§ 6 The Dancing
In the ancient Greek drama, as in modern opera, the three sister arts of Music, Poetry, and Dancing were all brought into requisition. But there was this difference—in the Greek drama the poetry was the principal feature of the performance; the music and the dancing were subordinate. Moreover, dancing was seldom introduced by itself as a mere spectacle; it was mainly used in combination with singing, to interpret and add vividness to the words of the song. The music, the poetry, and the dancing were blended together into one harmonious whole, each part gaining an advantage by its combination with the other two. Most, if not all, of the choral songs were accompanied by dances of one sort or another. To the Greek mind there was an inseparable connexion between song and dance, and the notion of choral singing unaccompanied by dancing would have appeared strange and unusual. The two arts had grown and developed simultaneously, as appears from the fact that many of the technical terms in metrical phraseology referred originally to the movements of the dance. For instance, the smallest division of a verse was called a ‘foot’. A verse of two feet was styled a ‘basis’, or ‘stepping’. The words ‘arsis’ and ‘thesis’, which denoted the varying stress of the voice in singing, originally referred to the raising up and placing down of the foot in marching and dancing. These terms show how closely the two arts of dancing and singing were associated together in ancient Greece. A choreutes who was unable to accompany a song with expressive dance-movements was looked down upon as an inferior performer.932 Dancing therefore, as might have been expected, played a most important part in tragedy, comedy, and the satyric drama. It was held among the Greeks in the greatest estimation, and there was none of that feeling of degradation about it which was common among the Romans. A man might dance in public without any loss of dignity, provided the dance was of a graceful and becoming character. Sophocles himself, the great tragic poet and fellow general of Pericles, was not ashamed to appear in a dance in one of his own tragedies.933
At the same time it should be remembered that dancing in ancient Greece was a very different thing from dancing in modern times. It included a great deal more. The word ‘dancing’ in English necessarily implies movement with the feet. It would be impossible in English to say that a man was dancing, if he continued to stand in the same position. But in Greek dancing this was not necessarily the case. The word ‘orchesis’, which we translate as ‘dancing’, had in reality a much wider meaning. Greek dancing originated, according to Plato, in the instinctive tendency of mankind to accompany speech and song with explanatory movements of the body.934 It was essentially a mimetic performance. It included, not only all such motions as are denoted by dancing in the modern sense of the word, but also every kind of gesture and posture by which various objects and events can be represented in dumb show. Its principal function was to interpret and illustrate the words of poetry. For this purpose nothing could be more important than appropriate gesticulation. Hence in Greek dancing the movements of the hands and arms played a larger part than the movements of the feet. The same was the case in Roman dancing also. A few quotations will illustrate this fact. Telestes, the celebrated dancer employed by Aeschylus, was said to be able to ‘depict events with his hands in the most skilful manner’.935 Demetrius the Cynic, after witnessing the performance of a celebrated dancer, exclaimed that he ‘spoke with his hands’.936 Ovid, in his Art of Love, when advising a lover to show off his best qualities before his mistress, tells him to sing if he has a good voice, to dance ‘if his arms are flexible’.937 The flourishes and gesticulations with which a professional carver cut out a hare were called ‘dancing’ by the ancients.938 Quintilian, speaking of the gestures used in oratory, gravely says that there ought to be a considerable difference between the orator and the dancer; that the gestures of the orator should represent the general sense of the words, rather than the particular objects mentioned.939 The bare fact of his comparing an orator with a dancer is a proof of the vital difference between ancient and modern dancing, and the importance of mere gesticulation in the former.
