Today, I am thankful for who demonstrate their passion for dance.
Growing up as a first-generation American and the son of Greek immigrants, I greatly appreciated all the finer aspects of my Hellenistic culture, My adoration of Greek history, philosophy, and cuisine is immense; however, what resonates most with me is my Greek heritage and culture, which was often on display at the Greek Festival I attended as a child in Jacksonville, Florida At these annual festivals and other similar venues, I learned, imitated, and cherished Greek dancing, a tradition as old as the Greek city-states from 5th Century BC. Greeks love to dance, even in the most stressful of times, as we learned from Anthony Quinn’s performance of the sirtaki (more commonly known as the Drunken Sailor’s Dance) in the 1964 movie Zorba the Greek. Although certain traditional Greek dances are recognized and performed across all parts of the southern European country, each region of Greece has also created its own flow, style, and choreography. So much so that one estimates that there are nearly 10,000 traditional Greek dances that still exist to this day. Not a single Greek Easter, wedding, or town festival will conclude without some display of communal Greek dancing. It’s in the DNA of Greeks, passed down from the generation of Plato and Aristotle to the modern-day inhabitants of the small Mediterranean peninsula.
But, it’s not just the Greeks. As humans, the art of dance is a phenomenon that unites us all. For thousands of years, every living society on this Earth has perfected its own predefined repertoire of sequenced movements. Some are slow, methodical, and deliberate, while others are brisk, energetic, and chaotic. So, it should come as no real surprise that the dance craze has made its way into the video gaming world. Since its initial inception by Ubisoft in 2009, the ever popular video game Just Dance is now in its eleventh consecutive year of releases. The latest version Just Dance 2020 includes everything from contemporary hits from Ariana Grande to an iconic rendition of Monty Python classics.
Yes, sometimes a melody with an awesome rhythm is sufficient to move humanity to dance.
But, then, there are those rare occasions where a dance spontaneously materializes without a clear explanation. No, I’m not referring to some ‘flash mob’ performance at Penn’s Station in NYC, The Mall of America, or your Cousin Suzie’s wedding. Instead, I’m referring to certain incidents of unclear origin or etiology that took place in the Middle Ages. On this day (June 24) in 1374, the first major phenomenon of dancing mania commenced in the small German town of Aachen. Before anyone realized, similar occurrences would serpentine up and down the Rhine and Meuse Rivers to the towns of Liege and Cologne, and even to villages in modern-day Belgium, Italy, and The Netherlands. Thousands of local peasants and townsfolk of all ages would join in, hardly pausing to partake in any other activity. These commoners would dance, despite evident facial grimacing, pronounced pain, and uncontrollable stress, often not stopping until some would drop dead from exhaustion, a stroke, or some cardiac event. Similar spontaneous dance outbreaks would occur in 1375, 1381, 1428, and 1518. Known as St. John’s Dance, many commoners in the Middle Ages argued that this dancing plague was caused by a religious curse cast upon them by some irate saint.
So, what was the cause of this ‘choreomania’?
Frankly, to this day, no one really knows. A logical explanation might include some contagious infectious malady, such as an infection from Group A streptococcus. A version of Rheumatic Fever, known as Sydenham Chorea, has been associated with involuntary neurological tics, twitches, and limb movements reminiscent of dance. Others theorize that dance victims suffered from ergot poisoning, or St. Anthony’s Fire. When mold grows on wheat, rye, or other crops, the ingestion of these cereals leads to ergotism, a condition associated with hysteria, hallucinations, and even unusual motor behaviors. Other suggest that intermittent plagues of scorpions or tarantula spiders might have incited dancing as a commonly-accepted remedy to rid the poison inflicted by insect bites. Recent scholars suggest social psychogenic illness (mass hysteria) or travelling religious cults might have also instigated the phenomenon.
Modern historians and scientists do not have a universally-accepted explanation for the Middle Ages craze of dancing mania. Maybe, just perhaps, this dance sensation was the Middle Ages equivalent of American Bandstand or Soul Train. Or maybe it was analogous to some sport, like Just Dance. Or maybe it was because it’s in our DNA to love dance. As Lady Gaga so eloquently reminds us in her song, which inspired the enormously popular video game, everything’s ‘gonna be okay’ if we just dance.
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