Choreomania

A Willerby Story

It started at the Donaldson house on a wet October Tuesday when, after a couple of hours scrolling TikTok, Theresa found she could not get a song out of her head.

It lodged there, plaguing her dreams.

The next morning it was louder.

It was there at breakfast and on the bus to school.

It was there in her lessons while the teachers were talking, addling and muddling her when she was called on for an answer.

It was there at break and at lunch, rising above the conversation and cutlery canteen babble and subsuming the words of her friends in a cloud of soaring and plunging notes that evaporated on her tongue like fizzing sherbet when she tried to sing or hum them.

It was there everywhere she went.

When she was asleep, she dreamed it.

She didn’t know how it had started, and she didn’t know how to stop it.

It was everywhere.

It was everything.

The next day she began to move to the music, at first just finger-drumming and toe-tapping, then ball-changing and swaying, then full body rolls and waves.

It drove her mum and dad spare.

“Stop it, Theresa,” her mother snapped, “stand still while we’re talking to you.”

But she couldn’t.

She went to bed dancing.

She slept dancing, and when she woke up, she was still dancing.

She danced down the stairs to breakfast where her parents shouted at her with words she could not hear, and she danced down the street to the bus.

She danced on the bus. She danced into registration where because she could not stop, after first laughter then stern words, she was sent out

She danced into the removal room where she stayed all day, dancing, and then she went to detention where she lasted for only five minutes before being thrown out for dancing.

She danced all the way home to the song (the song, the Song).

Her parents were waiting for her at home. School had already called them.

She could tell by their faces they were angry but that seemed unimportant.

They tried to sit her down to talk reason into her, but she couldn’t stay still, couldn’t stay down and then she was spinning around the kitchen with her eyes closed, oblivious to their reaching hands, twirling on her toes and reaching to the ceiling, knowing nothing but the song, the Song, the SONG.

She would not stop. She could not stop.

That next day Theresa was sent home for dancing again.

The next, two of her friends were.

The day after that it was eight, then twenty.

Choreomania surged through the school like a waterjet from a crack in a dam, and two days later they closed the school because the adults could not keep order.

In Willerby all the village children danced on the street in the October rain as their adults watched despairingly from the pavements.

Then some of them began dancing too, the younger first, then the middle-aged and then even some elders, more and more until there were dancers everywhere, on the street and in the gardens, in the fields and in the graveyard outside the church.

They danced alone.

They danced as couples.

They danced in ever shifting, evolving, fragmenting and reforming groups barely aware of other dancers because it was the Dance (the dance, the Dance) not the dancers which was important.

When there was nobody around, they danced alone.

A week into the epidemic Gary Donaldson, Theresa’s father, got it into his head the only way to end it would be to let the dancers dance it out, like letting a fever run its course.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, he said.

To most, this made as much sense as anything else. It was clear something must be done and at least this was something.

Someone suggested the dancers might be accommodated in its upstairs function room of the Green Man pub where village parties were often held, but Sunny the landlord was having none of it.

“You must be mad,” he said when it was put to him. “You keep that shit outside my pub.”

And so, because the publican in Willerby has always been all powerful in their domain, the dance (the dance The Dance THE DANCE) was kept out of the Green Man, and later that turned out to be a very good thing.

With the pub ruled out of bounds, Gary assembled a working party of the Willerby linesmen and women and supervised the construction of a dance floor on the village green by the rusting Victorian bandstand.

He and his team built a raised wooden platform, then decked it in oiled and polished planks that glowed white under high-powered security lamps mounted at each of its four corners.

They built a stage in the centre of the floor for a band.

After a day and a night, it was all ready, and the first dancers led by Theresa Donaldson were herded gently up the ladders onto it.

Swaying and twirling, eyes cast upwards and lips mouthing words nobody else could hear, they moved like sleepwalkers, unaware of anything around them, willing enough to be gently nudged towards the green where they climbed the rope-ladders and took the floor.

On the stage the village band - The Tumulus Wrecks – played a medley of folksongs on guitars, mandolins and accordions to accompany them, but the music was only ornamental, the dancers moving only to the beat of the song (the song, the Song, the SONG, the SONG) they heard in their heads.

When the Wrecks took their breaks, the dancing continued uninterrupted and eventually - after most of the band them became dancers themselves - they were replaced by speakers playing an algorithmically curated playlist of panpipes and whale-song.

After dancing for days without sleeping or eating, hardly even drinking, Theresa collapsed.

