The Danse Macabre (/dɑːns məˈkɑːb(rə)/; French pronunciation: [dɑ̃s ma.kabʁ]), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory from the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death.

The Danse Macabre consists of the dead, or a personification of death, summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and labourer. It was produced as memento mori, to remind people of the fragility of their lives and the vanity of earthly glory. Its origins are postulated from illustrated sermon texts; the earliest recorded visual scheme (apart from 14th century Triumph of Death paintings) was a now-lost mural at Holy Innocents' Cemetery in Paris dating from 1424 to 1425. Written in 1874 by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre, Op. 40, is a haunting symphonic "poem" for orchestra. It premiered 24 January 1875.

Religion is an important contextual factor around the Dance of Death tradition and its effect on the population, with new eschatology concepts in the fourteenth century being critical for the development of the Dance of Death. Early examples of Dance of Death artwork were present in religious contexts such as murals on Christian church walls. These served to remind people about the inevitability of death and urge moral reflection in order to cope with this reality. In his 1998 study on medieval religious practices, historian Francis Rapp wrote that

Christians were moved by the sight of the Infant Jesus playing on his mother's knee; their hearts were touched by the Pietà; and patron saints reassured them by their presence. But, all the while, the danse macabre urged them not to forget the end of all earthly things.

It is generally agreed upon by scholars that Dance of Death depictions do show realistic dancing based on the quality of gestures seen in artwork and familiarity with steps found in texts. The paintings include body positions that seem to indicate movement, particular gestures, and specific orders and dynamics between the characters, while texts use relevant dance vocabulary. These elements may indicate the presence of past enacted dances and that the depictions were read for a performative function, as hypothesized by Gertsman in her paper “Pleyinge and Peyntynge: Performing the Dance of Death.” This view centers on the incorporation of both visual and theatrical devices in these depictions to create effective artwork. Gertsman writes that

By drawing its inspiration from the sphere of performance, the Dance of Death imagery, along with its text, invites a performative reading, informed by specific structures of the verses, the concept of movement, and the understanding of the body language of the danse macabre's protagonists.

However, there is scarce evidence surrounding a physical dancing performance tradition of the Dance of Death outside of its other depictions. The Danse Macabre was possibly enacted at village pageants and at court masques, with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society", and may have been the origin of costumes worn during Allhallowtide. Regardless, its main influence has been in the form of visual arts such as murals, paintings, and more. The bubonic plague and its devastating effects on the European population were significantly contributing factors to the inspiration and solidification of the Dance of Death tradition in the fourteenth century. In her thesis, The Black Death and its Effect on 14th and 15th Century Art, Anna Louise Des Ormeaux describes the effect of the Black Death on art, mentioning the Danse Macabre as she does so:

Some plague art contains gruesome imagery that was directly influenced by the mortality of the plague or by the medieval fascination with the macabre and awareness of death that were augmented by the plague. Some plague art documents psychosocial responses to the fear that plague aroused in its victims. Other plague art is of a subject that directly responds to people's reliance on religion to give them hope.