Anthony Iannaccone's newest orchestral work, Dancing on Vesuvius, is a 12½-minute work for standard-size orchestra that was premiered in November 2008 by the Dearborn (MI)Symphony. The title refers to a metaphor made by Alban Berg in a 1933 letter to his wife, in which Berg compared the carefree decadence of German society while in a growingcrisis to dancing on a volcano. Iannaccone's work draws inspiration from Berg's observation, balancing dancing optimism with a dark underlying turbulence that ultimatelyerupts and engulfs the spirited dance.