A cowboy fires his gun at the ground near another’s feet and demands: “Dance!” It’s a cliché that might be familiar more thanks to the Bugs Bunny cartoons that parodied it than the old westerns that inspired it. In the realm of folktales, however, being forced to dance is more likely to be the result of a magic spell than the threat of gunplay.

Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale The Red Shoes – the subject of the fictional ballet within Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s movie of the same name – features a young woman who finally dons a particular pair of shiny red shoes only to find that she can’t take them off. Worse, they won’t stop dancing. She is forced to beg an executioner to sever her feet with his axe; the shoes, with her bloody feet still inside, continue to dance.

Perhaps the most famous example of a ballerina dancing against her will appears in Giselle, as first performed in 1841. It was inspired by an Austrian legend about the Wilis: beautiful spirits of young brides-to-be who were betrayed by their lovers before their wedding days. Denied that perfect opportunity to dance, they now force unlucky young men to dance with them until they die from exhaustion. Giselle’s librettist Théophile Gautier later said that the moment he heard the story, he exclaimed “What a pretty ballet this would make!”

Image: Robert Curran and Kirsty Martin in Giselle. Photography Justin Smith

The ballet of Giselle, however, comes with a twist. When Giselle is deceived by her love, Duke Albrecht, she dances madly until she dies of grief in her mother’s arms. Later, the Duke encounters Giselle again – now a beautiful spirit, ready to dance. Rather than taking predictable revenge, Giselle attempts to protect the Duke from her fellow spirits – but she is forced to dance by the Queen of the Wilis nonetheless. Giselle’s dance isn’t enforced punishment for herself; she’s compelled to dance to provide appropriate punishment for the Duke. She dances with him until dawn drives away the spirits, at which point Giselle disappears and the Duke collapses.

The danger inherent in magically driving mortals to dance comes into contemporary focus with a critically-praised episode of the cult television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Here a demon named Sweet – a well-dressed monster with finger-snapping, Fosse-esque moves – forces the entire town to sing and dance about their every emotion. It almost seems sweet until dancers begin to catch on fire. As Sweet sings by way of explanation:

All these melodies, they go on too long.
 Then that energy starts to come on way too strong.
 All those hearts lay open— that must sting.
 Plus some customers just start combusting.
 That’s the penalty when life is but a song.

Some fates, though, are worse than magic. The original Brothers Grimm version of Snow White has an ending that suits Wild West vengence: the wicked queen is forced to wear red-hot iron clogs and dance herself to an agonising death. It’s no surprise that the bright colours of Walt Disney’s famous retelling didn’t include this nightmarish punishment.