fandango

A form of lively flamenco music and dance that has many regional variations (e.g. fandango de Huelva), some of which have their own names (e.g. malagueña, granadina).

The soldiers were oftener gambling and dancing beneath the walls than keeping watch upon the battlements, and nothing was heard from morning till night but the noisy contests of cards and dice, mingled with the sound of the bolero or fandango, the drowsy strumming of the guitar, and the rattling of the castanets, while often the whole was interrupted by the loud brawl and fierce and bloody contest.

[…] sweet to us it is to behold delightful dancing, be it the stately splendour of the Pavane which progresseth as large clouds at sun-down that pass by in splendour; or the graceful Allemande; or the Fandango, which goeth by degrees from languorous beauty to the swiftness and passion of Bacchanals dancing on the high lawns under a summer moon that hangeth in the pine trees; or the joyous maze of the Galliard; or the Gigue, dear to the Foliots.

A gathering for dancing; a ball.

When Auguste Fretéllière and the painter Theodore Gentilz attended a fandango in the 1840s, the festivities took place near Military Plaza.

Fortunately, in the nineteenth century Iosé Maria Esteva wrote a poetic and detailed account of 'La guanabana' being danced by a group of women at a fandango.

An unknown entity or contraption.

What’s that fandango you’re using?

She had on a new silk dress, flounced clear up to her knees, and some kind of a fandango of a thing on her shoulders.

A confusion; a chaotic collection.

To my infinite amusement it did take, and I had the satisfaction of seeing it on the boards and also hearing the audience roar with laughter; in fact, I laughed myself, not at my own jokes, but at the people who could be amused at such a fandango of nonsense.

A splotch of colour on a wall charmed his eye, a fandango of shadows, the nonchalant pose of some labourer.

An extravaganza; an instance of lavish and fantastical events or behavior.

I am preparing to set out in a fortnight, or little more, and jogging on comfortably through Bavaria, Suabia, and France (with a fandango of eight days at Paris), I shall get to Calais in the first week of May.

Venice whirled towards her fall, in the reign of the 120th Doge, in a fandango of high living and enjoyment, until at last Napoleon, brusquely deposing her ineffective Government, ended the Republic and handed the Serenissima contemptuously to the Austrians.

To dance the fandango.

To dance, particularly with a lot of energy.