the.com/galop
the dance so fast that 1800s ballrooms basically invented cardio with a fiddle
means A lively, fast ballroom dance in duple time, popular in the 19th century, in which couples skip and chassé rapidly around the room.
from From French galop, "a gallop" — the same word used for a horse's headlong run, borrowed into German and then back across Europe as the dance spread. The name is a frank admission: you move like a horse at full tilt. The French verb galoper traces to an Old Frankish root, possibly *wala hlaupan, "to run well," a cousin of English 'leap.' So when those ballroom dancers thundered around the floor, they were quite literally galloping.
- origin
- German ballrooms, early 1800s, named for galloping horses
- step
- endless sideways chasses around the room at speed
- finale role
- closed quadrilles and balls as the breathless last dance
- musical legacy
- Offenbach's can-can grew straight from galop tempo
- meter
- breakneck 2/4 time, no room for elegance
galop dance — 19th-century ballroom dance in 2/4 time, popular in vienna and paris from 1829
offenbach galop — jacques offenbach's 1858 orchestral piece, a famous example of the galop genre