So You Think You Can Dance

clipped from en.wikipedia.org Dancing Plague of 1518 The Dancing Plague (or Dancing Epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in July 1518. Numerous people took to dancing for days without rest, and over the period of about one month, most of the people died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.[1] The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg.[1] This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. Most of these people eventually died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.[1] It is not known why these people danced to their deaths, nor is it clear that they were dancing willfully.

Possible Causes...

Mass psychogenic illnes:
Historian John Waller thinks that the dancing epidemic was caused by mass psychogenic illness (MPI), a manifestation of mass hysteria that is often preceded by extreme levels of psychological distress. Waller states that famine had been prevalent in the region for some time, caused by very cold winters, very hot summers, crop frosts, and violent hailstorms.


Ergotism:
Eugene Backman suggests the cause of this epidemic to be ergot, a mold that grows on rye. Ingestion of ergot in bread made from the affected rye could lead to delirium, hallucinations, and seizures, as well as other symptoms. While today this is called ergotism, contemporaneously it was known as "Saint Anthony's fire".


Religious Ecstasy:
Sociologist Robert Bartholomew of James Cook University in Australia contends that the dance was part of a "ecstatic ritual of a heretical sect". This explanation is questioned by Waller, who believes "there is no evidence that the dancers wanted to dance", citing recorded evidence that the dancers showed expressions of "fear and desperation".

Saint Vitus's Dance:
Christian legend says that invoking the wrath of St. Vitus could provoke compulsive dancing(or that dancing before an image of St. Vitus would imbue good health for the following year).However, this explanation does not support how so many cases of chorea could arise simultaneously in the population, nor how so many adults were affected.