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The "Sabre Dance" is a movement in the final act of Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian's ballet Gayane, completed in 1942. It evokes a whirling war dance in an Armenian dance, where the dancers display their skill with sabres. Due to its exceptionally exciting rhythm, the Sabre Dance established a place for itself in common concert practice, leading also to various adaptations in popular music.

It is famously used as the theme to the silent film series Keystone Kops. Plate spinners and other human tricks innovators highly contributed to the movement's popularization in the United States, such as on The Ed Sullivan Show, where it was played while plate spinners performed their act. The "Sabre Dance" was also covered by performers such as jazz musician Woody Herman, vocal trio The Andrews Sisters, rock and roll musician Dave Edmunds with the band Love Sculpture, heavy metal guitarist Wolf Hoffmann, German progressive thrash metal band Mekong Delta, prog rock group Ekseption, Tony Levin, and British punk rock bands The Boys, UK Subs and Toy Dolls. Following their concerts, Cake (band) has this song played over the house speakers while the audience scurries out of the venue.

"Sabre Dance" has traditionally been used by traveling circuses around the world, to musically accompany acrobats, dog acts, etc.

The song reinforces James Cagney's energetic performance in the final act of the 1961 comedy One, Two, Three as he plays a troubled executive making snap decisions to save his career. The tune is frequently featured on the TV series The Simpsons, usually to emphasise fast pace of some situation (e.g. Bye Bye Nerdie) or during an activity containing sort of acrobatic skills (as in Tennis the Menace). The National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres use Sabre Dance as their theme song. It is also the music played while Late Night with Conan O'Brien's recurring character the Masturbating Bear masturbates on stage. The MSNBC TV program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, features the music during Oddball, a nightly news feature of bizarre stories, often referring to the tune as "this strange music". The Coen brothers' 1994 film The Hudsucker Proxy also makes use of the music, in a scene in which a newly-invented hula hoop is picked up and used by a young boy for the first time. The piece was arranged and integrated into the wider score by Carter Burwell, who also made use of Khachaturian's other well-known piece, the adagio from Spartacus, as the movie's main theme. Vegas Vacation, A Simple Wish, Hocus Pocus, Radioland murders, Blues Brothers 2000, and Kung Fu Hustle are just some of the films that use Khachaturian's Sabre Dance today. In Spike Jones's song Pal-Yat-Chee, the singer himself imagines the murder scenes in the opera resembles the Sabre Dance.

mp3 sample of "Sabre Dance"

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