In this essay, I discuss the process of rehearsing the chorus of Euripides’ The Bacchae for a production I directed at Trinity University in January and February, 2011. Negotiating the pull between improvisational exploration and choreographic fixity, I led twelve undergraduate chorus members to explore a tension that lies at the root of Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous definition of Greek tragedy as the collision between the Apollonian and Dionysian, between the plastic visual arts like sculpture and the intoxicated impermanence of music.