death dance
Mortality's final performance
A death dance is a frantic or desperate final struggle, often preceding inevitable failure or destruction.
The term evokes the image of erratic movements before collapse: The company's layoffs and restructuring were just a death dance before bankruptcy.
In nature, it describes the convulsive movements of dying creatures.
The phrase can also refer to a dangerous confrontation where participants risk mutual destruction: The two powers engaged in a nuclear death dance throughout the Cold War.
- macabreDisturbing, death-obsessed
- danse macabreAllegorical mortality theme
- skeletonInternal supportive framework
- waltzDance in three-quarter time
- mortalityState of eventual death
requiem · funeral · plague · medieval · bones · morbid · ritual · tango · final · ghostly · grave · haunting · skull · specter · twilight · memento mori · dirge · shadow
death dancecelebration of life
Upbeat funeral alternative
wedding dance · birth celebration · victory dance · birth ritual · maypole dance
death danceecstatic dance
Freeform movement practice inducing bliss
jubilee · revelry · carnival · happy dance · bacchanal
death, dance, deaths, dead, deadly, deathly, deaden, deadened, deadening