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Keep on moving: the bizarre dance epidemic of summer 1518

90 points| pepys | 7 years ago |theguardian.com | reply

16 comments

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[+] g_bellard|7 years ago|reply
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

[+] BrandoElFollito|7 years ago|reply
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.

[+] zeristor|7 years ago|reply
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...

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...

[+] rusk|7 years ago|reply
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_...

[+] booleandilemma|7 years ago|reply
It feels like the people from 1518 are trolling us.
[+] isk517|7 years ago|reply
That or we are seeing some early form of memes.
[+] sorokod|7 years ago|reply
Wasn't the Tarantella dance belived to alleviate the the effect of a tarantula bite by sweating the venom out?
[+] aogl|7 years ago|reply
This is pretty weird.. who would have thought they're prescribe "more dancing for cooked minds!"
[+] kowdermeister|7 years ago|reply
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

[+] rejectedalot|7 years ago|reply
I learned recently that when elephants are very hot, they need to wildly flap their ears to cool their blood (as the blood flows from the body to the brain by way of the ears.) Maybe they hypothesized a similar effect?
[+] jcoffland|7 years ago|reply
A probable explanation is that it was made up to discredit dancing.
[+] dekhn|7 years ago|reply
See also tarantella
[+] DrFell|7 years ago|reply
> what used to be called “mass hysteria”.

Now we call it the 'online community'.

[+] kowdermeister|7 years ago|reply
> Fortunately, the 1518 dance epidemic was the last of its kind in Europe.

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