The Farandole is an open-chain community dance popular in Provence. It bears similarities to the gavotte, jig, and tarantella. The carmagnole of the French Revolution is a derivative. No satisfactory derivation has been given of the name. Diez (Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Romanischen Sprachen) 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.
The farandole is considered as the oldest of the dances as well as the most characteristic and the most representative of Provence. Its name is attested only from the 18th century, however, it has been represented since prehistoric times by rock engravings then during Antiquity on ceramics or frescoes. Today in Provence, it is danced to the tunes played by the drummers who accompany it with their galoubets and their tambourines. Its popularity made it enter in the Christmas Crib of Provence and it is one of the most characteristic elements of the Provençal tradition.
The dance is very probably of Greek origin, and seems to be a direct descendant of the “Cranes’ dance”, the invention of which was acribed to Theseus, who instituted it to celebrate his escape from the Labyrinth. This dance is alluded to at the end of the hymn to Delos by Callimachus: it is still danced in Greece and the islands of the Aegean, and may well have been introduced into the South of France from Marseilles.
Charles Gounod used a farandole, set in front of the Arles Amphitheatre, to open the second act of his opera Mireille (1864). Georges Bizet features the farandole as the fourth and concluding movement of his second L’ Arlesienne suite (1872). However, the dance is not suited for the purposes of the ballet. In Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty ballet (1890), the dames propose a farandole in the fourth scene of the second act. There is a farandole in Saint-Saens’ opera Les Barbares (1901), and a farandole is present in the classical saxophone piece Tableaux de Provence (1958) by Paule Maurice, the first movement of five.
In the 1940 Abbott and Costello film A Night in the Tropics, the movie ends with the singing and dancing of Bizet’s farandole. In 1969, a band by the name of “Love Sculpture” had an album entitled Forms & Feelings. One of the songs was Bizet’s farandole. Bob James, on his album Two, performed Bizet’s farandole in a jazz funk style. Released in 1975, the album charted at number two on the Jazz Album Charts. During his time as a member of the 1980s metal band Talas, Billy Sheehan performed another rock cover of Bizet’s farandole, which was subsequently covered, in a similar manner by Dream Theatre.
