Your Life During the Dancing Plague (1518)

It's July 1518 in Strasbourg. A woman starts dancing in the street and can't stop, and within weeks dozens of your neighbours have joined her. The city's answer? Hire musicians to keep them dancing. You're one of those musicians. This is the Dancing Plague of 1518, seen through the eyes of an ordinary townsperson who was paid to play. Would you have taken the job? Tell us in the comments. Chapters 00:00 The room that won't stop dancing 01:00 Strasbourg, 1518 02:35 The first dancer 03:49 The doctors' cure 04:45 Paid to play 05:43 The ban 06:56 It comes back 07:35 The road to Saverne 08:51 What really happened 10:18 Why did they dance? 11:58 After the dancing Sources & further reading Strasbourg council records of July–August 1518 (Archives de la Ville et de l'Eurométropole de Strasbourg; Archives d'Alsace, Bas-Rhin), as edited by Élisabeth Clementz Cécile Dupeux (ed.), 1518, la fièvre de la danse, Musées de Strasbourg, 2018 John Waller, A Time to Dance, a Time to Die (2008), US title: The Dancing Plague Gregor Rohmann, Tanzwut: Kosmos, Kirche und Mensch (2013) Lynneth J. Miller, "Divine Punishment or Disease?", Dance Research 35(2), 2017 J.F.C. Hecker, The Dancing Mania of the Middle Ages (1832), Project Gutenberg How this video was made: the script is researched and written from the sources above. The main character is fictional; the events, dates and places are real, and where the story relies on later legend, we say so. Visuals are AI-assisted illustrations, narration is AI-voiced. ─────────── Oddwitness puts you inside history's strangest real days, through the eyes of an ordinary person who was there. The main character is a fictional composite based on historical sources. The events, dates and places are real; where history relies on legend, we say so. 🔔 New episode every week. Subscribe:    / @oddwitness   #history #povhistory #oddwitness