06/24/2022
June 24, 1374 marks the first recorded outbreak of “Dancing Mania” in Aachen (now modern-day Germany). Dancing mania, also known as dance plague, choreomania, St. John’s Dance, tarantism, and St. Vitus’ Dance, was a social phenomenon that occurred in Europe between 14th and 17th centuries. It involved large groups, sometimes thousands of adults and children, dancing erratically to the point of exhaustion, often collapsing and injuring themselves. Music was often played during dancing mania outbreaks as it was believed to relieve the symptoms and remedy the problem, but it may have actually aggravated the outbreaks, inviting more people to join in the erratic dancing.
Dancing mania was not an isolated event, and is well documented. There are numerous theories as to what caused it, but none are conclusive. Religious cults, people dancing to relieve high levels of stress, ergot poisoning, and other explanations have been offered.
Dancing mania has been described as one of the earliest recordings of a “psychic epidemic,” and a psychogenic illness where large groups of people display physical symptoms with no known physical causes physical symptoms.
-
-
-
-
Image 1: A painting of dancing mania by Pieter Brueghel the Younger after drawings by his father.
Image 2: Dancing mania on a pilgrimage to the church at Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, a 1642 engraving by Hendrick Hondius after a drawing by Pieter Brueghel the Elder
-
-
-
-
-