French dances

thumb|300px|Depiction of the can-can by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1895

thumb|right|A gavotte in Brittany, France, 1878 The gavotte (also gavot, gavote, or gavotta) is a French dance, taking its name from a folk dance of the Gavot, the people of the Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné in the southeast of France, where the dance originated, according to one source. According to another reference, the word gavotte is a generic term for a variety of French folk dances, and most likely originated in Lower Brittany in the west, or possibly Provence in the southeast or the French Basque Country in the southwest of France. It is notated in or time and is usually of moderate t

upright=1.35|thumb|Farandole dancing in Saint-Geniès-de-Comolas The farandole (; ) is an open-chain community dance popular in Provence, France. It bears similarities to the gavotte, jig, and tarantella. The carmagnole of the French Revolution is a derivative.

thumb|250px|Passepied from opera-Entr'acte|interlude [[The Shagreen Bone]]

thumb|250px|''Branle d'Ossau'' by Alfred Dartiguenave, 1855–1856

thumb|Beauchamp–Feuillet notation|dance notation for the first 18 bars of a rigadoon by Isaac, published in Orchesography or the Art of Dancing ... an Exact and Just Translation from the French of Monsieur Feuillet; by John Weaver, Dancing Master. Second edition. Walsh, London, c. 1721. The rigaudon (, ), anglicized as rigadon or rigadoon, is a French baroque dance with a lively duple metre. The music is similar to that of a bourrée, but the rigaudon is rhythmically simpler with regular phrases (eight measure phrases are most common). It originated as a sprightly 17th-century French folk dance

The loure, also known as the gigue lourée or gigue lente (slow gigue), is a French Baroque dance, probably originating in Normandy and named after the sound of the instrument of the same name (a type of musette). It is of slow or moderate tempo, sometimes in simple triple meter but more often in compound duple meter. The weight is on the first beat, a characteristic emphasised by the preceding anacrusis, which begins the traditional loure. Another feature is the lilting dotted rhythm.

The tourdion (or tordion) (from the French verb "tordre" / to twist) is a lively dance, similar in nature to the galliard, and popular from the mid-15th to the late-16th centuries, first in the Burgundian court and then all over the French kingdom. The dance was accompanied frequently by the basse danse, due to their contrasting tempi, and were danced alongside the pavane and galliard, and the allemande and courante, also in pairs.

Balfolk (from French: , meaning a folk ball) 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.

Parisian dance

dance which was developed in France in the early part of the 20th century

thumb|Le Balajo, a famous bal musette on in Paris (1936) Bal-musette is a style of French instrumental music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1880s. Although it began with bagpipes as the main instrument, this instrument was eventually replaced by the accordion, on which a variety of waltzes, polkas, and other dance styles were played.