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10-05-2015, 08:21

Performing Arts

Dance, theater, and music thrived until Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b. c.e.), when the performing arts declined in Athens and throughout Greece.

Date: Before 600 b. c.e.-31 b. c.e.

Category: Theater and drama; music

Dance The most fundamental of the performing arts is dance, for in its most simple manifestations, dance requires only the human body in motion. The basic dance is that of wild and vigorous jumping and leaping in rhythm, the so-called ecstatic dance. Used in religious ceremonies in Classical Greece, the ecstatic dance usually begins with restraint but becomes so wild that the dancers often fall unconscious from exertion. It was believed that during such a dance the god being worshiped actually took possession of the performer’s body. The Greeks called this phenomenon enthousiasmos (literally “possessed by the god”), from which is derived the English word “enthusiasm.” Such a dance seems to have been performed by the ancient inhabitants of Crete where priestesses danced in worship of the great mother goddess. Young Cretan men performed a kind of bull dancing, a very dangerous artform akin to modern Hispanic bullfighting, in which young male dancers executed such maneuvers as somersaulting between the horns of the raging animal. Those that failed to execute these moves were often gored to their death, in effect being sacrificed to the divinity.

The ancient Greeks borrowed dance from Crete. Therefore, as in Crete, the ecstatic dance in Archaic Greece (before 600 b. c.e.) was done by women, the maenads, in honor of Dionysus, the god of fertility. Many visual depictions of the maenads exist. They carry a sacred staff, the thyrsus. Their heads are thrown back, and their clothes twist wildly about them. The term “maenad” is the source of the English word “maniac,” and indeed the women became so wild and maddened in their dancing that they are said to have had seizures. The chorus of dancing maenads were later replaced by men who performed a more sedate, controlled, military dance in honor of the god Dionysus, known as the dithyramb. Groups of young men were organized into dithyrambic choruses, and in the name of Dionysus, they competed against one another at spring fertility festivals.

Other dances were also practiced by the ancient Greeks, including the geranos, or snake dance, and various other animal dances depicting lions, bears, foxes, and even birds. Numerous vase paintings and other visuals show dancers wearing animal masks and headdresses, as well as full animal costumes. The great comic playwright Aristophanes wrote an entire play, Ornithes (414 b. c.e.; The Birds, 1824), which featured a dancing chorus of avian creatures. Of course, the satyrs, or male goat-dancers, were a standard feature of dramatic choruses. Satyr dancers, wearing horns, hooflike foot gear, and short furry pants, are depicted in many vase paintings. Because the satyr dancers are sacred to Dionysus, god of wine, vegetation, and fertility, they often wear vine leaves in their hair and display large, false genitals.

All young male citizens in Classical Greece were trained in dance because, like modern-day military marching, it was considered good preparation for group discipline in battle. Like modern marching bands, Greek dance groups were trained to form shapes or schemata that had particular meaning for the spectators. Dance also taught communication skills as each dancer learned the effective and graceful use of meaningful gesture known as cheironomia. Moreover, dance was considered the most sacred of arts, having been associated with the saving of the life of the great god Zeus. According to legend, the Titan Rhea had taught the art of dance to the Curetes, sons of earth who dwelled in Crete. When Rhea gave birth to Zeus, she fled to Crete to avoid Cronus, the father Titan who devoured all of his children immediately after they were born. She gave the baby to the Curetes. When Cronus came looking for the infant, the Curetes performed the dance taught them by Rhea, filled with wild, leaping, noisy, and ecstatic choreography. The vigorous visual and vocal activity diverted the attention of Cronus so that he did not see the baby nor hear it crying. Zeus survived to overthrow Cronus and become king of all the gods. Because of its sacred nature, dance was assigned a special muse, Terpsichore, one of the nine great muses of ancient culture. In the fifth century b. c.e., the greatest honor that could come to a young Greek man was to be selected a member of one of the dancing choruses that performed in the sacred dramas given at the major theatrical festival, the City Dionysia.

Dancers not only appeared in festivals and theatrical performances but also were considered an important part of private entertainments in Greece.

Although the culture did not encourage couples dancing as a social activity, dancers did appear at lavish all-male dinners known as symposia. Dancers at these events were often accompanied by related kinetic artists such as acrobats and contortionists. Most dancers were amateurs, but later professional actors and dancers banded together into a quasi-religious group known as the Artists of Dionysus.

Theater Dance was an intricate part of theater in the ancient world, and Greek culture drew little distinction between the actor and the dancer. The plays of the Greek theater, known as dramenon, or happenings, featured dancing choruses as a major element of all productions. The word “theater” is drawn from the Greek theatron, or seeing place. The relation between theater and dance is nowhere better illustrated than in the fact that the large performing circle found in most Greek theaters is called the orchestra, or dancing circle. Although theatrical presentations are as old as humankind, modern Western theater seems to be a product of ancient Greece. Its origins were in the funeral rituals of Egypt, the sacred dance-drama of India, and the fertility rituals of Crete.

