An egg dance is a traditional Easter

Easter

Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...

 game

Game

A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...

 in which eggs

Egg (food)

Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...

 are laid on the ground or floor and the goal is to dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

 among them damaging as few as possible. The egg was a symbol of the rebirth of the earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 in Pagan

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

 celebrations of spring and was adopted by early Christians as a symbol of the rebirth of man at Easter.

Another form of egg dancing was a springtime game depicted at the painting of Pieter Aertsen

Pieter Aertsen

Pieter Aertsen , called Lange Pier because of his height, was a Dutch historical painter. He was born and died in Amsterdam, and painted there and in Antwerp, though his genre scenes were influential in Italy.-Biography:...

. The goal was to roll an egg out of a bowl while keeping within a circle drawn by chalk and then flip the bowl to cover the egg. This had to be done with the feet without touching the other objects placed on the floor.

An early reference to an egg dance was at the wedding

Wedding

A wedding is the ceremony in which two people are united in marriage or a similar institution. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes...

 of Margaret of Austria and Philibert of Savoy

Philibert II, Duke of Savoy

Philibert II , surnamed the Handsome or the Good, was the Duke of Savoy from 1497 until his death.-Biography:...

 on Easter Monday

Easter Monday

Easter Monday is the day after Easter Sunday and is celebrated as a holiday in some largely Christian cultures, especially Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox cultures...

 of 1498. The event was described in a 1895 issue of The American Magazine as follows.

In the UK the dancing takes the form of hopping and sometimes called the hop-egg. There were various forms of egg-dance, but Mark Knowles

Mark Knowles

Mark Knowles is a former World number 1 doubles professional male tennis player from the Bahamas, who will go down as one of the greatest athletes of his country for his longevity within his sport and charitable contributions off the court.After being awarded a scholarship to the Nick...

 writes that it was brought to England from Germany by the Saxons as early as in the 5th century. The Saxon word hoppe means "to dance"

The 1867 book The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England writes:

And daunce it trimley about an egge.

Dancing upon one foot was exhibited by the Saxon gleemen,
and probably by the Norman minstrel

Minstrel

A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...

s, but more especially by
the women-dancers, who might thence acquire the name of hoppesteres,
which is given by Chaucer. A vestige of this denomination
is still retained, and applied to dancing, though somewhat
contemptuously ; for an inferior dancing-meeting is generally
called a hop.

Hopping matches for prizes were occasionally made in the
sixteenth century, as we learn from John Heywoode the epigram

Epigram

An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

matist.
In his Proverbs printed in 1566, are the following
lines:

Where wooers hoppe in and out, long time may bring
Him that hoppeth best at last to have the ring

But to return to the egg-dance. This performance was common
enough about thirty years back and was well received
at Sadler's Wells ; where I saw it exhibited, not by simply
hopping round a single egg, but in a manner that much increased
the difficulty. A number of eggs, I do not precisely
recollect how many, but I believe about twelve or fourteen,
were placed at certain distances marked upon the stage; the
dancer, taking his stand, was blind-folded , and a hornpipe
being played in the orchestra, he went through all the paces
and figures of the dance, passing backwards and forwards between the eggs
without touching them.