
Keep on moving: the bizarre dance epidemic of summer 1518 - pepys
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jul/05/bizarre-dance-epidemic-of-summer-1518-strasbourg
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tzahola
Too bad we will probably never know what it really was...

Just like with the celestial phenomena in Nuremberg 1561, and Basel 1566:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_ov...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1566_celestial_phenomenon_ov...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1566_celestial_phenomenon_over_Basel)

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g_bellard
If you understand french, I advice you to listen to this podcast by Franck
Ferrand which explains lot of aspects !

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA7K8gfLQsY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA7K8gfLQsY)

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BrandoElFollito
I like to listen to his podcasts when commuting : he is right at the edge of
pop-history (leaning towards the serious one) and several of the stories were
brilliant. Not sure what will happen now that he left the radio he was on.

Another good pop-historian one is of course Stéphane Bern, though the visuals
of his TV series are more interesting than the strict historical part.

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zeristor
John Waller wrote a book about this 9 years ago which I thought was amazing:

[https://iconbooks.com/ib-title/a-time-to-dance-a-time-to-
die...](https://iconbooks.com/ib-title/a-time-to-dance-a-time-to-die/)

I don't know if anything new has come to light though.

A particular touching thing was that they made red shoes for the dancers, a
known expensive colour, to show how much they valued them, but it didn't stop
the dancing.

The film the Red Shoes was based on HC Anderson's story, which as far as I can
tell has no connection with this dancing epidemic, just that his Dad was a
shoe maker and had some spare red material...

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rusk
I'm surprised that the poignancy of Martin Luther's proclamations [0] the
previous year seem to have been lost in this analysis. It's interesting that
the article suggests that the belief-systems driving this hysteria began to
diminish in the years following. Was this _peak middle-ages_? Had the papacy
driven everybody to breaking point at this stage?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation#Martin_Luther_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation#Martin_Luther_and_the_beginning)

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booleandilemma
It feels like the people from 1518 are trolling us.

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isk517
That or we are seeing some early form of memes.

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sorokod
Wasn't the Tarantella dance belived to alleviate the the effect of a tarantula
bite by sweating the venom out?

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type0
I would have guessed that such thing could have been caused by overconsumption
of Ephedra
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra)

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aogl
This is pretty weird.. who would have thought they're prescribe "more dancing
for cooked minds!"

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kowdermeister
I feel some details might have lost in 500 years :) The council probably liked
the decadence of the happening and they added some fuel. It was probably
unreal to be at a "festival" you never seen before so I can understand.

Just like experiencing a techo party for the first time no one seen before.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWUiLJnEYJI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWUiLJnEYJI)

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jcoffland
A probable explanation is that it was made up to discredit dancing.

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dekhn
See also tarantella

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DrFell
> what used to be called “mass hysteria”.

Now we call it the 'online community'.

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kowdermeister
> Fortunately, the 1518 dance epidemic was the last of its kind in Europe.

No no no... we call them festivals now :)

