Serpent Dance

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A quaint Morporkian folk-pathway consisting of an indeterminate number of people forming a long snaking line by holding the hips of the person in front, moving forwards in a direction determined by the person at the front of the line, and kicking out their legs alternately to the left and the right in time with the back-beat.

Death participated in such a dance at a birthday party for an un-named Patrician in Mort. His neighbours in the line were Lord Rodley (in front) and the Patrican's small pet swamp dragon (behind), neither of whom was greatly happy with the experience.


Annotation

On Roundworld, Death is known to dance. There is the cultured gavotte (or perhaps a tarantelle) in the film version of Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of the Red Death, where to make up the numbers and terrify the evil Prince Prospero (whose soul He has come to claim), Death re-animates the corpses of those who have died of the Red Death.

There is also the fearful capering of the Danse Macabre in, for example, Saint-Saens' Dance of Death([1]). There is a different dance of Death in the final movements of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, which takes the form of a stately waltz[2].

It is entirely in keeping with Discworld that Death dances the Conga.