The Madness of the Dance

From biting nuns to twitching schoolgirls, a professor (Maxine Peake) takes us on a musical journey through mass hysteria.

In the middle ages, there was an outbreak of dancing manias in Europe that lasted hundreds of years. In the 20th century, thousands of Chinese men and some women thought that their genitalia was vanishing, while schoolgirls in Belgium thought that they were being poisoned by a certain brand of fizzy drink. Looking at these various cases, and more, the professor (Maxine Peake) takes us on a musical journey through mass hysteria.

This short from Carol Morley can be seen as a companion piece to her later feature from 2014, The Falling, about an unexplained epidemic at a girls' school.