Definition of "tarantella"

The set in which they found themselves was composed of English, and Amy was compelled to walk decorously through a cotillion, feeling all the while as if she could dance the tarantella with relish.

1868–1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, Little Women: […], (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers

"A tarantella, I presume?" blandly suggested the doctor.Miss Mannersley stopped, and rose carelessly from the piano. "It is a Moorish gypsy song of the fifteenth century," she said dryly.

1895, Bret Harte, The Devotion of Enriquez

We learn to understand why our addled minds seize so little with precision, why they are caught up and tossed about in a kind of tarantella by headlines and catch-words, why so often they cannot tell things apart or discern identity in apparent differences.

1922, Walter Lippmann, “chapter v”, in Public Opinion