather Norwegian [7] ) and the choreography bears no similarity with Swedish folk dances. [8] Instead, this dance is known in Scandinavian dance collections (Swedish, [9] Danish [10] and Norwegian [11] ) as “All American Promenade”. This, together with its dissimilarity to Swedish folk dances and its similarity to other mixer dances in Britain and America, pinpoint rather to a non-Swedish origin of the dance. The Norwegian dance collector Hulda Garborg (1862-1934) is reported to have learnt the dance in the US and brought it to Norway, but its description in a Scandinavian language was published much later. [12] The association of the dance with Sweden stems perhaps from the fact that in Denmark, the All American Promenade is most often danced to a Swedish tune: Gärdeby Gånglåt, [13] attributed to the Swedish fiddler Hjort Anders Olsson [ sv ] (1865-1952).
In Belgium, the dance is called “Jig”/“Gigue” after the music most commonly played to the dance [14] or “Aapje” (an acronym for “All American Promenade”, AAP).
Sometimes it is claimed that the “All American Promenade” was choreographed in the 1960s by Jim Arkness; [15] [16] but a description of this dance was published already in 1953 [17] and the dance is probably derived from the British "Gay Gordons": The “Gay Gordons” dance was mentioned already in 1907, [18] and was a popular 'old time' dance in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s, [19] along with "The Military Two Step" (by James Finnigan) and the "Dashing White Sergeant". The "Gay Gordons" was known to all Aberdeen folk dancers in 1950. [20] Its first eight measures are identical to the Chapelloise/AAP, but the “Gay Gordons” lacks the change of partners which is typical for the Chapelloise/AAP.
Sources for an understanding of dance in Europe in the Middle Ages are limited and fragmentary, being composed of some interesting depictions in paintings and illuminations, a few musical examples of what may be dances, and scattered allusions in literary texts. The first detailed descriptions of dancing only date from 1451 in Italy, which is after the start of the Renaissance in Western Europe.
The reel is a folk dance type as well as the accompanying dance tune type. Of Scottish origin, reels are also an important part of the repertoire of the fiddle traditions of Britain, Ireland and North America. In Scottish country dancing, the reel is one of the four traditional dances, the others being the jig, the strathspey and the waltz, and is also the name of a dance figure.
Scandinavia is a subregion of Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. Scandinavia most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also refer to the Scandinavian Peninsula. In English usage, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for Nordic countries. Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes included in Scandinavia for their ethnolinguistic relations with Sweden, Norway and Denmark. While Finland differs from other Nordic countries in this respect, some authors call it Scandinavian due to its economic and cultural similarities.
A country dance is any of a very large number of social dances of a type that originated in the British Isles; it is the repeated execution of a predefined sequence of figures, carefully designed to fit a fixed length of music, performed by a group of people, usually in couples, in one or more sets. The figures involve interaction with your partner and/or with other dancers, usually with a progression so that you dance with everyone in your set. It is common in modern times to have a "caller" who teaches the dance and then calls the figures as you dance. Country dances are done in many different styles.
The polska is a family of music and dance forms shared by the Nordic countries: called polsk in Denmark, polka or polska in Estonia, polska in Sweden and Finland, and by several different names in Norway. Norwegian variants include pols, rundom, springleik, and springar. The polska is almost always seen as a partner dance in, although variants in 2
4 time, as well as in compound meters also exist.
The schottische is a partnered country dance that apparently originated in Bohemia. It was popular in Victorian era ballrooms as a part of the Bohemian folk-dance craze and left its traces in folk music of countries such as Argentina, Finland, France, Italy, Norway ("reinlender"), Portugal and Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, and the United States, among other nations. The schottische is considered by The Oxford Companion to Music to be a kind of slower polka, with continental-European origin.
This is an alphabetical index of articles related to dance.
Hulda Garborg was a Norwegian writer, novelist, playwright, poet, folk dancer, and theatre instructor. She was married to Arne Garborg, and is today perhaps best known for kindling interest in the bunad tradition.
Uff da is an American Scandinavian exclamation or interjection used to express dismay, typically upon hearing bad news. Of Norwegian origin, the phrase was brought by Scandinavian Americans to the Upper Midwest, New England, and Pacific Northwest regions of the United States during the 19th century, where its meaning was broadened to express also surprise, astonishment, exhaustion, or relief.
The cotillion is a social dance, popular in 18th-century Europe and North America. Originally for four couples in square formation, it was a courtly version of an English country dance, the forerunner of the quadrille and, in the United States, the square dance.
A branle, also bransle, brangle, brawl(e), brall(e), braul(e), brando, bran, or brantle, is a type of French dance popular from the early 16th century to the present, danced by couples in either a line or a circle. The term also refers to the music and the characteristic step of the dance.
The Norwegian Constituent Assembly is the name given to the 1814 constitutional assembly that adopted the Norwegian Constitution and formalised the dissolution of the union with Denmark. The meetings took place at the Eidsvoll Manor in the village of Eidsvoll Verk in the Eidsvoll parish in Akershus county, Norway from 10 April to 20 May 1814. In Norway, it is often just referred to as Eidsvollsforsamlingen, which means The Assembly of Eidsvoll.
Balfolk is a dance event for folk dance and folk music in a number of European countries, mainly in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Poland. It is also known as folk bal.
Sista dansen is a Danish-Norwegian-Swedish 1993 film directed by Colin Nutley. The film was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 67th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.
Breton dance is a group of traditional dance forms originating in Brittany, the Celtic region of France. The dance has experienced a reappropriation in the late 1950s, with the development of the Celtic Circles and Fest Noz.
Scandinavian Braille is a braille alphabet used, with differences in orthography and punctuation, for the languages of the mainland Nordic countries: Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish. In a generally reduced form it is used for Greenlandic.
Alick-Maud Pledge (1893–1949) was an English folk dance and gymnastics teacher in France.
Folk high schools are institutions for adult education that generally do not grant academic degrees, though certain courses might exist leading to that goal. They are most commonly found in Nordic countries and in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The concept originally came from the Danish writer, poet, philosopher, and pastor N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872). Grundtvig was inspired by the Marquis de Condorcet's Report on the General Organization of Public Instruction which was written in 1792 during the French Revolution. The revolution had a direct influence on popular education in France. In the United States, a Danish folk school, called Danebod, was founded in Tyler, Minnesota.
A barrel of land is a Scandinavian unit of area. The word may originate from the area of fields one could seed with a barrel of grain seeds. The acre is the equivalent Anglo-Saxon unit. Because the barrel sizes varied by country, the area unit does too. One barrel can be approximated as half a hectare.
