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Abstract

Feudalism and Christianity were the pillars on which medieval society rested. Certain classes such as the peasants and various layers of the nobility began to crystallize. The Church stood above all of them as the extraterritorial and other worldly power. The Church claimed that people was devoted to ascetic outlines of life. The lower classes had their joys and folk dances just as the upper classes enjoyed their social dances or court dances. All danced in their own world which was divided with classes. Folk dances and social dances reflected different life-style, manners, and tastes between the peasants and the nobility. On the other side, medieval people were told that dancing is the devil's business, and the devil is the one dancer most often visually imagined and recreated. Professional women dancers were strongly condemned through medieval days. A very strange breed developed in the Middle Ages. Funerals, solemn processions, or gay pageants called forth a hysteria of tears or hilarity. It was something like the extreme excitability of the medieval soul, or a kind of a characteristic medieval aberration. There were a lot of wars, starvations, and epidemics through the Middle Ages. Especially, in the fourteenth century the plague killed about half the population of Europe. That the people should have been forced into a dancing mania is understandable. There were innumerable outbreaks of wild, uncontrollable dancing. People were driven by the momentum of their madness and were felled by exhaustion or death. It was known as the Dance of Death(danse macabre), St. Vitus's dance, or Tarantella. One can say that the Dark Ages of dance was in the Middle Ages, and also say that the various features of dances were emerging and outbreaking at the same times.