Polonaise

The polonaise is a stately Polish dance in triple meter, recognisable by its characteristic opening figure and cadential flourishes, which travelled from folk practice to the courts of Europe and into the concert hall. Its supreme exponent is *Frédéric Chopin*, whose polonaises, from the childhood G minor piece to the "Polonaise-Fantaisie", turned a ceremonial dance into a vehicle of Polish national feeling. *Michał Kazimierz Ogiński*'s "Farewell to the Homeland" (1794) is its emblematic early example, and the dance also furnished movements and stage scenes for *Carl Maria von Weber*, *Franz Liszt* and *Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky*.