Dancing in the Streets summary

In regions once devoted to Dionysus or Pan, a new figure emerged: Jesus Christ. To a modern observer, and certainly to Christians of the Reformation era, these figures might seem diametrically opposed. Yet, the rites and festivities of early Christians were reportedly not dissimilar to the ecstatic rites performed by pagans. Scholarly accounts suggest that early Christian services were noisy and charismatic, involving the consumption of wine, listening to music, and dancing. 

Early Christians were often persecuted for their beliefs and practices. This persecution, combined with the belief that an apocalypse was imminent, infused their rituals and celebrations with a heightened sense of nihilistic abandonment. Yet, as the early Christian cult evolved into an official and more respected church institution, some of these ecstatic and collective elements began to fade. Collective dancing began to be frowned upon by church leaders. This shift in attitude was definitively marked in the fourth century when John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, famously declared, “For where there is a dance, there is also the devil.”

Despite the efforts of church authorities, Christianity throughout the Middle Ages was a religion deeply intertwined with dance. Many parish priests, despite orders from higher up to quash these rituals, condoned and even participated in the dances of their congregations. The church’s wariness of dancing stemmed from a belief that it allowed individuals to access experiences of ecstasy and divinity within their own control, bypassing the church’s mediated authority over the divine. This was particularly troubling to the church, which sought to maintain its power by regulating how and when people could connect with spiritual ecstasy.

This suppression of dance led to an unusual and dramatic backlash in the form of dance manias that swept across parts of Europe, particularly in France and Italy. In these episodes, large groups of people – sometimes hundreds – would suddenly and uncontrollably begin dancing, often until they collapsed from exhaustion or injury. Although historians and medical experts have searched for a biological or psychological explanation for these manias, no satisfactory answer has been found. It’s possible that these outbreaks were a collective, contagious impulse to recapture earlier forms of ecstatic dance, a desperate reaction to the church’s strict prohibitions.

In seventeenth-century England, an epidemic of depression swept through society, afflicting prominent figures such as writer John Bunyan, poet John Donne, essayist Samuel Johnson, and politician Oliver Cromwell. Though often referred to as “the English Malady,” melancholy was not confined to England; it was a widespread affliction across Europe. By the nineteenth century, melancholy had become entrenched both as a medical diagnosis and a literary and artistic theme, affecting thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Baudelaire, and Leo Tolstoy. These melancholics were characterized by apathy, a loss of appetite for life, and a withdrawal from society.

Could this decline in the ability to experience pleasure be linked to the systematic repression of dance and other rituals of collective ecstasy by church and state? While this doesn’t explain all aspects of melancholy, the banning of festivals and carnivals could reasonably be considered a contributing factor to the rise of melancholy during this period.

In the contemporary West, we live in what could be described as a post-festive era. While traditional festivals and communal dances have largely faded, mass gatherings and spectacles still play a significant role in public life. The most notorious examples in recent memory are the rallies staged by fascist regimes in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.

American journalist William Shirer, who attended one of Hitler’s rallies, remarked that he began to understand, though not condone, Hitler’s appeal. Shirer observed that Hitler and the Nazis had restored ritual, pageantry, and color to public life, elements that had long been stripped away in modern society. The rallies were meticulously staged in grand spaces adorned with ritualistic decorations, including swastikas and references to a blend of pagan and mythic stories deeply rooted in the Germanic past. These elements encouraged a collective experience where individuals were subsumed into the crowd, losing their capacity for independent thought and critique.

The 1950s and ’60s witnessed an explosion of dance and collective joy that echoed the dance manias of medieval Europe, as rock and roll broke into the mainstream. The United States and the United Kingdom, with their puritanical and industrial legacies, might seem unlikely epicenters for this hysteria. But their histories of fervently suppressing and expunging global practices of ritual dance and collective joy may have made them especially vulnerable to such an eruption.

Rock and roll’s origins lie in African dance, slave songs, and the blues. These deeply rhythmic and emotive forms of expression, rooted in the African diaspora, were co-opted by white performers, most notably Elvis Presley. Elvis, with his sexually suggestive dance moves – movements that also drew from global dance traditions – shocked white Western audiences. What had been a means of survival and resistance among enslaved Africans was transformed into a cultural phenomenon that challenged the conservative norms of mid-twentieth-century America and beyond.