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.

“The most visually stunning quarantine comic I’ve seen is THE DANCING PLAGUE by the British artist Gareth Brookes . . . With fire and needle, Brookes crafts a book the likes of which we’ve never seen before.” – The New York Times