Dancing Manias: About Human Energy

Dance research has hitherto mainly focused on two fields of activity: either scene dance (ballet, modern dance) or social dance (folk dance, court dance, waltz, modern pop dance). There is, however, a third field, which deserves attention-dance crazes, dancing manias. This article takes its starting point from a revivalist dance movement in the twentieth century, turning back to the St. John's and St. Veit's dancing manias of the Middle Ages and to Tarantism in Early Modern Italy. The phenomenology of these dance crazes includes trance, religious revival and eroticism. Dancing manias raise questions about the significance of the concept of energy. Space and time are not sufficient to describe the dynamics of these dances-and this may even be true for scene dance and for trendy social dance. But what is the energy in human movement culture-and what is its material character? The term ”energy” must be discussed in relation to dance, as it has previously been applied to theatre, joint singing and laughter. The energy of dance is, thus, significant not only for the understanding of dance. It also challenges to develop methods for the materialistic phenomenology of body culture more generally. For inter-cultural learning between East and West, the study of human energy is highly important. It breaks down the established dualism between Western rationality (based on the measurement of space and time) and Eastern ”irrational” energeticism.