Editing Baroque dance (section)

== The French Noble style ==
{{Further|French ballet}}
[[Image:Ballet de la nuit 1653.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A costume design for Louis XIV as The Rising Sun, from the final entrée of ''[[Ballet de la Nuit|Le Ballet de la Nuit]]'' (1653)]]
The great innovations in dance in the 17th century originated at the French court under [[Louis XIV of France|Louis XIV]], and it is here that we see the first clear stylistic ancestor of [[classical ballet]].  The same basic technique was used both at social events, and as theatrical dance in court ballets and at public theaters.  The style of dance is commonly known to modern scholars as the ''French noble style'' or ''belle danse'' (French, literally "beautiful dance"), however it is often referred to casually as ''baroque dance'' in spite of the existence of other theatrical and social dance styles during the baroque era.

Primary sources include more than three hundred choreographies in [[Beauchamp–Feuillet notation]],<ref>Little, Meredith Ellis and Marsh, Carol G. ''La Danse Noble, An Inventory of Dances and Sources'', (Broude Brothers Ltd, 1992) {{ISBN|0-8450-0092-6}}</ref><ref>Lancelot, Francine, ''La Belle Dance: Catalogue Raisonné'', (Van Dieren Editeur, 1996) {{ISBN|2-911087-02-X}}</ref> as well as manuals by [[Raoul Auger Feuillet]] and [[Pierre Rameau]] in France, [[Kellom Tomlinson]], [[P. Siris]], and [[John Weaver (dancer)|John Weaver]] in England, and [[Gottfried Taubert]] in Germany (i.e. [[Leipzig]], Saxony).  This wealth of evidence has allowed modern scholars and dancers to recreate the style, although areas of controversy still exist.  The standard modern introduction is Hilton.<ref>Hilton, Wendy, ''Dance and Music of Court and Theater: Selected Writings of Wendy Hilton'' (Pendragon Press, 1997) {{ISBN|0-945193-98-X}}</ref>

French dance types include:
{{Div col|colwidth=18em}}
* [[Allemande]] (Descendant of a traditional German dances)
* [[Bourrée]]
* [[Canarie (dance)|Canarie]] (Canary) (Of Spanish origin)
* [[Chaconne]] (Actually of Spanish origin)
* [[Courante|(French) Courante]]
* [[Entrée grave]]
* [[Forlane]] (Forlana)
* [[Gavotte]]
* [[Gigue]]
* [[Loure]] (slow gigue)
* [[Minuet|Menuet]] (minuet)
*  Musette
* [[Passacaglia|Passacaille]] or Pasacalle (passacaglia) (Of Spanish origin, traditionally a guitar piece)
* [[Passepied]]
* [[Polonaise]] (Of Polish origin)
* [[Rigaudon]]
* [[Sarabande]] (Of Spanish origin)
* [[Tambourin]]
{{div col end}}

The English, working in the French style, added their own [[hornpipe]] to this list.

Many of these dance types are familiar from [[European classical music|baroque music]], perhaps most spectacularly in the stylized [[suite (music)|suite]]s of [[Johann Sebastian Bach|J. S. Bach]].<ref>Little, Meredith and Jenne, Natalie. ''Dance and the Music of J.S. Bach'' (Indiana University Press, 1991, 2001) {{ISBN|0-253-21464-5}}</ref> Note, however, that the [[allemande]]s, that occur in these suites do not correspond to a French dance from the same period.