quadrille

quadrille, fashionable late 18th- and 19th-century dance for four couples in square formation. Imported by English aristocrats in 1815 from elite Parisian ballrooms, it consisted of four, or sometimes five, contredanses; like the contredanse (q.v.), the quadrille depended more on the cooperative execution of intertwining figures, or floor patterns, than on intricate stepwork. Each of the quadrille’s sections was danced with prescribed combinations of figures, such as the tour de deux mains (“two-hand turn”), in which the couple held hands and turned; or the chaîne des dames (“ladies’ chain”), in which opposite women first passed each other by the right hand, and then each gave her left hand to the opposite man, who turned her into place beside himself. The quadrille was frequently danced to a medley of opera melodies. The lancers, a variation of the quadrille, became popular in the late 1800s and was still danced in the mid-20th century in folk-dance clubs.