In the Middle Ages, a heterogeneous and debated series of conditions made dancing morally licit.  The late medieval treatises recommended some precepts to ensure that coreutic entertainment did not involve risks for the soul's salvation: dancing must not interfere with sacred spaces and time, must be inspired by honest intentions, and practised with modesty and moderation, while adhering to a rigorous bodily discipline.

An ancient legend, known as the "Kölbigk dancers", warns against the pernicious effects of transgressing these rules. The first known records of the story, reported in three different versions, date back to the beginning of the twelfth century (or even the end of the eleventh). William of Malmesbury includes the first one in the Gesta Regum (1114 - 1123), reporting the episode in the epistolary form through the narrating voice of a dancer called Otberto, who tells the following story. 

On Christmas Eve in the year 1012, in a Saxon village, Otberto meets with fifteen boys and three girls to dance and sing in a cemetery near a church. The young people's singing disrupts the liturgical celebration taking place inside the sacred building. As a result, the priest orders them to be silent. As his order is ignored, the priest casts a curse on the young people, forcing them to dance and sing non-stop for a whole year. At the end of this period, some dancers die, while the survivors suffer for life from an inextinguishable tremor in their limbs.

Several variants of this anecdote were reported in the following century in famous works, including the Speculum Historiale by Vincent de Beauvais (mid-13th century). In the fourteenth century, the cautionary narration appears in numerous collections of exempla, such as the Tombel de Chartrose compiled in the third decade of the century, the Alphabetum Narrationum by Arnold de Liège (from the first half of the fourteenth century), and the Scala Coeli by Jean Gobi (1323-1330).  The same theme also appears in chronicles: in the Polychronicon and its version in Vulgar of 1387. The legend underwent numerous changes over the centuries. Starting from the text revival by Vincent de Beauvais, the more complex aspects of the story were progressively eliminated to simplify the plot and make it suitable for preaching. In fact, in the fourteenth century, the episode was included in numerous collections of exempla, but with the exclusion of many of the themes close to Gregorianism that had enriched its first versions. Perhaps this process was also due to the now consolidated application of the pastoral principles sanctioned in 1215.

The theme of the expansion of the dance time appears, albeit in a different form, also in literary testimonies dating back to the thirteenth century. The prose version of Lancelot, written between 1215 and 1235, tells of how Lancelot entered the Lost Forest and joined a cheerful dancing group, remaining a prisoner of a spell aimed at preventing lovers from leaving the carole. A similar episode appears in Raoul de Houdenc's 13th century Arthurian novel Meraugis de Portlesguez.. Meraugis, chasing an enemy, finds himself in an enchanted castle, inside which a spell forces every passing knight to stop and dance with a group of girls. As a result of the incantation, the paladin will remain a prisoner of the carole until the arrival of a new victim destined to replace him. In both texts, the passing of the suspended time spent by the knights dancing is conveyed through the interpolated narrative tool, as the episode is interrupted at the hero's entrance into the carole, to be resumed only after several verses or chapters. In this way, the suspended time of the dance is transformed into the actual waiting time of the reader.

The theme of the expansion of the dance also appears, in a version close to the legend of the cursed dancers, in the Huon d'Auvergne - late Franco-Italian chanson de geste whose first attested codex dates back to 1341 - and in its version in Tuscan prose by Andrea Barberino, written between the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century. Ugone, meeting a group of girls who dance incessantly (twelve in the Huon d'Auvergne, reduced to three in the Italian version), invites them to suspend the activity. However, their movement is unstoppable: it is a punishment for having preferred dancing to the holy communion.

The following are some of the common elements of the enchanted and cursed caroles described in the texts: 

1.   The dancers dance in a circle, which is a choreographic structure suitable for representing delayed and recurring temporal dimensions. 

2.   Dancing is accompanied by singing, which is characterised by the repetition of a musical refrain. The content of the refrain, when specified, plays a fundamental role in the symbolic synthesis of the story, as it recalls the sin committed.

3.   The dancers' loss of control is associated with insanity. 

According to the text, the miniaturistic presentations of the codices containing the Lancelot mainly uses the choreographic structure of the closed circular chain to represent the carole. In several manuscripts, the carole acts as a "visual marker", emphasising the narrative technique of interpolation, known as "entrelacement" ("interlacing of separate narrative threads").

The coreutic "madness" that persistently appears in the writings is not expressed in images. Visually, the exuberance of the dance does not transcend the limits of a modest body discipline, maintaining the typical iconographic elements of courtly dance. Finally, the inclusion of the episode in the illuminated manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail cycle, which gained extraordinary popularity, is responsible for the widespread diffusion of the iconographic tradition of the carole of the Lost Forest, as compared to the coreutic representations described in other sources relating to enchanted and cursed dances.

Bibliography

A.A. Montanari, Tempo sospeso e trasgressione coreutica nelle fonti bassomedievali, «Reti medievali» XXI\2 (2020), pp. 1-38

A. Belgrano, Danses profanes et lieux sacrés au Moyen Âge central - Les danses dans les cimetières entre contrôle social et négociations, in «European Drama and Performance Studies», 1 (2017), 8, pp. 25-41 

E. Muzzolon, La carole magique. Résurgence d’un motif du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance, in Seminari di storia della lettura e ricezione, tra Italia e Francia, nel Cinquecento, Padova, Cleup, 2018, pp. 9-45