| Warning |
| Site map |
| Introduction |
| The circumstances |
| The dances |
| The instruments |
  MIDI music! |
| The composers |
| The movies |
| Bibliography |
| Discography |
| Music glossary |
| History |
| Glossary |
| The forenames |
| Download |
| Acknowledgments |
| |||||||||||||||||||
From a foot on the other one
The popular dances have a role of social cohesion. They imply the participation of a big part of the rustic population. Today, they often lost these functions which they assumed in the traditional societies: under the influence of contemporary choreographies (in a folkloric tendency) practised within dancers’ traditional circles, they evolved towards spectacle dances, in which does not participate any more the population of the spectators. But these traditional groups saved this dances from the neglect. This is the price to be paid to preserve the traditions... The community dances often escape this observation, among which farandoles for the County of Nice.
They are all the open-chain or closed-chain dances, linear or circular form, for which the number of participants is not pre-defined: round dance, branle, farandole, gavotte, sardana, ... Among the general characteristics, one finds outside practice, and the alternation of the sex of the dancers throughout the chain. Several variants of community dances are or were practised in the County: The farandole Community dance in open chain, the farandole pulls credibly its origin from medieval branle, as its distant cousins the breton gavottes and the irish jigs, or, closer to us, the transalpine tarantellae. The popular farandole is danced in the County of Nice on a very free step. The dancers hold one another by their hands, and mark every musical beat by skippings: strong beats on a foot, alternately left then right, the other one being raised; weak beat on joined feet. It is led by the abat-mage, which holds in his free hand the ribboned halberd. In the village of Belvédère, on the occasion of the Saint-Blaise patronal festival, it is the most recently married couple that leads farandole in the streets. It is curious to notice how the farandole travelled, geographically and linguistically, towards Brittany, brought over there by the soldiers of the Empire wars (in the 18th century), where it became war an daol, literally “on the table”! It’s the same for the monferrina from Piedmont, which, having followed identical roads, meets in Center-Brittany under the name of “montfarine dance” or “flour dance”! Polig Montjarret collected some of these airs, still alive in the middle of the 20th century, in his Tonioù Breiz Izel (Tunes from Low-Brittany) collection. The brandi According to Joseph Giordan, president of the Acadèmia nissarda, this dance would have been imported to County of Nice by P. de Brandis, a judge in the Parliament of the city of Aix. The mourisca, or moresca (moorish) A dance with a less mobile, comic character and heavier than farandole, made of tramplings, of leva-gamba (“rise-leg”). This dance, which symbolizes confrontation between the Christians and the Moors, was practised during the carnival. The passa cariera (pass-street dance) Passa cariera (“pass-street”), the ethymology of which leads us to the baroque passacaille (via spanish passa calle), are street entertainments, the musical character of which is not codified. Sometimes slow to accompany the walking of the leading citizens in streets, sometimes more animated to accompany bounds of the youth. For its article farandole, the Georges Castellana’s dictionary quote “three sorts of farandoles: the brandi, the descaussa, and the mouresca”.
The “characters” were, in the theater dance, well definite figures which were dancing in accordance with their role. The contredanse The contredanse (from English “country dance”), or quadrille, which usually complies to four or eight persons, was practised in the County: Calant de Vilafranca, On which tunes was there danced the contredanse? With which steps? The monferrina and the périgourdine, whose A stacada d’Breï still keeps the memory, were very likely two of its figures. The monferrina The monferrina could take its name from and be native to Piedmont (mount Ferrat), then spread itself in the Latin part of the Alps (Savoy, Lake Geneva’ Basin, Valais, Tessin and Grisons, north of Italy), and up to Center Brittany. The quadrille, or square dance An other dance with figures, the square dance (quadrille): “The simple or double quadrille was danced anywhere; but the quadrille ‘at the command’ was particuliar to the County.” (Albert Blanchi, quoted by Georges Castellana in Dictionnaire français-niçois, French-Nissart Dictionnary.) Some other characters dances Festive dances: the round dances of May.
The following “dances” are not strictly dances with figures, but rather “historical” dances (or plays), practised within a well delimited area, some of which retain the memory of circumstances in which women honour was at stake. A stacada d’Breï (The Attached of Breil) A stacada d’Breï (The Attached of Breil): historic reconstitution which takes place the summer, every four years, in Breil-sur-Roya’s village. A tradition several times centenary which redraws the revolt of Breil inhabitants against the abuses of the leading citizens, in particular that of the droit de cuissage (the right for the lord to place a naked leg into the bride’s bed)... The cepoun (the tree stump, or chopping block) The cepoun (the tree stump, or chopping block): play-dance extremely virile, which is practised on the place of Utelle’s village for centuries, always on August 16th for Saint-Roch patronal festival, and whose origin seems unknown. This original fight takes place according to an unchanged rite passed on for the 15th century, and lasts exactly one hour, during which the knocks are not saved to the aggressors. It is a question, for the unmarried boys of the village, of stealing to the married men the cepoun, big wooden block (cut trunk) about 80 kg, and to roll it up to the square of the church. While young people jump on the cepoun and receive in their passage strikings from the married men, being arranged in hedge on each side of the block, fife and drum repeat a particular air: the cepoun tune. When a battle undertakes between young people which try to seize the cepoun and their opponents, fife and drum interrupt this tune, the fife playing muddled trills and the drum beating continuous rolls till the end of the battle. Several times within hour, the participants rest for a few minutes and resume the fight on the statement of a characteristic formula of the fife. During the duration of the cepoun, one observes a farandole around the ritual circle.
The Corpus Christi plays in Aix-en-Provence
The Tarasque plays in Tarascon The Tarasco is the the Tarascon City’s eponymous marine monster.
From different origins in the time and in the space, the dances in couple were practised from the 19th century in the european middle-class lounges. For the County of Nice, the example comes from festivities of Victor-Emmanuel’s Court, king of Savoy. Very fast, these inside dances (contrary to the outside community dances) were adopted by the whole population.
As far as I know, there was not solo man or woman dance, practised in County of Nice as such traditional dance. © 2001-2024 Jean-Gabriel Maurandi.
| |||||||||||||||||||
