In 1935, Miller and her husband bought five-thousand acres of land in Española, near Sante Fe, and built a ranch for themselves to live. This land adjoined the San Ildefonso Reservation, and set in motion an intimate,

lifelong relationship between Miller and the indigenous people of Tewa Pueblo. The cultural tradition, crafts, and religious beliefs of the Tewa inspired her, and Miller witnessed many performances and rituals that were closed to visitors outside of the Pueblo community.

Miller represented a number of the Tewa ceremonial dances through her painting. Examples of these include Miller's illustration of the Kachina night dance, the deer dance, as well as the eagle dance, which was displayed at the artist's 1945 exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Levy's gallery was at the time the premiere showcase for Surrealist painting in America, with other exhibitors including Salvador Dalí, Leonor Fini, and Frida Kahlo.

Dance was an important motif of Miller's art, and this present work is one of the most ambitious that the artist undertook on the subject. The forms of the dancers are highly reduced - verging on non-figuration - and their mingling, elongated bodies extend beyond the canvas. The suggestion of a breast in the right-hand figure leads one to believe that the dancers are female, but this is ambiguous. It is unclear too whether the dance being performed is of a ceremonial nature, but the frenzied, gestural movements of the dancers are captured with Miller's confidence of line and striking application of colour. The critic for The Art Digest, Margaret Breuning, remarked upon Miller's use of colour. She remarked that it was perhaps the most striking aspect of Miller's work, "accentuating the linear patterns and giving congruity to designs with her wide chromatic range."