bourrée

American  

[boo-rey, boo-rey] / bʊˈreɪ, buˈreɪ /

noun

plural

bourrées

1. an old French and Spanish dance, somewhat like a gavotte.

2. the music for it.

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bourrée British  

/ ˈbʊəreɪ /

noun

1. a traditional French dance in fast duple time, resembling a gavotte

2. a piece of music composed in the rhythm of this dance

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Etymology

Origin of bourrée

1700–10; < French: literally, bundle of brushwood, originally, the twigs with which the bundle was stuffed (the dance may once have been done around brushwood bonfires); noun use of past participle (feminine) of bourrer to stuff, fill, verbal derivative of bourre hair, fluff < Late Latin burra wool, coarse fabric

Example Sentences

“That’s your pas de bourrée, your pas de gavotte.”

From New York Times

Jackson’s moonwalk, for example, “reminds me of a ballerina with a brilliant bourrée,” he says.

From Washington Post

In concert, McCartney has been known to locate the song's melody to a much earlier period in the 1950s, when he and George Harrison, wanting to show off their guitar skills, tried their hand at playing Bach's Bourrée in E Minor.

From Salon

“How you interpret it, how you feel the rise and fall of it, that’s up to you,” she told a group of students, ages 12 to 17, referring to the back-side-side footwork of a pas de bourrée, a structured preface to “freestyle snow.”

From New York Times

In a week she learned the jaunty Bourrée from Bach’s Cello Suite No. Three; soon she had developed her own little vibrato.

From Los Angeles Times