Ballroom dance is a set of European partner dances, which are enjoyed both socially and competitively around the world, mostly because of its performance and entertainment aspects. Ballroom dancing is also widely enjoyed on stage, film, and television.
Contra dance is a form of folk dancing made up of long lines of couples. It has mixed origins from English country dance, Scottish country dance, and French dance styles in the 17th century. Sometimes described as New England folk dance or Appalachian folk dance, contra dances can be found around the world, but are most common in the United States, Canada, and other Anglophone countries.
The waltz, meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple, performed primarily in closed position.
Ice dance is a discipline of figure skating that historically draws from ballroom dancing. It joined the World Figure Skating Championships in 1952, and became a Winter Olympic Games medal sport in 1976. According to the International Skating Union (ISU), the governing body of figure skating, an ice dance team consists of one woman and one man.
Viennese waltz is a genre of ballroom dance. At least four different meanings are recognized. In the historically first sense, the name may refer to several versions of the waltz, including the earliest waltzes done in ballroom dancing, danced to the music of Viennese waltz.
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 polka-mazurka is a dance, musically similar to the mazurka, but danced much like the polka. Many polka-mazurkas were composed by Johann Strauss II and his family. Johann Strauss I did not compose any of this type of music; the first polka-mazurka example written by the Strauss family was in the year 1854 by Johann Strauss II, entitled La Viennoise op. 144.The polka-mazurka was not credited to the Strauss family alone, as many Viennese composers in the 1850s era also wrote many examples. This variant of the polka was seen as cross-cultural, as many of its influences can be seen in the French-polka with its feminine and deliberate steps as well as the exciting schnell-polka, where Eduard Strauss composed many famous pieces of this type.
The mazurka is a Polish musical form based on stylised folk dances in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, with character defined mostly by the prominent mazur's "strong accents unsystematically placed on the second or third beat". The mazurka, alongside the polka dance, became popular at the ballrooms and salons of Europe in the 19th century, particularly through the notable works by Frédéric Chopin. The mazurka and mazurek are often confused in Western literature as the same musical form.
A redowa is a dance of Czech origin with turning, leaping waltz steps that was popular in European ballrooms.
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 ("jenkka"), France, Italy, Norway ("reinlender"), Portugal and Brazil, Spain (chotis), Sweden, Denmark ("schottis"), 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.
The quickstep is a light-hearted dance of the standard ballroom dances. The movement of the dance is fast and powerfully flowing and sprinkled with syncopations. The upbeat melodies that quickstep is danced to make it suitable for both formal and informal events. Quickstep was developed in the 1920s in New York City and was first danced by Black Americans. Its origins are in combination of slow foxtrot combined with the Charleston, a dance which was one of the precursors to what today is called swing dancing.
The Slängpolska is a Swedish folk dance and sometimes also the description of certain folk music tunes. The dances bearing the name slängpolska can be divided into two major types.
Waltz is one of the five dances in the Standard category of the International Style ballroom dances. It was previously referred to as slow waltz or English waltz.
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.
The kujawiak is a Polish folk dance from the region of Kujawy in central Poland. It is one of the five national dances of Poland, the others being the krakowiak, mazur, oberek, and polonaise.
Gammaldans (Swedish) or Gammeldans is a small set of Nordic dances that became broadly popular in the late 19th century. These were also the dances of the Nordic immigrant communities in the United States.
Valse à deux temps, waltz à deux temps, also Valse à deux pas or Valse Russe was a waltz of Russian origin introduced in France in the mid-19th century.
Pravo horo is a very popular, simple folk dance from Bulgaria that is done throughout the Balkan countries. In Greece, it is called Zonaradiko. It is considered the "national dance" of Bulgaria, Albania, and North Macedonia. It is a rustic village line dance with a three-measure pattern, done to 2
4 or 6
8 music, and is a staple of weddings, feast days, and other celebrations. As with other Balkan dances, each country and even local region has its own variation of the dance, often interspersing other steps with the basic pravo step, to the extent that these different versions amount to distinct dances.
Cross-step waltz is a social ballroom dance in time, performed primarily in closed position, to slower tempo waltz music. It is characterized by a "primary cross-step" where the Lead role crosses the right foot over the left, as the Follow role crosses the left foot over the right, on the first count of the musical measure. Cross-step waltz can travel and rotate like traditional waltzes, while the dynamic of the cross-step facilitates a wide range of traveling variations.