J’ai tant dansé

Commissioned and premiered by Les Chantamis – director, Marie-Josée Ouimet – in Edmonton, Alberta.

This was originally written for SATB. The SSAA version was created in 2024 for the Unisong Festival in Ottawa.

When thinking about how I would tell this fun story in my arrangement of this song, I imagine three characters: a young girl, a cobbler, and, a group of admirers (not really in the original song but added in my arrangement) interested in winning the attention of the young girl. I picture a French-Canadian soirée – a social dance scene where this young girl (the bergère referred to in the refrain) is dancing up a storm to her favourite jam on the dance floor, which might very well be the dining room floor of a French-Canadian household, the dining table having been cleared away to make room for partying. This girl has several admirers eyeing her and waiting to make their move. She’s either uninterested or unaware of this and is just enjoying getting her party on, and so my arrangement starts out just introducing the song and the dance and everybody is having a great time.

We learn at the end of the first verse that this girl ends up dancing so hard, her shoe falls apart! This plot twist continues in verse two, which I’ve set in a ‘wonky asymmetrical time signature’ to reflect the feeling of her hobbling around with a busted shoe. The admirers (tenors and basses) take this as an opportunity to demonstrate some heroic chivalry and offer to go and find her the cobbler (le cordonnier).

At this point, we learn that the cobbler is at the party too, “in the shade,” which we’ll assume implies some kind of double-entendre, and I encourage choirs to play into this ‘wink-wink’ moment. Unfortunately for the admirers, it seems the chivalry has backfired, as the cobbler is quite an appealing fellow, and the young lady becomes smitten and flirts with him instead. The music reflects this with a capricious waltz-like feeling as this young lady tries to catch the attention of the fetching cobbler with her beautiful singing and sashaying around, while the piano accompaniment quotes the famous seductive aria, L’amour est un oiseau rebelle, from Bizet’s opera, Carmen. Again you can play this up; it’s not meant to be particularly subtle!

Here in my interpretation, the admirers I’ve ‘added to the story’ who were eyeing her up on the dance floor realize they’re losing their chance, and a bit of competition ensues amongst these potential suitors who want to win her, so I’ve musically portrayed the actions of one admirer who immediately jumps in with some ‘fancy dancing’ to disrupt what’s going on and pull her attention over to him! This happens musically as the sudden interjection of the well-known French song, Ah! si mon moine voulait danser, and, having caught her attention with this sudden change of song, they continue back with the original song of J’ai tant dansé – the admirer has succeeded in getting her attention! Or has he? The young lady joins in a bit, but is half-hearted about it, partly joining in but partly contributing statements of “Beau cordonnier” as she’s really still just interested in the cobbler. The admirers (tenors and basses) must keep up their efforts to distract her, trying to outdo one another with their interruptions of ‘fancy dancing,’ musically represented by incorporating at different points three different traditional French tunes about dancing: Ah! Si mon moine voulait danser, Sur le pont d’Avignon, and Vive la Canadienne.

She continues her flirting with the cobbler, saying “Je te donn’rai un sou marqué” – she’ll give him some money here for his services. This is another “wink-wink” moment here you can highlight for the audience – she’ll give him some money ONLY and is keeping things professional here. At this point I’ve asked for a solo voice to come in as the voice of the cobbler taking the flirting up a notch by saying, “oh I have plenty of money, thanks” (another wink-wink), at which point, another frenzy of fancy dancing begins amongst the admirers! At letter H, the young lady (sopranos and altos) mocks the cobbler’s reply, teasing him whilst the tenors and basses accompany with a disappointed “ah” but then the tenors and basses take things up a notch with the suggestion that they go and find a priest! The young lady reacts with a surprised “ah!” which then continues in a “whoa, pump the breaks” fashion as sopranos and altos sing the original tune at half the speed while tenors and basses carry on with their impressive “dance moves.”

At letter J, the cobbler proposes that they marry in a month, and you can hear the wedding march at this point in the piece. This incites some level of panic from the young lady, and we hear a bit of emotional chaos happening, first as a bit of a chase in a canon of the retrain J’ai tant dansé, and then arriving at maximum fanciness as the music simultaneously quotes Ah! Si mon moine voulait danser, Vive la Canadienne, and, Sur le pont d’Avignon. At this point, the sopranos are quoting Vive la Canadienne as the young girl mainly just celebrates herself here!

Eventually, they agree wholeheartedly that perhaps it’s best to wait a year before getting married, and I imagine it, the party continues and a good time is had by all!

Performance note: These kinds of French-Canadian parties typically occurred on Sundays when people were forbidden (by the church) from working and/or doing chores, and many people would come to these parties with instruments to play. These usually included spoons, piano, violin, harmonica, guitar, and other folk-style instruments, and lots of people knew how to join in the music making and play by ear. I absolutely encourage choirs who wish to do so to add in instruments in some or all of this arrangement as they see fit!