The purpose, then, of ancient dancing was to represent various objects and events by means of gestures, postures, and attitudes. In this kind of mimicry the nations of southern Europe are particularly skilful, as may be seen at the present day. The art was carried by the Greeks to the highest perfection, and a good dancer was able to accompany a song with such expressive pantomime as to create a visible picture of the things described. Aristotle defines dancing as an imitation of ‘actions, characters, and passions by means of postures and rhythmical movements’.940 His language indicates very clearly the unlimited capabilities of Greek dancing. Its general character will be well exemplified by the following account from Plutarch’s Symposiaca. Dancing, it is there stated, might be divided into Motions, Postures, and Indications. Motions were of the greatest use in depicting actions and passions. Postures were the attitudes in which each motion terminated. For example, a dancer might halt in such a posture as to suggest Apollo, or Pan, or a Bacchante. Indications were not mimetic at all, but consisted in merely pointing out certain objects, such as the heaven, the earth, the bystanders. Dancing might be defined as poetry without words. The combination of poetry and dancing, of words and gestures, produced a perfect imitation.941 In the above account from Plutarch we have a clear exposition of the Greek conception of dancing as the handmaid of poetry. Its function was to delineate and to emphasize the creations of the poet. This was the part which it played in the Greek drama. It is most important, therefore, when speaking of dancing in connexion with the old dramatic performances, to remember the essential difference between the ancient and modern meaning of the words.
Some few facts have been recorded concerning the history of dancing in connexion with the drama. In the earliest times it consisted mainly of movements with the feet. The use of the hands and arms in dancing, and the introduction of elaborate gesticulation, was a development due to a later period.942 In the old-fashioned dramas of Thespis and his immediate successors dancing necessarily played a very important part. Both tragedy and comedy were at that time mainly lyrical, and the long choral odes were accompanied throughout by dances. The early dramatists, such as Thespis, Phrynichus, Pratinas, and Cratinus, were called ‘dancers’ as well as poets, because one of their principal duties consisted in training their choruses in the art of dancing.943 Phrynichus, in an epigram of which two verses are still preserved, boasts of having discovered more figures in dancing than there are waves in a stormy sea.944 The tragic dance of the sixth century, to judge from the specimens given by Philocleon at the end of the Wasps, was of a wild and lively character.945 The tone of solemnity, by which it was afterwards distinguished, was due to the innovations of Aeschylus. It was probably in the time of Aeschylus that dancing in tragedy reached its highest pitch of excellence. His long choruses gave ample opportunities for the display of the dancer’s skill. Moreover, the training of the chorus was personally superintended by Aeschylus, and he is said to have himself invented a great number of postures and attitudes to be used in dancing.946 Towards the end of the fifth century the art appears to have declined in significance, along with the general decrease in the importance of the chorus. It began to lose something of its mimetic character. Plato, the comic poet, who flourished at the end of the fifth century, contrasts the mediocrity of the choral dancing in his day with the excellence of that of a former period. In old times, he says, a good dancer was a sight worth seeing; but the choreutae of the present day stand in a row, like so many cripples, and bawl out their songs, without any attempt at appropriate motions and gestures.947 This deterioration was a necessary consequence of the tendency to thrust the chorus more and more into the background.
The general character of the dancing in the Greek drama has already been described. As far as details are concerned our information is very defective, and only slight indications are to be obtained from the existing plays. It is probable that, when the parodoi commenced with a series of anapaests, the chorus only marched in, without dancing. But all parodoi written in lyrical metres were undoubtedly accompanied with a dance. The iambic and trochaic tetrameters, in which many of the parodoi in Aristophanes are written, seem to have been generally intended for choruses which entered running, and with an appearance of great haste.948 The stasima, or long choral odes between the acts, are said by many of the scholiasts to have been unaccompanied by dancing, and to have been delivered by the chorus standing perfectly still.949 The statement is no doubt an error, due to false etymology. The stasima, or ‘stationary songs’, were so called, not because the chorus stood still during their delivery, but because it remained all the time in the orchestra. They were therefore opposed to the parodoi, which were delivered while the chorus was coming in, and to the exodoi, which were delivered while it was going out.950 That the stasima were accompanied by dancing is proved by several references to dancing which they contain.951 A tradition has been preserved by one scholiast concerning the manœuvres of the chorus in the stasima. It is said that during the strophe they moved to the right, during the antistrophe to the left; and that during the epode they remained standing in the same position as at first.952 This description, however, has probably been applied to the drama by mistake. A manœuvre of the kind mentioned, though suitable to the circular chorus of the dithyramb, would be out of place in the rectangular formations of the dramatic choruses. Also it is comparatively rare to find epodes in the stasima. As for the incidental odes, which occur in the middle of the dialogue, many of those were written in the lively hyporchematic style, to mark the joy of the chorus at an unexpected turn of fortune. Some of the regular stasima were of the same type.953 The dances by which these odes were accompanied were extremely brisk and energetic, in tragedy as well as in comedy.954 The exodoi, or concluding utterances of the chorus, were not usually attended with dancing, but were delivered in recitative as the chorus marched out. There is an exception in the Wasps and the Ecclesiazusae, which are terminated by the chorus dancing out of the orchestra. But Aristophanes himself remarks that this was an innovation.955 There is no reason to suppose that in tragedy the kommoi, or musical dialogues between actors and chorus, were unaccompanied with dancing. But naturally, if this was the case, the dance would be of a quiet and sober kind, consisting more of appropriate gestures and motions than of dancing in the modern sense of the word.
