Branle

A branle (pronounced bran(ə)l)—also bransle, brangle, brawl, brawle, brall(e), braul(e), or (Scot.) brantle (OED)) is a type of French dance popular from the early 16th 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.

History

The name of the dance is derived from the French verb branler (to shake), possibly related to brander (to brandish), and the dance moves mainly from side to side. Before 1500 the word is encountered in dance only as the "swaying" step of the basse danse; dances of this name are encountered from about 1500, and is used to describe dances still danced in France today (Heartz 2001). Branle music is generally two-in-a-measure, somewhat like the gavotte, though some variants, like that of Poitou, are in triple time (Scholes 1970).

Although originally a French round dance of rustic provenance, danced to the dancers' singing, it was adopted, like other folk-dances, into aristocratic use - among its courtly relations may be the basse danse and the passepied (Scholes 1970) for, though it is in triple time, Rabelais and Thoinot Arbeau (1589) identify the latter as a type of Breton branle. The first detailed sources for the dance's steps are found in Arbeau's famous text-book Orchesography. Antonius de Arena briefly describes the steps for the double and single branle (Arena 1986 [1529], 20–21), and John Marston's The Malcontent (1604) sketches the choreography of one type.