Farandole

The farandole (French: [faʁɑ̃dɔl]; Provençal: farandola [faʀanˈdulɔ]) is an open-chain community dance popular in Provence, France.

Diez[1] connects it with the Spanish farándula, indicating a company of strolling players, which he derives from the German fahrende ("travelling").

A still more unlikely derivation has been suggested from the Greek fálanx (φάλαγξ, "phalanx") and doúlos (δούλος, "slave"), because the dancers in the farandole are linked together in a long chain.

It has been also suggested that farandole may be an alteration of Provençal barandello, from brandello (derivative of branda, "stir"), under the influence of Occitan words such as flandina ("cajoler") and flandrina ("dawdle").

In the village of Belvédère, on the occasion of the festival honouring patron Saint Blaise, the most recently married couple leads the dance.

"Musically, the dance is in 68 time, with a strongly accentuated rhythm, moderate to fast tempo, and played by a flute and drum.

Another description of this dance comes from Grove's dictionary,[2]"The Farandole consists of a long string of young men and women, sometimes as many as a hundred in number, holding one another by the hands, or by ribbons or handkerchiefs.

The leader (to quote the poet Mistral) 'makes it come and go, turn backwards and forwards ... sometimes he forms it into a ring, sometimes winds it in a spiral, then he breaks off from his followers and dances in front, then he joins on again, and makes it pass rapidly under the uplifted arms of the last couple.

In the latter the farandole is preceded by the huge effigy of a legendary monster—the Tarasque—borne by several men and attended by the gaily dressed chevaliers de la Tarasque.

In this farandole, skeletons and living people alternate, arranged in a descending hierarchical order: the pope, the emperor, the cardinal, the king, the patriarch, the constable, the archbishop, the knight, the bishop, the squire, the abbot, the bailiff, the astrologer, the bourgeois, the Carthusian, the sergeant, the doctor, the wife, the usurer, and the poor.

Its role is to articulate the farandole, dance of agrarian rites, in its two main themes: that of the spiral (also known as the snail or labyrinth) and that of the passage under the vault (known as the serpent).

Also in Provence, other dances related to the farandole were practiced on more free steps: the brandi, the morisca ("Moorish"), the passa-carriera ("street passer", cf.

As the drummer is notable, he has put on his most elegant costume, wears a wide-brimmed felt hat, and under his velvet jacket appears his embroidered waistcoat on his white shirt.

Over the course of the novel, characters physically journey inside a mitochondrion and encounter the farandolae as sentient creatures that do circular "dances" around their "trees of origin" that drain the elder fara of energy.