dance of death

American  

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 British  

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

---

Etymology

Origin of dance of death

First recorded in 1470–80

Example Sentences

But the real dance of death in Tennessee Williams’s play isn’t between the two of them: It’s between Blanche and her sister, Stella.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025

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.

From New York Times • Apr. 3, 2022

So, in Moonfall, as the moon spirals closer and closer to the Earth in a dance of death and destruction, the lunar gravitational pull on our planet increases, leading to massive floods.

From Slate • Feb. 4, 2022

The dance of death, with this image produced decades after the Black Death had already run its course.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2020

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

From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone