The Dancing Plague

From “choreomania” to coronavirus: an utterly original graphic novel about a newly urgent subject

Set in 1518, and told from the imagined perspective of Mary, one of the witnesses, The Dancing Plague tells the true story of when hundreds of Strasbourg’s inhabitants were suddenly seized by the strange and unstoppable compulsion to dance. Prone to mystic visions as a child, betrayed in the convent to which she flees, then abused by her loutish husband, Mary endures her life as an oppressed and ultimately scapegoated woman with courage, strength, and inspiring beauty. As difficult to interpret now (as a psychological reaction to social injustice?) as it was then (as a collective demonic possession?), the story of the “Dancing Plague” finds suitably extraordinary expression in the utterly unique mixed-media style Gareth Brookes has devised to tell it.

The pioneering blend of his trademark “pyrographic” technique with sumptuously colorful and literal embroidery perfectly reflects, in a beautiful work of art, the enduring fragility of our human condition from “choreomania” to coronavirus.

About the Author

Gareth Brookes studied printmaking at the Royal College of Art. His graphic novels include A Thousand Coloured Castles (2017) and The Black Project, which was nominated in the Selection Officielle at the 2018 Festival de la Bande Dessinee in Angouleme. His work has appeared in ArtReview, been published by Kus, and was included in the "Comics Unmasked" exhibition at the British Library in 2014.