Wiktionary
n. A 16th century French dance
Wikipedia
A branle (pronounced bran(ə)l)—also bransle, brangle, brawl, brawle, brall(e), braul(e), or (Scot.) brantle (OED)) is a type of French dance popular from the early 16th century to the present, danced by couples in either a line or a circle. The term also refers to the music and the characteristic step of the dance.
Usage examples of "branle".
There was a new dance going on, a branle by the music and the scrambling laughter.
The formal music for the branle and galliard, the charconne and allemande and pavane and the Spanish minuet blew pattering like tinfoil through the peach trees, suffocated by the drawling French of English thoraxes and the polite, beautiful French of the most highly cultured courtiers in the world.
Mary had torches brought that they might dance as she had in the salle de bal at Fontainebleau the branle des torches in which the dancers passed torches from one to the other.
Then they danced the branle des lavanditres, and that other dance, the Purpose, in which the partners kissed.
It is as necessary to kiss in the Pup-pose as it is to clap hands in the branle des lavandihes.
Jaufre had begun the lively steps of the branle, linking hands to form part of the large circle.
There was a new dance going on, a branle by the music and the scrambling laughter.
They dance pavanes, galliards, corantos, branles, contredans, and so forth.
A branle was forming in the hallway like a fifteenth-century conga line, accompanied only by Felix Arabia on shawm, resembling a Bosch demon in a genial moment.