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While the country dance was developing with such great variety in
England, the same primitive choral dance that sired the English dance was producing a rather
different and much less lively offspring in France. The English dance moved from the people to the
aristocracy, as a good art should. The French dance moved downward from the court to the people,
making a different sort of contribution and adding a different flavour as far as we who inherited
it are concerned.
The French had a round dance called a "branle". It was
done by couples in a circle, as our rounds are done today, and had become a ballroom dance done by
aristocratic society long before our story begins. There are pictures on mediaeval tapestries of
lines of elegant dressed couples doing these dances in magnificent halls. In the 17th century,
every ball started with a series of three branles : a "Branle Double" for the older
people, a "Branle Simple" for the younger married couples and a "Branle Gay"
for the young people. There was also a Gavotte, a true round dance, in which the couples turned
freely around the floor.
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