Is dancing, like laughter, peculiar to human beings? Countless pictorial records show that dance has been part of oursocial behaviour since prehistoric times, and has gradually evolved over the centuries. After being collective, it beganto include individualised practice; losing its ritual and ceremonial function, it became central to aristocratic or popularrecreations and a means of appealing to the opposite sex. Reflecting the artistic display of war dances or religiousdances and events relating to seasonal or corporate celebrations, musicians have since times immemorial providedrhythms to inspire movement. Dances and their music exist in many, many forms. For example, the sarabande camefrom Spain to France and England in the early seventeenth century. In those countries a stately version, in slow tripletime, was preferred to the lively Spanish original. The sarabande became a standard movement of the dance suite,as exemplified on this recording by the fourth movement of George Frideric Handel's Suite in D minor (HWV 437) forsolo harpsichord (c. 1730), which achieved popularity in modern times when Stanley Kubrick used an orchestratedversion for his film Barry Lyndon (1975); it has also been borrowed more recently by Michael Winterbottom (A Cockand Bull Story, 2006) and Brian de Palma (Redacted, 2007). An other example is the intense and bewitching Danzaritual del fuego ('Ritual Fire Dance') of 1914 is the centrepiece of Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo ('Love theMagician'), which had several versions, finally becoming a ballet, first performed in Madrid in 1915. Falla himselfmade the piano transcription. In the ballet, a young Andalusian Gypsy girl, Candela is haunted by the ghost of aformer lover. She performs this dance, with all the Gypsies gathered around the fire. It causes the ghost to appear,with whom she dances, and as they whirl faster and faster, the ghost is drawn into the fire and vanishes forever.Laure Favre-Kahn leads us to follow her into the bubbling and scrolls exhilarating melodic Brahms HungarianDances, Chopin Mazurkas or Traditional Dances by Bartok.