Someone had the wherewithal to call an ambulance.

She was taken to Beckworth hospital where she was sedated, because whenever she wasn’t she danced, making it impossible for the doctors to keep her drip in.

They said without that, she would die, and they couldn’t for the life of them understand why her parents seemed so disinterested and distracted at this terrifying news, why they couldn’t sit still, why they were so quick to leave their daughter and go back home to the dance (the dance the DANCE the DANCE).

Dance Fever infected more and more of the village.

The dancefloor grew so crowded the dancers couldn’t move without bumping into each other. Some stumbled and fell where they lay twitching and flailing like overturned beetles until they were righted and guided back down the ladders so their bruises and bumps could be tended by the those still in their right minds before – uncaring of their injuries - they swayed, shimmied and twirled away.

David and Maude called a meeting in the Green Man for the last handful who didn’t hear the song (the song the Song the SONG the SONG the SONG!) and there, over a tense and frightened hour, it was agreed this was not something that would run its course on its own and that it must be stopped before it spread beyond the village to places that had long-forgotten the nature of such things and had even less hope of stopping them.

“It started here,” said David. “We have to stop it here.”

He left to get books from his cottage. When he returned, an hour later and carrying his briefcase, he was wild-eyed and breathing heavily.

“We shouldn’t go out there again until we have a plan,” he said, “some of the dancers grabbed me and shook me, trying to make me dance. They got quite rough when I wouldn’t. For a bad moment I thought they might not let me by.”

“Well done then, for getting through,” Mauve said. “Let’s see what you got and see what’s to be done.”

David opened his briefcase and began unpacking a stack of books, pamphlets and loose sheets onto the table the group were sitting round.

“I spent a bit of time on the internet.” He raised a hand at Sunny whose absolutist zero online stance was well known. “I know there’s none in here which is a good thing, but it was useful to get a steer on the sort of stuff we need. I think what we have here is a thing they called Dancing Fever back in medieval days. We never had it in Willerby – which surprises me to be honest – but it happened in cities in what’s now Italy, Germany, France and Holland.”

“Never England though?” Mauve asked. “Interesting, wonder why it’s here now.”

“Maybe that’s the internet too,” said Jamal, “making the world smaller.”

Mauve looked at him closely. “That sounds like it might be right. If it is, that’s something we need to keep an eye out for. Things getting in, things getting out. When this is all over, looking into that sounds like it might be a good job for you, the computer side of things.”

She turned to Lisa. “You heard anything, love? This feels like it might be in your line of work.”

Lisa shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Not a note, which does sound odd, because music nobody else can hear does sound like my sort of thing.”

“Not that weird,” said David, “what I’ve got says this music aint human and you only ever hear people. It’s demons or devils or at least what people called demons and devils when this sort of nonsense happened more often.”

He paused to pick up a paper-clipped fan of different sized sizes of paper.

“This thing – whatever it is – jumps from person to person like a virus. The more you encourage the dancers the more you encourage the thing and the faster the dance spreads. All that stage and music nonsense has just fanned the flames. It’s been tried before, and it don’t work. Annoyingly what should be done to stop it is much harder to come by, but there must be a way. If there weren’t it’d still be going in the places where it first started. Hopefully there’ll be something in all this. Get reading everyone.”

And then there was silence as they bent their heads to their task.

Sunny stood arms folded behind the bar watching them and glancing nervous looks at the pub door.

Then he closed it, locking it first with a key and then with an iron bar.

…

“Most of what I’m reading,” said Dan after a while, “seems to suggest it sort of just burns itself out after a while.”

“That’s good!” Caitlin said, brightly, then “Right?”, after she saw Dan’s worried expression.

“Not really,” Dan said. “The thing I’ve got says people always die first. It also says the dancers couldn’t stand the colour red or – and this is weird – pointy shoes.”

“Yep, that’s what I’m getting too,” said Lisa, shaking her head. “That’s what happened in Milan. The people dying before it burnt out. Nothing about red or pointy shoes though.”

“But they didn’t have the medicine we have,” said Cailtin. “Theresa Donaldson – the one this all started with – they’ve got her in hospital.”

“Right you are,” said Mauve, “but last I heard she’s not getting any better.”

Nobody said anything at that.

“There has to be something,” said David, a moment later, looking up at the rest of the group over his half-moon spectacles, “keep reading.”

They all went back to it.

…

“Do any of you believe in God?” Sally said a while later.

