gigue

The gigue ( ZHEEG, French: [ʒiɡ]) or giga (Italian: [ˈd͡ʒiːɡa]) is a lively baroque dance originating from the English jig. It was imported into France in the mid-17th century and usually appears at the end of a suite. The gigue was probably never a court dance, but it was danced by nobility on social occasions and several court composers wrote gigues. A gigue, like other Baroque dances, consists of two sections. A gigue is usually in 38 or in one of its compound metre derivatives, such as 68, 64, 98 or 128, although there are some gigues written in other metres, as for example the gigue from Johann Sebastian Bach's first French Suite (BWV 812), which is written in 22 and has a distinctive strutting "dotted" rhythm. Gigues often have a contrapuntal texture as well as often having accents on the third beats in the bar, making the gigue a lively folk dance. In early French theatre, it was customary to end a play's performance with a gigue, complete with music and dancing.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Gigue”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

gigue is type of dance; classical dance music form, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 13 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