Stravinsky's Danses concertantes (1942) is scored for chamber orchestra, including timpani. The work is cast in five movements, and although commissioned as a concert piece, Stravinsky configured it as a ballet. Stravinsky had no particular scenario or subject in mind for this work, but its structure is such that it was probably constructed with the hope or expectation that is would be choreographed one day—an ironic circumstance, given that many of the composer's ballets were explicitly composed in a manner that facilitated their adaptation into concert works.

The music of Danses concertantes is characterized by syncopations, a blurred sense of downbeat, keys arranged in ascending semitones, and a certain independence in the musical lines—that is, the individual parts often sound soloistic. The Danses concertantes appeared in the years following the ballet The Card Game (1936) and the Symphony in C (1940), and musicologists have noted strong similarities between those two works and the Danses.

The work was indeed eventually choreographed, notably in 1944, 1955, and 1959. As with many of Stravinsky's ballets, the rhythmic complexity of the music makes great demands on both choreographers and dancers.

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