ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 focuses on cases of dancing mania, starting from a revivalist dance movement in twentieth century Germany and then turning to the St. John’s and St. Veit’s dancing manias of the Middle Ages and Tarantism in Early Modern Italy. These dance-crazes included trance, religious revival, and eroticism. Dance research has hitherto mainly focused on two fields of activity: social dance as a regulated and “normal” playful togetherness – and scene dance, which represents creative works of staging and display. Dancing manias, however, make up a third field and raise the deeper question anew: Why do people dance? Central for understanding becomes the energy of dance. Play is a method of practical doing to unfold a Stimmung, voicing, atmosphere. Dance creates a non-tangible, and yet material reality. The phenomenon of energy in human movement culture challenges the materialistic phenomenology of play and game.
