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The noun egg-dance designates a dance blindfold among eggs; hence, figuratively, an intricate and difficult task.
The U.S. psychologist and family therapist Michael J. Murphy used the noun egg-dance figuratively in the column Family Matters, published in the Bennington Banner (Bennington, Vermont, USA) of Wednesday 26th January 1994 [page 14, column 3]:
People who have grown up in alcoholic families know what it is like to walk on eggs. One client told me that he could tell how the evening was going to go by listening for the way his father closed the car door upon his return home from work. If members of the family inside the house heard the car door slam, egg-walking procedures were initiated immediately.
Generally, the father’s drunken rage was focused on the mother. He’d reel into the kitchen, face flushed and clothing askew, having experienced some humiliation at the local bar, desperately needing to pass on the burden of fear and anger to someone else. The boy would watch his mother do an artful egg-dance, striving to do nothing that would give his father an excuse to treat his wife as he would have liked to have treated his oppressor down at the bar.
The word egg-dance came to be used as a verb meaning: to dance blindfold among eggs; to undertake an intricate and difficult task.
For example, Louise Levene used egg-dance as a verb in a review of Cinderella, by Deborah Colker and Akram Khan, performed by the English National Ballet at the Barbican, London—review published in The Sunday Telegraph (London, England) of Sunday 14th December 2003 [Review section: page 5, column 2]:
The finale featured Colker at the piano, taking delivery of 90 cheap vases. These were arranged in tidy rows across the stage so that the performers could egg-dance among them for a bit before 90 magnets on wires zoomed down from the flies and whisked them upward to create a sort of ceramic bead curtain.
The English antiquary Joseph Strutt (1749-1802) described the egg-dance as follows in Glig-Gamena Angel-Deod. Or, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (London: Printed by T. Bensley for J. White, 1801) [Book 3, chapter 5, pages 172 & 173]:
XIX. The Egg-Dance. I am not able to ascertain the antiquity of this dance. The indication of such a performance occurs in an old comedy written in the reign of queen Elizabeth, where we meet with these lines:
Upon my one foote pretely I can hoppe,
And daunce it trimley about an egge. *
[…]
But to return to the egg-dance. This performance was common enough about thirty years back, and was well received at Sadlers 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 one of them.
* This refers to The longer thou livest, the more foole thou art (London: Printed by William How for Richard Johnes, [c. 1568]), by William Wager—the passage quoted by Joseph Strutt is as follows in the original edition [page unnumbered]:
Vpon my one foote pretely I can hoppe,
And daunce it trimly about an Egge.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest literal uses of the noun egg-dance that I have found:
1-: From the diary that the English author Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) kept during a visit to Paris, France, in 1775—as published in The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London: Printed by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, 1791), by the Scottish biographer James Boswell (1740-1795) [page 504]:
“Oct. 16. Monday. At the Boulevards saw nothing, yet was glad to be there.—Rope-dancing and farce.—Egg dance.”
2-: From the following advertisement, published in The Bath Chronicle (Bath, Somerset, England) of Thursday 29th April 1790 [page 1, column 4]:
Amphitheatre, Monmouth-street, Bath.
In Addition to the GREAT VARIETY of PERFORMANCES that were done last week,
Messrs. HANDY and FRANKLIN have engaged, at a very great expence, Two Capital Performers from Sadler’s-Well,—the Spanish Little Devil FELIX BALAGAY, and the famous Venetian PASQUEL VINCENT.
On Friday Evening next, April 30th, 1790,
Will be a VARIETY of NEW PERFORMANCES,
(FOR THAT NIGHT ONLY.)
[…]
The Spanish Little Devil, Felix Balagay, will perform a Variety of SOMERSETS, FLIPFLAPS, SAUTES DES SINGES, &c.
[…]
After which he will perform
The Spanish Fandango; or, Egg Dance,
Blindfolded, superior to any thing of the kind ever attempted.
