The 2024 Legal Defense Fundraiser has ended early due to the Board's decision to settle the suit. Donations will go towards the creation of a legal defense fund. Discussion on the matter can be found at the RationalMedia Foundation noticeboard. Thank you for your generous support.

Information icon.svg Campaigning is open for the RationalWiki 2024 Board of Trustees election.

Dancing mania

From RationalWiki
Revision as of 05:34, 22 August 2019 by The Blade of the Northern Lights (talk | contribs) (And this)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Dancing mania as depicted by Hendrick Hondius (1642)
Tell me about
your mother

Psychology
Icon psychology.svg
For our next session...
Popping into your mind

Dancing mania or choreomania was a form of mass hysteria epidemic in early modern Europe. It basically took the form of thousands of people dancing wildly and uncontrollably through the streets until they died or otherwise collapsed from exhaustion.

Causes

The breakouts of dancing were once thought to have been caused by widespread psychological trauma due to harsh living conditions; one person would start dancing and the rest, seeking a vent for all their troubles, would follow. However, more recently it has been revealed that that these episodes are best explained as screwball religious sects who gained followers as they made pilgrimages throughout Europe during years of turmoil and hardship in order to receive divine favor. Their symptoms are predictable for any large population engaging in prolonged dancing, emotional worship as well as fasting. Their actions have been mistranslated by contemporary scholars evaluating the participants’ behaviors per se, removed from their regional context and meaning. Tarantism was the name of a regional variant of dancing mania that developed into a local tradition in the most southern parts of Italy.[1]

Outside Europe

Episodes of dancing mania are also reported to have happened among the Ainu peopleWikipedia.[2]

Further reading

  • Gotman A., Kelina Choreomania (2008) Columbia University

See also

External links

References