Dance Motifs

The first two I think of often, but the third I was just reminded of recently in connection with the motto "Laeta in chorea magna."

"Seeing you made her think of the children, poor thing -- dear, dear, they're all dead but the youngest.  But banish care, it's no time for it now -- on with the dance, let joy be unconfined is my motto, whether there's any dance to dance, or any joy to unconfine -- you'll be the healthier for it every time -- every time, Washington -- it's my experience, and I've seen a good deal of this world." 

Colonel Sellers in The American Claimant, by Mark Twain.

Labour is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

William Butler Yeats, Among School Children, VIII

"Circling round and round the dancers was a ring of Dwarfs, all dressed in their finest clothes; mostly scarlet with fur-lined hoods and golden tassels and big furry top-boots. As they circled round they were all diligently throwing snowballs. ...  They were throwing them through the dance in such perfect time with the music and with such perfect aim that if all the dancers were in exactly the right places at exactly the right moments, no one would be hit. This is called the Great Snow Dance and it is done every year in Narnia on the first moonlit night when there is snow on the ground. Of course it is a kind of game as well as a dance, because every now and then some dancer will be the least little bit wrong and get a snowball in the face, and then everyone laughs. But a good team of dancers, Dwarfs, and musicians will keep it up for hours without a single hit."

C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair