Dancing In The Streets

Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. She discovers that the same elements come up in every human culture throughout history: a love of masking, carnival, music-making and dance. Although sixteenth-century Europeans began to view mass festivities as foreign and savage, Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practices of Christianity as a danced religion. Exhilarating in its scholarly range, humane, witty and impassioned, Dancing in the Streets will generate debate and soul searching.

Witty and quizzical ... Her lightness of touch is commendable -- Simon Callow Guardian
Dancing in the Streets is a genuine triumph of popular critical scholarship - the punchy elegance of her prose makes this an essential purchase Independent
A sparkling history of mass festivity, from Dionysian cults through ecstatic slave rites to rock'n'roll, it also, in sober vein, records its suppression and containment by disquieted elites and concludes with meditations on some deep-seated troubles of our own age -- Gareth Dale Times Higher Education Supplement

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of fourteen books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. She lives in New York State.

This book explores the common characteristics of the communal celebrations displayed by cultures from all parts of the world and throughout history. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. She discovers that the same elements come up in every human culture throughout history: a love of masking, carnival, music-making and dance. Although sixteenth-century Europeans began to view mass festivities as foreign and savage, Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practices of Christianity as a danced religion. Exhilarating in its scholarly range, humane, witty and impassioned, Dancing in the Streets will generate debate and soul searching.

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