Deliverance was a live rendition, choreographed by Michael Clark, of the Great Depression–era dance marathon depicted in the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? In McQueen’s portrayal, the film’s “dance to the death” becomes a poignant metaphor for the experience of working in fashion. Despair and exhaustion—of the Depression, of dance marathons, of designers—palpably accelerate until the performance culminates in a dancer collapsed lifelessly at center stage. Animating danse macabre imagery also seen in Ernst Barlach’s lithograph, this finale resonates with Georg Tappert’s Dance in the Cabaret, which conveys people pursuing temporary pleasures with abandon within the unsettled environment of the Weimar Republic.