During a large part of every Greek play the chorus had nothing to say or sing, but merely stood watching the actors, and listening to the dialogue. It would be absurd to imagine that they remained stolid and indifferent during all this period. Chorus and actors were supposed to form one harmonious group, and no doubt the chorus followed the events upon the stage with a keen appearance of interest, and expressed their sympathy with the different characters by every kind of gesture and by-play. Occasionally the long descriptive speeches delivered from the stage were accompanied with a mimetic dance on the part of the chorus.956 The events described by the actor were represented in dumb show by the choreutae. In comedy it was a regular practice to introduce descriptive speeches of this sort, the metres used being iambic or anapaestic tetrameters, which were especially suitable for dancing to. There is an example in the Clouds, where Strepsiades describes his quarrel with Pheidippides. The various phases of the quarrel were represented in dumb show by the chorus, keeping time with the recitative of the actor.957 Again, we are told that Telestes, the dancer employed by Aeschylus, ‘danced the Seven against Thebes’ so successfully as to bring the various events before the very eyes of the spectators. The statement no doubt refers to the dumb show with which he accompanied the long descriptive speeches that abound in that play.958
Each of the three different species of the drama had its own special kind of dance. The tragic dance was called the ‘emmeleia’. It was grave and majestic in its motions, and was one of the two dances approved of by Plato, and admitted into his ideal republic.959 Some of the postures or figures in the tragic dance are mentioned by the ancient writers. One of them represented a man in the act of thrusting with the sword; another depicted a man in an attitude of menace, with clenched fist. The rest are a mere list of names, of which the meaning is uncertain. But it is plain from the existence of such lists that the art of tragic dancing was reduced to a regular system, and that the various attitudes and postures were taught in a methodical manner.960 We can hardly be mistaken in assuming that as a rule the movements of the tragic dance were slow and deliberate, and more like walking than dancing in the modern sense. The odes called ‘hyporchemata’, with their lively motions, were only adopted in tragedy on special occasions, to show the excessive joy of the choreutae.961 The kommos at the conclusion of the Persae gives us a vivid picture of the general style of a tragic dance. The Persian Elders follow Xerxes on his way to the palace, bewailing the ruin of the empire in mournful strains. At each fresh exclamation of grief they fall into some new posture, first beating their breasts, then plucking their beards, then rending their garments, then tearing their hair; and in this manner they gradually make their exit from the orchestra.962
The comic dance was called the ‘kordax’. Its movements were coarse and lascivious, and its general style was suggestive of the phallic songs out of which comedy had been developed. It was a dance for drunken people, and no one but a man without any sense of shame would dance it when he was sober. It was considered vulgar and disgraceful by Plato, and excluded from his commonwealth.963 Aristophanes, in the Clouds, takes credit to himself for having abandoned it in that play; but, as the scholiast remarks, he frequently introduces it elsewhere.964 In the comic dances the wildest movements were admissible. The chorus, at the end of the Wasps, when encouraging the sons of Carcinus to fresh exertions, bid them ‘whirl round like tops, and fling their legs up into the sky’. Occasionally the circular dance of the dithyrambic chorus was adopted in comedy.965
The dance used in the satyric drama was called the ‘sikinnis’. It was mainly a parody and caricature of noble and graceful dances, and was very violent and rapid in its movements. One of the postures used in the satyric dance was called the owl, and is variously explained by the old grammarians as having consisted in shading the eyes with the hands, or in turning the head to and fro like an owl.966