Saint Vitus’ Dance, or in Latin chorea sancti viti, is an unassuming name for a neurological disorder involving involuntary spasms and movements resembling a twisted dance in the most extreme cases. A similar but unrelated historical phenomenon was the “dancing plague” that afflicted towns in the medieval Holy Roman Empire. Those facts all sprang to mind after writing the first few measures of a piece I had tentatively titled “Angle Dance” for its disjointed, jerky movements and odd intervals. It was the synthesis of this musical idea with the aforementioned morbid trivia that guided this piece’s creation.

Ring Dance of the Saint is a literal translation of the Latin term for the Saint Vitus’ Dance, a choice I thought would obscure the character of the piece. “How amusing”, I thought, “would it be for someone to read the title and expect something saintly?” The afflicted dancer oscillates between moments of frenzied movement and exhaustion, leading to an even more intense bout of dancing. The musical content takes inspiration from both duple European folk dances like the bouree and the four-on-the-floor pulse of modern electronic dance music.