'American Letters No. 12': Village People and Rigodons

The French folks at the big Beauforts Reunion dinner dance took their dancing seriously. Person for person, they were the sharpest group of nonprofessional hoofers I have ever seen. What is more, they danced the night away, never tiring out.

With my cane and sore left foot, I played the wallflower for about an hour, just listening to the half-and-half mix of French and American pop hits. But when a group dance was announced, I felt the need to join the throng. Actually, my cane enhanced the handmade letters of the Village People's "YMCA," and after my knee-slapping, cane-supported jig during a Virginia reel, the people from the French Beauforts treated me as a "type bien" (regular guy), no longer the pleasant but stand-offish foreigner.

On the following morning, a local group called "Les Ritournelles" (named for a folk dance) performed dances from a day long before American songs were ever heard in the Dauphiné. The most characteristic folk dance of Beaufort Isere's region is the rigodon.

The Infos Rigodon web page (pagesperso-orange.fr/folk.terresfroides/411Rigodon.html) said the rigodon "has known a long popularity in this province and the Dauphinois people have shown a particularly durable attachment to it, It is, however, an imported dance that the Dauphinois have adopted, probably while unconsciously reshaping it and adapting it to their culture and highlander mentality."

The dance originated further south, in France's sunny Provence region. Whenever people gathered in the 17th and 18th centuries, regardless of social status, they would dance the rigodon. The dance had become so well established by the mid-1700s that there were distinct regional variations in Provence. An observer wrote in 1786 that the peasants were fond of both the rigodon and a circle dance called the "branle" (French for "swaying side to side).

Decades before the French Revolution, the rigodon had become one of the favorite dances of the royal court, along with minuets, gavottes and contredanses. Provence's cultural influence extended into surrounding areas as its standard of living rose in the late 1700s. Also, the farm workers of the Dauphiné highlands went south to Provence in the summers to work, staying in the warmer "Land of Midday" (le Midi) to toil through the winter. Come springtime, the homesick Dauphinois would return home with their wages and with new, exciting things to share, like the rigodon.

Throughout the 19th century, the rigodon was often the only dance to be found at parties and gatherings in the Dauphiné. Everyone from farmers to aristocrats fell under its spell. The rigodon was a two-time dance in two parts. The first part, the "promenade," was so named for the movements of the dancers, usually into a circle. In the rigodon proper, or second part, the distinctive steps begin.

The commonest forms of the dance are the "file circulaire," where men and women circle the floor counterclockwise; the "formes à quatre danseurs" (four-dancer groups); two-dancer groups (sometimes a man and a woman, at other times two men); and a group procession evolving into a large circle.

The rigodon began to lose ground toward the end of the 1800s. New dances invaded, this time from the north. From Paris came more intimate couple dances like the waltz, quadrille and troika.

World War I dealt a heavy blow to the old ways of life. The rigodon slowly faded from the Dauphiné, except as a cultural relic or special activity like American square dances. Thanks to revival groups like Les Ritournelles, it still reminds Beaufort Isere of traditions lost only a century ago.

Watch a rigodon from the Dauphiné online at YouTube.com, with search words: Danses folkloriques du Dauphine.