Polonaise through the White House receiving line. Sousa wrote it in 1886 at the request of President Chester A. Arthur who died before it was performed. Tchaikovsky's opera "Eugene Onegin", an adaption of Alexander Pushkin's novel in poetry verse, includes a famous polonaise. The polonaise is a Polish dance and is one of the five historic national dances of Poland. The others are the Mazurka (Mazur), Kujawiak, Krakowiak and Oberek, last three being old folk dances. Polonaise originated as a peasant dance known under various names – "chodzony" ("pacer"), "chmielowy" ("hops"), "pieszy" ("walker") or "wielki" ("great"), recorded as early as the
Polonaise include Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Ferdinand Ries, Michał Kleofas Ogiński, Karol Kurpiński, Józef Elsner, Niccolò Paganini, Maria Agata Szymanowska, Franz Schubert, Vincenzo Bellini, Louis Spohr, Carl Maria von Weber, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Henryk Wieniawski, David Popper, Wojciech Kilar, Johann Kaspar Mertz, Moritz Moszkowski, Friedrich Baumfelder, Ferdinando Carulli, Mauro Giuliani, Modest Mussorgsky, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin. Another more recent prolific polonaise composer was the American Edward Alexander MacDowell. John Philip Sousa wrote the "Presidential Polonaise", intended to keep visitors moving briskly