Abstract
Drawing on the combined approaches of ancient Greek iconography, dance history, and the archaeology of ritual and religion, this paper examines dance gesture as a mechanism of ritual communication in ancient Greek vase-painting. After presenting the problems and limitations of matching art and text with regard to dance, as both Classical scholars and practitioners of modern dance have attempted, the paper expands on various ways of showing dance on vases. Special attention is given to komast dancers on black-figure vases and to other types of dance scenes and figures. A rethinking of the evidence for dance as ritual on Greek vases is proposed under the two categories of non-repetitive and repetitive gesture. It is posited that such a distinction anticipates the mood, participants, and occasions, and might indicate discrete areas of ritual activity. Dance, gesture, and ritual are also considered according to the gender and sexuality of performers, the presence of the divine, and the relationship between the shape, composition, and function of some vessels.
Hence, when the representation of things spoken by means of gestures arose, it produced the whole art of dancing
Pl. Leg. 816a; transl. BURY 1926
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1 Dance as Ritual on Vases
The appearance of dancing scenes on ancient Greek vases enables a unique opportunity to explore the combined areas of gesture and ritual. Vase-painters in the city of Athens and in other regions, during the 6th and 5th centuries BC, frequently chose dance as a subject to decorate the surfaces of their vessels. Such dancing took a variety of forms, incorporated different participants according to age, sex, and appearance, and occurred in assorted settings or in no explicit setting at all. A variety of functions were also possible in antiquity for vases with dance scenes. The symposion, the all-male drinking party attested by ancient authors writing about the city of Athens, and long considered an important social ritual, is one situation where such vases would have been used.1 Yet, it is important to specify that all vases depicting dance where neither made exclusively for use in the context of a symposion nor is the symposion the only ritual setting represented by vase-painters. Dancing was a ubiquitous aspect of ancient Greek life, belonging to both public and private spheres, and one should imagine that painters sometimes had other rituals and locations in their minds, such as those associated with weddings, funerals, and festivals to honour the gods.2 Indeed, it is arguable that the best way to comprehend such different occasions, especially on vases where no details of a ‘real’ physical context are provided (e.g. drinking paraphernalia for symposion, altar or cult equipment for animal sacrifice), is through exploring the ways vase-painters use gestures to communicate dance visually, as a ritual activity unto itself.
Among the best-studied group of dancers on vases are the so-called ‘padded dancers’ or komasts, male figures found on black-figure vases throughout the 6th century (Figures 1 and 2) who exhibit a bottom-slapping gesture as part of their routine.3 The komasts dance alone or in groups, or even alongside women or musicians,4 yet their routines lack regularity, often seeming spontaneous and unrehearsed. While these dancers are present in the context of a symposion, especially in Athenian vase-painting, male dancing figures executing the same gestures inhabit completely different settings on vases made and used in other locations. Notable are the black-figure vases of Boeotia, where dancers perform their routines in settings that have been tied to local religious festivals and cultic practices.5 Another major category of dance iconography, appearing by the late 8th century BC (Figure 3) and continuing into the 6th and 5th, is circular or line-dancing, sometimes labelled a chorus (choros). The participants, often (though not exclusively) women, often in the presence of a musician, join hands and practice identical, or nearly identical, poses and gestures, reminiscent of modern Greek folk-dancing.6 The mood in these images seems more serious, and the regularity of the dancing belongs to other ritual circumstances, such as a religious procession (pompē), a choral performance, or a wedding celebration.7 In only briefly describing each of these broad categories, the kōmos and the choros, it is evident that vase-painters were able to use dance gesture as a means of communicating a certain situation and its participants as well as broad categories of ritual (or) performance.
Corinthian black-figure aryballos, New York Comast Painter, late 7th/early 6th century BC. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 06.1021.17 (Rogers Fund, 1906)
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: public domainAthenian black-figure cup, Falmouth Painter, ca. 570 BC. Paris, Musée du Louvre E741
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: public domainEuboean Late Geometric amphora detail, late 8th century BC. Eretria, Archaeological Museum 3275
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Drawing: D. Weiss, after Boardman 1998, fig. 84But, regardless of type or circumstances, expressing and communicating ‘dance’ to the viewer/user of the ancient vase would have presented a particular set of challenges for ancient artists, and can also be difficult for the modern interpreter.8 As a three-dimensional art-form rife with gestures, translating dance onto the vase’s two-dimensional surface might have proved more difficult than showing episodes of mythology or a battle-scene, for example, where other visual indicators (of which gesture is only one) supply clues to the subject being conveyed.9 Consider the example of Herakles and the Nemean lion, or the Gigantomachy, where the scenes on vases are known based on the characters and the textual narrative, as much as on how gesture is being used in a composition.10 The ability of the viewer to recognize the activity being shown on a vase as dancing would have been highly dependent on how the painter went about showing the rhythmic patterns of movement of the human body. The vase-painter had to make some significant choices about which moments to choose and how best to depict them in order to create a veritable snapshot of the dance.11 Such ‘snapshots’ should not, however be considered by the modern viewer to be flashes of ancient dancing frozen in time, like the still photographs of a live performance. At most they might represent a series of steps, but even this explanation seems highly speculative given the technical constraints of Greek vase-painting. Rather, the gestures and postures of the dancing body were employed in carefully contrived ways as mechanisms of visual communication on the part of the artist. They speak directly to the viewer, as if to say ‘this is dance’.
At the same time, dance was a highly ritualized activity in its own right, whose ritual aspects on vases, as in other arts of other times and places, were only further enhanced by a given setting.12 Thus, in examples where the context is made obvious by the iconography, archaeological context, or both, we might posit: “this is (informal) dancing at a symposion” or “this is (formal) dancing for the cult of Artemis at Brauron”.13 Dance, then as now, upholds a strong, if complex, relationship to ritual. In dance scholarship, the term ritual dance must be distinguished from the idea of dance as ritual, because the former usually implies dance as part of a religious ritual, while the latter indicates dance experience as ritual or, to quote Jamake Highwater: “dance as a separate reality”.14 This is especially poignant for the study of ancient Greek dance, in fact unique to it, because Classical scholars have attempted in the past to identify dance gestures on vases with the named-dances mentioned in surviving texts as well as by early modern dancers and choreographers to recreate, teach, and perform ancient Greek dance based on looking at vases as literal depictions of dance movement.15 Rather than attempting to build a better bridge between the art of dancing and a known or lost ritual recorded in a written text, and working on the assumption that vases were painted to be seen and handled, it is suggested here that the gestures (and thus their associated movements) in vase-painting can in their own right confirm the link between dance and ritual.
Drawing on the combined approaches of ancient Greek iconography, dance history, and the archaeology of ritual and religion, this paper examines dance gesture as a mechanism of ritual communication in ancient Greek vase-painting. After presenting the problems and limitations of matching art and text with regard to dance, as both scholars of the ancient world and practitioners of modern dance have attempted, we expand on various ways of showing dance on vases. What will be proposed is a rethinking of the evidence for dance as ritual on vases under two categories of gesture: non-repetitive and repetitive. Such a division is based on careful observation of the images themselves and should not be seen, for example, as a direct reflection of Plato’s two kinds of dancing: “the one representing the solemn movement of beautiful bodies, the other the ignoble movement of ugly bodies” (Leg. 814e; transl. Bury 1926).16 Considering dance images on vases along these lines enables us to question how the categories of non-repetitive and repetitive gesture might, in theory, indicate that discrete areas of ritual activity, behaviour, or setting are being portrayed.
In order to take a more nuanced look at the scenes, this paper then considers the evidence for dance, gesture, and ritual according to several other factors. For example, what are the differences or similarities among male and female dancers and the gestures they employ? What do these variants suggest about gender, sexuality, and the context in which the dancing occurs? Additionally, we explore a few examples where dancers are shown in the presence of the gods and how the presence of the divine lends additional significance to the use of ritualized dance gestures. Throughout these discussions, the matter of the (dancing) body must also be kept constantly in mind. The concept of the ‘Classical ideal’ has long suggested a desire on the part of the ancient Greek artist to convey and display the human body in a particular way. However, dance iconography on vases sets the body in motion and immediately breaks down this way of thinking by juxtaposing the steatopygous (lit. “fat-bottomed”) nude male komast of Archaic art, or the draped “padded dancer” (danseur rembourré) who slaps his bottom, with the elegantly clothed female line-dancer who performs uniformly across time periods. Regardless of category, techniques, or specific examples, the main goal is to question how the vase-painter was able to make dance, both as a concept and as a reality, palpable to the viewer. By recognizing that dance is a special class of ritual – a performance that combines movement, rhythm, facial expression, and music – and accepting the limitations of conveying it as a subject on vases, it is hoped that we may better comprehend the special language of gesture that was employed by ancient Greek artists in a variety of known ancient circumstances.
2 The Modern Stage
The impulse to bring ancient Greek dance to life belongs historically to both scholars and to professional dancers.17 Their attempts and attitudes provide highly relevant background to any contemporary exploration of ancient Greek dance, gesture, and ritual. These rather different groups have in some sense shared a common goal, drawing on a common set of textual and artistic evidence. But, by necessity, they have tackled the problem of translating dance differently. The late 19th century French composer and musicologist Maurice Emmanuel (1862–1938), author of La Danse grecque antique d’après les monuments figures, studied vases and sculpture in order to recreate dance steps, poses and gestures. His book, which also made use of “the serial pictograms of chronophotography”,18 had an enormous impact on modern attitudes to ancient Greek dance, with several generations of reconstructionists (mainly French: L. Séchan, G. Prudhommeau, M.-H. Delavaud-Roux) following in his footsteps – i.e. subscribing to the idea that Greek art, aided by texts, can be used to reconstruct, and ultimately re-perform Greek dance.19 Similarly, musicologist Curt Sachs would claim in 1937 that “The Greeks of antiquity were skilled leap dancers’” based on the examination of a black-figure vase.20 The line-drawings in Emmanuel’s publication serve as instruction manuals that demonstrate gestures and movements in a certain order: thus, one might in theory “dance like a satyr”; or, by observing an ancient vase juxtaposed with a modern woman, one learns to dance and dress “like a maenad”.21 Of direct relevance is Emmanuel’s extensive discussion of gesture, and especially “symbolic and ritualistic gesture” as revealed in ancient Greek art (as distinct from “gestures of every-day life” or “as mere decorative motifs”). He recognized “the dances of the Komos” as an independent category in black-figure painting, at once connected to the gods and belonging to everyday life. For him, the relevant vases fit within the sphere of Dionysos and the consumption of wine, and he even goes as far as describing komast dancers as possible “substitutes for the Satyrs in real life”.22 Such general ideas are no longer widely accepted, as the corpus of komast vases in black-figure has been demonstrated to have a complex iconography with examples deriving from various regional production centres of Archaic Greece. Furthermore, the literal reading of dance images by Emmanuel and others should no longer be considered a valid method in the study of ancient dance. Vases must be understood on their own terms and with regard to the visual vocabulary painters developed to express dance and many other subjects. By the same token, the realization by dance historians that the gestures of dance comprise their own category of ritual, as mentioned above, frees us from the tendency to connect ritual only with religious worship and the lives of the Greek gods, and opens our minds to other circumstances or types of ritual performance.
Concurrent with the modern reconstructionist dance movement, and relevant to understanding ritual, is the contribution to Greek dance history made by professional dancers and instructors of dance. Best known among them is Isadora Duncan (1877–1927), the American who travelled extensively in Europe performing her Greek-style dances and donning ancient costumes. Her concentrated study of ancient Greek vases for what they reveal about the gestural language of dance is well-documented.23 Along with her brother Raymond, and for a time with Eva Palmer (later Sikelianos), another American performance artist who would come to be known for her revivals of Greek drama,24 Isadora settled in Athens at the family compound on the slopes of Mt Hymettos. Isadora was famously photographed in the Theatre of Dionysos and at the Parthenon, where she demonstrated her unique style of ancient dancing. Many scholars have written at length about Isadora’s dancing as well as the influence of both Greek art and dress on her performances and her persona. Vital to the current discussion is her reliance on Greek vases and their images in order to recreate the “gestures, postures, and indications” of the dance: the phora, schēma, and deixis, according to Plutarch.25 In her own writings, reviews of her performances, and still photographs of her ‘in motion’ (Figure 4), the influence of vase iconography is everywhere apparent. Despite her claims to the contrary, even during her life “almost everybody was convinced that she was reviving Greek dance, or was trying to do so”.26 Another key figure is British dance instructor Ruby Ginner (1886–1978), who founded a school of Greek dance and drama in London during WWI, later the Classical Greek Dance Association.27 Ginner was the author of two important books, The Revived Greek Dance: Its Art and Technique (1933) and Gateway to Dance (1960), and it should be noted that the Ruby Ginner Dance Method survives today and is still taught in many parts of the world.28 Like Duncan, Ginner can be associated with the Natural Dance Movement, which included training in the Delsarte method of bodily movement and expression founded by French musicologist François Delsarte.29 But unlike Duncan, for Ginner “the Greek dancer … was by definition a member of a chorus: the collective rather than the solo performer”.30 Choric dance, she writes, belonged to the dramatic stage, and both tragic and comic versions used ritualized gestures that “expressed the emotion of the poem” and, as a result, outstripped the regulated steps of the performers themselves in importance.31 With Irene Mawer, Ginner founded the Ginner-Mawer School of Dance and Drama in London, and by 1918 they held an annual summer school where this interest in the dramatic chorus was further explored through performance. In 1929, when Eva Palmer Sikelianos visited the Ginner-Mawer School, she believed she had witnessed “the true spirit of the Greek school”.32
Isadora Duncan
