In between my semesters of teaching theory at our local community college, I put significant works towards completing a concertante called Ragtime Dances for Marimba and Orchestra. The piece is inspired by the American dance music of the ragtime era, specifically the works promoted by the Castle dance duo. Since my piece is for a community orchestra, it is strongly tonal, diatonic, and tertian in nature. There are areas of the piece which my theory class would be quite comfortable analyzing, and there are areas that make use of a variety of modes and synthetic scales. One element common to each of the five dances is the octatonic scale: