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A Strange Case of Dancing Mania


Still Waters

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Six-hundred and forty two years ago today, citizens in the German city of Aachen started to pour out of their houses and into the streets where they began to writhe and whirl uncontrollably. This was the first major outbreak of dancing plague or choreomania and it would spread across Europe in the next several years.

To this day, experts aren't sure what caused the frenzy, which could drive those who danced to exhaustion. The outbreak in Germany was called St. John's dance, but it wasn't the first appearance of the mania or the last, according to The Black Death and The Dancing Mania, originally published in 1888. In the book, Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker imaginatively describes the spectacle of St. John's dance as follows:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/strange-case-dancing-mania-struck-germany-six-centuries-ago-today-180959549/?no-ist

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Stress induced psychosis for sure. There was also that laughing epidemic that went on for 18 months in Tanzania. Both are freaky when you think about it. Can't decide though if I would want to dance or laugh myself to death. 

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That is a creepy thought indeed, just thinking about people dancing non-stop. As for deciding if I would want to dance or laugh myself to death, I'd go for the laughing in all honesty. 

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My dancing would have caused everyone to stop dancing, and then start laughing. A double whammy.

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Oh Carol, don't let him steal your heart away.
I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day.

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Definitely not the stuffy, snooty, stuck-up town from Footloose.

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Sounds like Jazzercise gone wrong.  Wouldn't that be a creepy premise for an episode of your favorite HBO show??

 

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I'd never heard of it in Germany before... I was familiar with the "tarantella" - the "dancing sickness" in Italy at about the same time though...  Weird stuff...

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Let's see... early disco fever?  Riverdance?  Being in Germany maybe a polka-a-thon.  I know, an alien experiment to test the stamina of the human body.  Yeah, that's it! 

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Perhaps a pathogen in a common food source such as regional crops or even a bread mold induced the euphoria. Reminds me of beer ... for generations, helping men to dance.

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Reminds me of a pincher bug i saw a couple days ago. It was walking in circles. I came back 7 hours later and it was still in the same spot walking in circles. Made me think about how scary it would be to malfunction and repeat an action until you die, kinda like this.

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I read about this in The Book of Lists 2 years ago as a child and have been fascinated by it ever since.  Seems that people tried to play music to soothe the dancers but that backfired.  Apparently dousing them with cold water worked on occasion.  That would be pretty scary, though, having these people come dancing through your town as people you know could "join in."

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B)I've heard about this too. Its really weird. I haven't heard anything about this occuring in England ,Scotland,Ireland or Wales at the time.

Eventually maybe they might find out the cause,.However there haven't been more of these thank goodness. I'll have to look and see if any of these  occured in Bavaria or the Black Forest region as I have relatives there to this day. I guess my family was just happy they survived the Black Death.

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Maybe over time the story has been misconstrued. Perhaps it became "dancing" when it was originally self-stimulation.

 

Edited by TripGun
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