THE DANCE

1518 STRASBOURG

518, a woman, according to the sources a Madame Troffea, steps out onto the streets of Strasbourg and begins to dance away. Well, a little dance has never hurt anyone. But instead of stopping at some point, she dances and dances and dances. Over time, imitators join in and begin to participate.

It should have been 34 in the first week. At the end of August - because that's how long the strange phenomenon has been going on - there are already a few hundred, mostly female, citizens who move back and forth day and night until they collapse from exhaustion, overtiredness and physical pain. Quite a few die.

As paradoxical as that may sound to today's ears: According to tradition, city leaders first fight the mysterious wave, which later went down in history under the name "Strasbourg Dance Fury of 1518", with dancing. They build their own stage and let the excited crowd, accompanied by music, continue to spin. In vain.

Finally, you make a pilgrimage with the dancing enthusiasts to the shrine of St. Vitus, also called St. Vitus, near the town of Saverne at the foot of the Vosges. Mass is being read there, and after everyone has been given a pair of red shoes to walk through the shrine of the martyr, the specter is as suddenly over as it was. "A creutz (...) Was made on the top and bottom of the shoes and sprinkled with white water in St. Vitus's name, because it helped almost everyone," says the Strasbourg chronicle of the engineer Daniel Specklin.

Ethnology shows that trances, which are described as spiritual, ritual or ecstatic, belong to the religious or therapeutic repertoire in 90 percent of all human cultures. In these ecstatic trances, which are mainly described in connection with concepts of shamanism, very real-looking pictorial hallucinations are deliberately brought about by various spiritual beings using various techniques.

In many religions, trance is viewed as a means of connecting spiritually or magically with God, spirits or other beings or mythical places. Thereby messages or insights are to be obtained in order to solve worldly problems. In some cultures, drugs are used for this. Almost everywhere certain ritual postures are used in conjunction with rhythmic drums or rattles to initiate spiritual trances. The rhythmic stimulation is a mandatory requirement

Huntington's chorea, also called Huntington's disease, HD; older names: Veitstanz, great Veitstanz, Chorea major), is an incurable hereditary disease of the brain, which is characterized by involuntary, uncoordinated movements with flaccid muscle tone is, [1] leads to dementia and leads to death.

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