Page "Regency dance" Paragraph 9

First imported from France by Lady Jersey in 1815, the Quadrille was a shorter version of the earlier cotillions.

Figures from individual cotillions were assembled into sets of five or six figures, and the changes were left out, producing much shorter dances.

By the late 1810s, it was not uncommon to dance a series of quadrilles during the evening, generally consisting of the same first three figures combined with a variety of different fourth and fifth figures.

Jane Austen's niece Fanny danced quadrilles and in their correspondence Jane mentions that she finds them much inferior to the cotillions of her own youth.