The Greek city-states had developed public religious festivals around two important seasons: spring and fall. The spring festival was devoted to Dionysus and was called the Dionysia, at which a number of rituals and dramas were performed. The Dorian Greeks claimed to have invented drama, but it was the Athenians who brought it to its classic form. In 534 b. c.e., Pisistratus, the ruler of Athens, made the Dionysia a legal state function. Thereafter, all male citizens of Athens were required to attend the plays each year. Thespis, the famous leader of a dithyrambic chorus, was named the first archon (producer) of Athens’s City Dionysia. Thespis is credited with formalizing dialogue in theater in that he would call out to his dancing chorus and they would answer him in a call-response pattern. Such performers were called answerers, or hypokritoi, which became the Greek word for actor and the English word “hypocrite.” At first only two types of dramenon were performed at the Dionysia, tragedies, or plays about the death of a hero and his replacement by another hero, and satyr plays, or comedies about the sexual escapades of the gods. It was the satyr plays that featured a chorus of singing and dancing goat-men or satyrs. Tragedies also featured a singing-dancing chorus, thought to be as large as fifty persons. All performers in Greek theater were men, although they frequently played women’s roles. The plays themselves were composed of two types of narrative elements: choral odes and the scenes between characters, known as the episodes. Choral performers were amateurs, young men chosen for their dancing ability. The actors were professional priest-performers. Costuming was very elaborate, and actors and chorus wore masks that completely covered the head.

The playwrights were known as poets (or makers) of dramenon. Three playmakers were selected each year, and each was responsible for one day of plays, which consisted of three tragedies and a satyr play. At the end of three days, a jury of twelve tribal leaders voted on the winner of the Dionysia, and that poet received a large sum of money. The vote was supposed to be directed by the hand of the god. Each day of plays was paid for by one of the three wealthiest men of Athens of that particular year, and one of those men, known as the choregus, or choral leader, was given the honor of being named the winner of the agon, or dramatic contest. Usually, the winner would put up a monument commemorating his victory and listing the names of the playwright and the hypokritoi, so that considerable information survives about the Dionysia. The most famous playwrights of fifth century Athens were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Their most famous plays are Agamemnon (458 b. c.e.; Agamemnon, 1777), Oidipous Tyrannos (c. 429 b. c.e.; Oedipus Tyrannus, 1715), andMTdeia (431 b. c.e.; Medea, 1781), respectively.

Never as highly respected as tragedies or even satyr plays, comedies were not admitted into the Dionysia until 587 b. c.e. Only the comedies of Aristophanes survive in written form, of which the most famous is Lysis-tratT (411 b. c.e.; Lysistrata, 1837). No satyr plays survive. A special form known as New Comedy, or comedy of manners or character type, developed, of which Menander was considered the master.

Music Of all the performing arts, music in the ancient world is the least known because little evidence remains. The first musical instruments would most likely have been the human voice and body, with the voice providing melodic statement and the body creating basic percussion in the form of clapping and stamping. One only has to think of modern tap dancing to realize that to have a body and to be human means that music is immediately possible. However, undoubtedly, musical instruments were present from early times, and considerable visual evidence of instruments exists all about the Mediterranean Sea. Flutes, lyres, drums, and stringed instruments akin to the guitar are abundantly pictured in archaeological remains. In the eastern Mediterranean, art depicts people playing guitars and recorders. In Greece, the double flute was also very popular.

However, no written musical literature is available until Classical Greece, and then only a few fragments of compositions survive. Many musicologists believe that Greek music was oriental in sound, but more is known about the names of musical types than about the quality. Plato in his Nomoi (360-347 b. c.e.; Laws, 1804) reports that there are various classes and types of Greek music, including hymns, dirges, paeans (songs of joy and praise), and dithyrambs (songs and dances to the god Dionysus used in public festivals and theatrical performances). Pictorial evidence reveals that the dithyrambs and choral odes of tragedy and probably even the solo speeches were accompanied by two basic musical instruments: the lyre and the aulos, or double-pipe flute. The lyre is a stringed instrument used for the less raucous and vigorous chorus speeches, hence the English term “lyrical.” It was the instrument sacred to the Greek god Apollo, the divinity of light, healing, and music, who is usually depicted carrying the lyre. The aulos, however, seems to have produced a sound that was a cross between an oboe and a bagpipe and was used with the more tumultuous odes and episodes in the theater. Percussion instruments, the most fundamental of all musical devices, were used throughout Greek performances. Tambourines were special favorites of Roman musicians, as were flutes and wind instruments made of brass or, following a more ancient Hebrew tradition, of animal horns.

Greek music is known to have used various modes or scales. The music was written down in two systems, one for vocal music and one for instrumental, both of which were unlike modern Western systems for transcribing music. Both consisted of indicating notes by using letters of the alphabet above the song word, but neither is clear in application, and only a few fragments survive. Also surviving is a treatise, De musica (probably third century c. e.; Aristides Quintilianus: On Music, 1983) by Aristides Quin-tilianus, dealing with musical harmony and rhythm; the moral, educational, and therapeutic values of music; and music’s scientific and mathematical aspects. Part of the education of every Greek youth was training in music, as much for its mathematical as for its aesthetic value.

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