Throwback Thursday and the Dancing Plague
In mid-July of 1518, in Strasbourg France, a strange “dancing plague” gripped the city. It all began when one woman began dancing in the street. She did this for days, twisting and spinning, and soon, other people joined her. By the end of the week, over a hundred people were dancing in the street.
Authorities shrugged and decided to let them be, assuming everyone would dance themselves out eventually. They set a building aside for the dancers and even hired musicians and professional dancers!
But soon people began to die. Those with weak hearts or other medical conditions were the first to go. By August, the authorities were concerned and arranged for the dancers to go to a nearby mountaintop healing shrine.
So what caused this dancing mania? Opinions differ. Some say it was a case of mass hysteria, or a mass psychological illness. Another theory says that it was ergot poisoning from a mold that grows on bread. (This theory has also been suggested as a possible cause for hysteria of the Salem witch trials.)
Whatever the cause, it disappeared as mysteriously as it began.
From the Big Blue Book of Ballet
Secrets:
Dance History Factoid #150:
“In 1518, a mysterious dancing plague occurred in France.”
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Quote
of the Day:
“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that
we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be
mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed
and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
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