Multi-pass demo here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOR15e2vXWM

There's a slight gotcha with this animation (in addition to the slightly hokey camera path) in that this was done in two passes. One pass does the sparks with the motion blur and the second one does the plasma "dance" because the motion is not normally sufficiently predictable to produce a blur on film.

Particle bursts produce the sparks and a texture displacement drives the animation- altering the type of noise texture will directly affect how the spark dances and can give a number of effects.