Dance me to the end of love by Leonard Cohen

Title:                           Dance me to the end of love
Lyrics:                        Leonard Cohen
Music:                        Leonard Cohen
Release:                     1984, album Various Positions
Performers:               Leonard Cohen

"Dance Me to the End of Love" is a 1984 song by Leonard Cohen and first recorded by him for his 1984 album Various Positions. The song follows a typical Greek "Hasapiko" dance path, most probably inspired by Cohen's long lasting affiliation to the Greek island of Hydra. It has since been recorded by various artists, and has been described as "trembling on the brink of becoming a standard".
Although structured as a love song, "Dance Me to the End Of Love" was in fact inspired by the Holocaust. In an interview, Cohen said of the song:
“it's curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that's why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt. So, that music, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin," meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song — it’s not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.”

Lyrics

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Oh, let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
​
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Scottish painter Jack Vettriano, who is perhaps mostly famous for his painting: The singing Butler, also painted Dance me to the end of love, that was inspired by this song.

Dance to the end of Love, 1998, Jack Vettriano

'I love playing around with lyrics when I’m thinking of titles. Dance Me To The End Of Love is a Leonard Cohen song. When I first did the painting I had the couples dancing across the canvas from left to right, but then I changed it and had them dancing away from each other into the distance'

​- Jack  Vettriano

The Singing Butler, 1992, by Jack Vettriano

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