Dancing Greekness

This book is not another history of the dance in ancient Greece, but wants to lay the groundwork on which such a history should properly be build. The three preliminary studies offered here are, first, an extensive historiography of the subject which seeks to illuminate where we stand at present in reference to the large amount of work done on ancient Greek dance for the past 500 years. Secondly, an exercise in source criticism, embracing both texts and imagery, in order to establish the limits to which we can push any investigation, and thirdly, an attempt at model building to provide an explicit theoretical framework for future research. This is the first time that some of the approaches of the new dance scholarship which has arisen during the past few decades have been systematically applied to the dancing of the ancient world.

In private and in public life, the ancient Greeks danced to express divine adoration and human festivity. They danced at feasts and choral competitions, at weddings and funerals, in observance of the cycles of both nature and human existence. Formal and informal dances marked the rhythms of life and death. In Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion, Steven Lonsdale looks at how the Greeks themselves regarded the act of dance, and how dance and related forms of ritual play in Greek religious festivals served a wide variety of functions in Greek society. The act of worship, he explains, often implied engaging in collective rites regulated by playful behavior, the most common forms of which were group hymns and choral dances.

This book is not another history of the dance in ancient Greece, but wants to lay the groundwork on which such a history should properly be build. The three preliminary studies offered here are, first, an extensive historiography of the subject which seeks to illuminate where we stand at present in reference to the large amount of work done on ancient Greek dance for the past 500 years. Secondly, an exercise in source criticism, embracing both texts and imagery, in order to establish the limits to which we can push any investigation, and thirdly, an attempt at model building to provide an explicit theoretical framework for future research. This is the first time that some of the approaches of the new dance scholarship which has arisen during the past few decades have been systematically applied to the dancing of the ancient world.

Karl Marx observed that ‘just when people seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves... they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service’. While the Greek east under Roman rule was not revolutionary, perhaps, in the sense that Marx had in mind, it was engaged in creating something that had not previously existed, in part just through the millennia-long involvement with its own tradition, which was continually being remodelled and readapted. It was an age that was intensely self-conscious about its relation to history, a consciousness that manifested itself not only in Attic purism and a reverence for antique literary models but also in ethnic identities, educational and religious institutions, and political interactions with – and even among – the Romans. In this volume, seven scholars explore some of the forms that this preoccupation with the Greek past assumed under Roman rule. Taken together, the chapters offer a kaleidoscopic view of how Greeks under the Roman Empire related to their past, indicating the multiple ways in which the classical tradition was problematised, adapted, transformed, and at times rejected. They thus provide a vivid image of a lived relation to tradition, one that was inventive rather than conservative and self-conscious rather than passive. The Greeks under Rome played with their heritage, as they played at being and not being the Greeks they continually studied and remembered.

This multifaceted book investigates the place of dance and performance in the development, confirmation and subversion of conceptions of Europe from the 20th century up until today. Its contributions unravel the nexus between Europe and dance from historical and contemporaneous perspectives, and testify to an understanding of Europe based on different constructions of (alternative) societies. Through the threefold themes of identities, languages and institutions, this volume reveals the complexity of this topic. It investigates the construction of European identities in and through performance and their intersection with local or global cultures; explores versatile models of European multilingualism and linguistic diversity on stage; and considers the constructions of Europe, in dance, as conditioned by institutional and socio-political frameworks. The first volume of its kind, it offers a collection of previously unpublished chapters by an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars. It will make essential reading for anyone interested in the fields of dance, performance and European Studies, and serve as an important springboard for future research in this area.

“Ancient Greek dance” traditionally evokes images of stately choruses or lively Dionysiac revels – communal acts of performance. This is the first book to look beyond the chorus to the diverse and complex representation of solo dancers in Archaic and Classical Greek literature. It argues that dancing alone signifies transgression and vulnerability in the Greek cultural imagination, as isolation from the chorus marks the separation of the individual from a range of communal social structures. It also demonstrates that the solo dancer is a powerful figure for literary exploration and experimentation, highlighting the importance of the singular dancing body in the articulation of poetic, narrative, and generic interests across Greek literature. Taking a comparative approach and engaging with current work in dance and performance studies, this book reveals the profound literary and cultural importance of the unruly solo dancer in the ancient Greek world.

Valued for their sensual and social intensity, Greek dance-events are often also problematical for participants, giving rise to struggles over position, prestige, and reputation. Here Jane Cowan explores how the politics of gender is articulated through the body at these culturally central, yet until now ethnographically neglected, celebrations in a class-divided northern Greek town. Portraying the dance-event as both a highly structured and dynamic social arena, she approaches the human body not only as a sign to be deciphered but as a site of experience and an agent of practice. In describing the multiple ideologies of person, gender, and community that townspeople embody and explore as they dance, Cowan presents three different settings: the traditional wedding procession, the "Europeanized" formal evening dance of local civic associations, and the private party. She examines the practices of eating, drinking, talking, gifting, and dancing, and the verbal discourse through which celebrants make sense of each other's actions. Paying particular attention to points of tension and moments of misunderstanding, she analyzes in what ways these social situations pose different problems for men and women.