superenergetic

— Unburdened by defensiveness, Ravel is able to figure the exotic in ways that are genuinely open to the energies of the other as well as appropriative of them. Those emergies find their culminating expression in the “General Dance” celebrating the union of Daphnis and Chloe. By organizing its dithyrambic whirl with an irregular meter, 5/4, the dance becomes an orgy of “false steps” utterly alien to the European tradition of superenergetic finales.