T H E E N D C O M M U N E

      Choreomania

Have you heard of the so-called “dancing plague” of 1518? It was a case of dancing mania that broke out in Strasbourg (modern day France) in July 1518. Numerous people allegedly danced for days and days without rest, and over the period of about one month, some of the participants of this bizarre behavior died from exhaustion or stroke. The dancing mania, or choreomania, is thought to be an extremely unusual case of mass-psychotic psychogenic illness. The 1518 Strasbourg case is, though, not by any means an isolated event but an example in a longer range of well documented incidents from mainland Europe, with one of the first major outbreaks documented in the German city of Aachen in 1374.

The phenomenon however seems to have devolved through the 16th and 17th centuries and has been faded in obscurity ever since.