3-: From the following advertisement, published in The Public Register, or, Freeman’s Journal (Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland) of Saturday 28th November 1795 [page 3, column 2]:
For the Benefit of Mr. HANDY, and positively the last Night but one of his Company’s performance, and of the GRAND PONEY RACES,
On Monday next, 30th Nov. will be presented (for that Night only) the following extensive Variety of novel Entertainments:—The EGG DANCE, over 12 eggs, by Mr. Robinson, blindfolded.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences that I have found of the noun egg-dance used in comparisons and figuratively:
1-: From John Bull (London, England) of Saturday 5th March 1842 [page 114, column 1]:
Lord Monteagle after “coy, reluctant, amorous delay,” brought forward last night his motion for an inquiry into his own delinquencies, real or supposed, for such in point of fact was the motion submitted by him to the House of Lords. […] There were five points, he observed, elicited by the Commission of Inquiry that had originated in the other House, from which alone a censurable judgment could be wrested against him. These points will be found pricked down in our Parliamentary summary, and sooth to say, he hopped in and out between them, as dexterously as clown performing the egg-dance.
2-: From an account of the meeting that was held at Manchester, Lancashire, on Wednesday 8th October 1856, to celebrate the opening of the new Free Trade Hall—published in The Globe and Traveller (London, England) of Friday 10th October 1856 [page 2, column 2]:
In deference to the shareholding dissentients from the prevailing doctrine, politics were superseded by polkas at this inauguration—since we may regard Mr. Gibson’s semi-political speech as a sort of egg-dance amidst forbidden topics, picking his steps amongst, without exactly breaking into, them.
3-: From Carlyle, published in the Georgia Journal and Messenger (Macon, Georgia, USA) of Wednesday 5th January 1859 [page 2, column 5]:
Poetry is the revelation from the Spirit of Nature—(French poetry) is an art, a highly complex egg dance, to be danced before the King, to a given time, and without breaking a single egg.
4-: From a translation of a passage from Les Grotesques de la Musique, a book by the French composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869, as published in The Charleston Mercury (Charleston, South Carolina, USA) of Thursday 25th August 1859 [page 2, column 2]—reprinted from the Boston Journal of Music:
“Too miserable critics! for them the winter has no fires, the summer no cool places. Always on the go, and always in a glow. All the time listening, all the time enduring. All the time in fact executing the egg dance, trembling lest one break a few, whether it be by praise, or whether it be by blame, when all the time one would so like to come down with both feet upon the whole mass of owls’ and turkeys’ eggs, with very little danger to the eggs of nightingales, so rare are such in these days.”
5-: From a review of Studies from Life (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1861), by the English author Dinah Craik (1826-1887)—review published in the Illustrated Times (London, England) of Saturday 8th December 1860 [page 357, column 2]:
Who can love a voluminous writer that is never caught tripping? Upon which question follows another—Can the highest order of sincerity belong to a mind so self-watchful, so very capable of executing metaphysical and moral egg-dances without breaking a single shell?
6-: From The Western Times (Exeter, Devon, England) of Tuesday 2nd July 1867 [page 4, column 5]:
THE REFORM BILL.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s egg dance should be in its final figures—must be in point of time. Considering the number of nights the performance has lasted, the number of eggs laid, often with puzzling skill, upon the parliamentary floor, spectators have by turns been amused and mortified at his cunning pirouetting, sometimes on the factious and sometimes on the fantastic toe, yet seldom crushing a single shell.
Very early, egg-dance came to be used as a verb; the first occurrence that I have found is the verbal noun egg-dancing in the following from Mr. Mundella in the House, published in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph (Sheffield, Yorkshire, England) of Tuesday 9th March 1869 [page 6, column 6]—reprinted from the Court Journal:
Poor Mr. Mundella came to grief. That unfortunate gentleman is certainly as frequently in trouble as any member of the House need wish to be. […] To some men, the practices of the House simply seem a series of traps from which, even with an agility that might prove successful, even in egg dancing, they cannot keep clear.
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