Dancing The Quadrilha

"We had a Festa Julina, like the Festa Junina I had in Cruzeiro last year, this time in Jardim Camargo Novo. It was pretty dumb, except for the rice pudding and when the kids danced the Quadrilha. I want to learn how to dance the Quadrilha. I will show everyone what the Festa Junina is all about next summer. We will paint fake beards on and wear straw hats and dance the Quadrilha and eat Paçoca. Delicious!"

Quadrilha is a Brazilian dance of European origin. It's first records, which mentioned old rural dances from Normandie and England, got lost in time. The group of aristocractic dances that spread across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries arrived in Brazil along with the Portuguese colonizers.

The dance nowadays known as "quadrilha" harbored in Brazil better known as "Pas de Dance", a kind of French ballroom pair dance. The word "Quadrilha" derives from French "Quadrille" and from Italian "Squadro", which means a group of soldiers standing on a square.

According to researcher Câmara Cascudo, during the time when Brazil was a Portuguese colony, there was a strong identity with everything coming from Europe. Thus, it was very easy to adapt the term "quadrille" into "quadrilha".