Despite the late publication date, Janácek had actually done most of the work on the Lachian Dances back in the late 1880s and early 1890s, when he was studying and collecting the folk music of his native Lachian region. This accounts for the more conventionally Romantic approach to the music, setting it apart from such highly individual masterpieces of Janácek's old age as Taras Bulba and the Sinfonietta. Still, these dances bear Janácek's thumbprint; they are more rough-hewn, less exuberant than Dvorák's Slavonic Dances (on which they are modeled), with the melodies blurted out in shorter phrases linking the music as closely to song or Czech speech as to dance.

The first movement, generically titled "Ancient I," combines a ceremonial wedding dance (Starodávny) with a more turbulent "club dance." The use of violins in their highest register and the graceful deployment of woodwinds show the strong influence of Dvorák's ideas about orchestration. The second movement, "Blessing's Dance," is another ceremonial wedding dance (Pozehnany), this one more bumptious with a strong, four-beat rhythmic figure reminiscent of American Indian music. The "Smith Dance" is a tumultuous piece incorporating timpani thuds and sharp chords meant to imitate a blacksmith at work. "Ancient II" is an essentially stately dance, with hints of the sweeping string writing and chugging rhythms that characterize Janácek's mature work. The title "Celadensky" signifies that the swift, gopak-like fifth movement comes from the Lachian villages of Celadná and Dymák. The concluding "Saw Dance" (Pilky), its prancing outer sections surrounding a swirling center, is derived from a dance associated with autumn preparations for the coming winter.

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