dance of death

noun

1. a symbolic dance in which Death, represented as a skeleton, leads people or skeletons to their grave.

2. a representation of this theme in art.

dance of death

noun

1. Also called (French): danse macabre. a pictorial, literary, or musical representation, current esp in the Middle Ages, of a dance in which living people, in order of social precedence, are led off to their graves, by a personification of death

Word History and Origins

Origin of dance of death¹

First recorded in 1470–80

Example Sentences

For the most part, these women indeed meet Émile, their agent of mercy, halfway — a process the director, Paul Vecchiali, depicts as an eerie, enigmatic dance of death and desire.

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“So it’s a dance of life, which is also a dance of death. We like to think of them as separate but they’re not. They’re the same.”

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“It is a dance of death with your opponent,” he says.

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On the dusty plains before the walls of Troy, thousands upon thousands of soldiers take part in the dance of death.

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Where the production gets more specific is in its departures from the libretto: its absence of caricature and villainy, its climactic dance of death instead a scene of stillness and life continuing in agony.

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