The Year the City Couldn’t Stop Dancing

In the summer of 1518, a woman stepped into the street in Strasbourg and began to dance. She didn’t stop. Within days, dozens had joined her—arms flailing, feet blistered, bodies collapsing from exhaustion, then rising again to continue. No music. No joy. Just motion, without rest or reason.

By the end of the month, reports say hundreds were dancing. Some died from it. The city brought in musicians, thinking it might help them sweat the sickness out. It didn’t. The movement continued, strange and relentless, before fading as suddenly as it began.

Theories came later—mass hysteria, ergot poisoning, psychological stress. Each one tries to hold it in place. But the records remain: official notes, physicians’ reports, chroniclers trying to describe what couldn’t be explained. Something took hold that summer. It moved through bodies, not minds. And no one—not then, not now—can say exactly what it was.