"A History of Collective Joy" is the subtitle to a new book in the US, dealing with the subject of popular dance down the ages. But as its main title - Dancing in the Streets - hints, a big theme of the study is the challenge that such joy can present to those in authority. As author Barbara Ehrenreich suggests, rulers have often seen a thin line between dance-induced mass ecstasy and insurrection, writes Frank McNally
From the Roman crack-down on Dionysian worship in 186BC, public dancing has a long history of worrying people in power. And it was not only the secular leaders who worried. After initially tolerating dance in their rituals, the early Christians soon cracked down too. "Where there is dance, there is also the devil," warned a 4th-century bishop - though it took 1,000 years for the practice to be banned from churches.
Ehrenreich speculates that the clerical prohibition may in turn have set off the series of dancing "manias" that swept mainland Europe from the 14th century onwards. In modern times, pop groups sing about people taking to the streets, gripped by the latest dance sensation (typically said to be "spreading across the nation"). But in the middle ages, this really did happen, and it didn't even require music.
Thousands just took to the streets of Germany, France, and Italy, dancing themselves to exhaustion in a quasi-religious fervour and mocking the priests who tried to stop them. At the time, the behaviour was attributed to poisoning from insect bites or bad food. The fact that the mania's onset coincided with the Black Death suggested alternative, psychological explanations.
Calvinism eventually did for dancing in much of Northern Europe, until all that was left in polite society was the indoor ballroom dance, bedevilled only - as the author says - "with anxiety over a possible misstep". Elsewhere, public dancing was increasingly limited to licensed halls. The streets were finally safe, says Ehrenreich, but at the cost of the collective happiness to which dancing once contributed.
I'm fairly sure the devil was not in attendance at my daughter's feis at the weekend. In the unlikely event that he has time to monitor Irish dancing these days, he must be kept busy following Michael Flatley's leather-skirt-and-oiled-chest version on its world tours. Yet even at the most humble junior feiseanna, you cannot escape the politico-religious aspect of dance completely.
Irish dancing in some ways mirrors the history of the nation itself. Ancient in origin, it experienced a revival in the early 20th century and owes its modern identity to the events of Easter 1931, when the proclamation - sorry, the constitution - of the Commission of Irish Dancing was published. The commission was up and running (competitions) a year later, and has never looked back.
In a break with tradition, the first item on the new body's agenda was not the split. It took nearly 40 years for the split to happen, in fact. But when it did, in 1969, it mirrored another schism of that era: as the provisional Comhdháil na Muinteoirí Rince Gaelacha broke away from the official coimisiún and started holding its own events.
In fairness, neither organisation had a Marxist leadership and both were equally committed to the armed struggle. The armed struggle, in Irish dancing terms, is of course the phenomenon whereby performers are required to keep their upper limbs held rigidly by their sides at all times, while their lower limbs flail freely. The two wings of the movement have remained fiercely disciplined on this point ever since, even after the success of Riverdance - an armed uprising, if ever there was one - in 1994.
Not having had much in the way of streets, Ireland traditionally danced at the crossroads. But Irish dancing has received plenty of attention from the authorities - especially the ecclesiastical ones - down the years. The stiff-armed, stiff-hipped style of modern times is generally attributed to the former influence of the church. And any risk of mass hysteria breaking among Irish dancers is further reduced by the constant stress of competition.
Even feiseanna can be subject to manias, however. At the bigger events, I've noticed that competitors - especially the female ones, who form the vast majority - become afflicted by some kind of mass hypnosis. Symptoms include wearing curly-haired wigs, fake tans, and embroidered dresses that cost their parents a fortune. It's as if some evil scientist has crossed Shirley Temple with Maureen O'Hara and replicated the result hundreds of times over.
But ours was just a local feis (in a Comhdháil-controlled area), where dress codes were relaxed and so was the prize-giving.
Everybody wins at these events, a fact that does not diminish the excitement for competitors, who leave the hall trailing clouds of glory and bags full of gilt-plastic trophies. My daughter counted hers repeatedly on the way home, pausing only to sigh with pleasure, or to wonder if I might buy her a press to keep them in. I think that she may have been experiencing collective joy - to coin a phrase - all on her own.