Mauve looked up. “I suppose I’ve never ruled out the possibility,” she said. “Living here as long as I have means keeping an open mind. I hedge my bets on it.”

“I’ve got something here about praying,” Sally said. “That ended it in Strasbourg once. Or at least this says that did it. A group of people, priests but others too, went to the church and prayed for an end and it sort of fizzled out.”

“I don’t think that’ll work for us even if it worked for people back then,” said David. “Six hundred years ago or whenever, people believed in God in ways we can’t understand now.” He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “They believed in God and prayer the way we believe in gravity and electricity now. It was just a fact of life to them. I don’t think us just mumbling some words can do much if anything at all. I think for any hope whoever’s doing the praying would have to believe it would work.”

“Any of you got faith like that?” Mauve asked. “I know I aint and I’m in the church more than any of you ever are. Any of you churchier than I’ve realised?”

Everyone – except Jamal – shook their heads.

He held up his hand and cleared his throat. “I’m not churchy, but I am Muslim,” he said. “I pray. I go to mosque.”

Mauve looked at him for a long thoughtful moment.

“If you did pray the dancing would end, would you believe God could do it?”

Jamal thought for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d believe he could if he wanted to and that was the right thing. Is that enough?”

“I honestly have no idea,” she said, “but you might be the best hope we’ve got unless anyone here has found anything else? Let’s let Jamal try. Come on. That’s enough reading. Time for us all to go home, carefully.”

…

It was impossible to ever be sure whether it was Jamal’s prayer that lifted the dance curse (the dance The dance THE DANCE THE DANCE!) from Willerby but it was soon after he did that it began to fade.

He prayed, not for anything specific about the dance or song, but for peace to fall on the village.

And slowly, it did.

Co-incidence seemed implausible, as did the self-conscious, awkward Lord’s Prayers muttered by the others in the privacy of their homes.

Choreomania withdrew first from the old, then the middle aged and lifted from the young and then the children last of all.

It left Willerby in a state of mild embarrassment with those who’d heard and danced unable to look each other in the eye for a few days, until the awkwardness faded and what counted for normal life in the village resumed the beat and rhythm of dog-walking, commuting and garden-fence chats about the weather and sports team results.

Gary and the linesmen removed the dancefloor and stage, agreeing without words never to mention it again.

…

One morning after it was all over, Mauve went to visit Jamal in his house and had coffee with him.

“You really, really believe in God then?” She asked him.

Jamal thought for a long moment. “Yes, I suppose I do,” he said. “I’ve never really questioned it.”

“When you have time,” Mauve said to him, “I’d like to know a bit more about that.”

“Sure,” said Jamal. “I’m happy to talk about it whenever you are.”

“Thank you,” said Mauve. She paused for a moment. “And thank you for stopping it. I believe it was you.”

“Through me, perhaps” said Jamal, “but not me. Let’s talk more about that another time.”

Mauve nodded at him and walked home thinking on the nature of faith and its power.

…

Theresa returned from hospital quiet and dazed.

She said she didn’t remember anything, which was almost true because all she did remember was a great obliterating freedom and unity in song and dance.

She was watched closely, kept away from her phone and computer, kept away from music lessons at school.

For months her parents asked her whether she ever heard the song. She said she never did, which wasn’t even almost true.

While never again as strong, steady and constant like the breathing of a hibernating animal, it was always there, but possible to push down and away unless she were tired or drunk.

Even then although she wanted to, she knew better than to move to it.

Years later – exhausted and hungover at the end of a big weekend when she expected it to call - she realised she hadn’t heard it months, that it had faded away for good.

She was relieved and sad at the same time.

She knew it was not right, did not fit, was dangerous, did not belong.

But it had been such a lovely song.

She missed it. She thought of it often, most when the demands of life screamed at her for decision after decision after decision. Decisions about exams and studying and friends, then boyfriends and husbands and children and balancing it all with work, then aging parents and then her own twilight physical decline into old age.

So much.

Too much.

What an escape it would be, she thought, to hear the song one last final time, to plunge into the dark, to let go, to let it take her to the dance and lead others into releasing all their worries and cares, all of them together, beautifully and inescapably lost in in the song.

In the song.

The Song.

In the dance.

The Dance.

The song. The Song. The SONG. THE SONG! The dance. The Dance. The DANCE. THE DANCE!

…

But I hear the music, I feel the beat

And for a moment, when I’m dancing, I am free

I hear the music, I feel the beat

And for a moment, when I’m dancing, I am free.

Florence and the Machine. Free. From the album Dance Fever.