In July 1518 a woman named Frau Troffea began to dance in a Strasbourg street and could not stop. Within weeks dozens of others had joined her. The city's physicians blamed overheated blood, so the council did something extraordinary: it built a wooden stage and hired musicians to keep the dancers moving until the fever passed. Sebastian Brant, the famous poet of The Ship of Fools, was city secretary at the time. The words are imagined.