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: Arnold Genthe, 1915. Digital Image © The New York Public Library Digital CollectionsAnother issue that has plagued the modern study of ancient dance is the assumption – made by both Classical scholars and performers – that texts and images present a tidy and unified picture of ancient Greek dancing. The 1988 doctoral study of dance movement by J. Perkins, which combined the writings of Plato and Aristotle with an analysis of sculpture and vase-painting in an effort to broaden the definition of ancient Greek dance, concluded that “ancient figures … could serve to enrich the repertory of the modern choreographer”.33 Others have assumed that the names and descriptions of dances occurring in literary sources, maintain a one-to-one relationship with artistic representations. Thus, when looking at an image on a vase, we are viewing a specific named-dance from antiquity. A prime example of this trend is represented by Heinz Schnabel’s 1910 study of the comic dance known as the kordax, described by Theophrastus (Char. 6) as vulgar, undignified, and obscene.34 Schnabel proposes that some vases, in particular those showing Corinthian padded dancers (Figures 1, 13, and 14), are evidence of the kordax in visual form. Like other early enthusiasts of Greek dance, Schnabel privileges texts over images, believing that the latter must derive from the former. However, the eclectic and varied nature of the iconographic evidence prevents the universal acceptance of such a suggestion. For example, several scholars have related such dancers with the performance of dithyramb, thus connecting them to Dionysian rituals; while other interpretations point to the cult rituals of other divinities, such as Demeter or Artemis.35 Ancient historian F. Naerebout has written at length about ancient Greek dance and advocates convincingly for the value of considering all kinds of evidence – texts, objects and images – but that the “source material … should be carefully scrutinized, with every type of evidence assigned its own category, and then used to produce an account of ancient dance that leaves antiquarian questions behind and moves on to the question of ‘what dance was all about’”.36
The Classical scholar with the most sustained interest in Greek dance, as evinced by her long list of publications, is Lillian B. Lawler (1898–1990). Lawler’s consideration of the topic is primarily textual, though she does draw on visual evidence, including vases.37 Again, starting from textual description and named-dances, Lawler creates a narrative of dance history that is both chronological and thematic. Her The Dance in Ancient Greece (1964) remains the only introduction to the subject in English, but it is not without problems and her understanding of vase iconography there and elsewhere is overly simplistic. Lawler’s engagement with dance gesture is made obvious through the subjects she addresses in her many published articles: “dancing with the elbows”, “flat hand”, “snub-nosed hand”.38 Her compulsion to match up an ancient dance with a particular image, or a group of images, is consistent with the desire to relate known and lost dramas with artistic depictions.39 Although a trained dancer herself and seemingly interested in Anthropology, she views dance as ritual only when speaking of Bacchic or orgiastic rites, or when witnessed as part of religious festivals and worship.40
The problem of using vases to identify a dance or to re-perform one is inherently complicated: vase-paintings have their own language and vase-painters did not need to rely on texts as direct models. A more useful method of analysis recognizes the dancers on vases as dancers on vases, with particular attention to the information available in the images themselves rather than as translations of a textual tradition or as mirrors of reality.41 Although such an approach has the potential to unveil certain aspects of the artistry, the character or nature of dance, and remind us “that the dancer’s body travels in space”, it should not be mistaken for a literal reading of dancing, performing, or “gesturing.”42 Important to mention too is the scholarship in more recent years that relates dancers on vases with the symposion or other performance contexts. The realization that the setting represented on a vase lends meaning to the dance (as ritual activity), and that the vase itself could have been used during a symposion (as ritual context) expands our thinking about dancing, performing, and gesturing.43
3 Non-Repetitive and Repetitive Routines
There are various types of dancing portrayed on Greek vases, and both dance culture and performance rituals, such as the dramatic chorus, are very well attested in ancient sources. Because non-repetitive and repetitive gestures, and their accompanying movements, were chosen by painters in vase representations, we are able to explore those differences and what they imply in terms of dance and dance-related ritual. By far the greatest quantity of surviving examples are those depicting komast dancers, so named because of their association with the ancient kōmos, a group of males that gathered in association with the symposion and other celebratory occasions. Like the symposion, the kōmos was itself a form of social ritual in which groups of men, young and old, attended parties (often uninvited), provided entertainment, feted athletes, made a clamour in the streets, etc. The figures on vases associated with such activities first appear in late 7th century Corinthian black-figure vase-painting, where they routinely move in full profile, are characterized by their costume (a short red chiton), their somewhat grotesque anatomy (leading to the descriptor “padded dancers”) and, most importantly, their ritualized gesture of bottom-slapping (Figure 1). The same male figures at times exhibit playful gestures and aggressive behaviours (i.e. fighting, leg-pulling, pantomime) that are different from their regular dance routine. The komast emerges in Athenian black-figure painting early in the 6th century, initially as a clothed figure deriving from the Corinthian model. Very quickly Athenian painters dispense with the short red chiton and with the grotesque aspects of the anatomy, preferring fully nude (Figure 2) or partially nude performers – because, like an athlete, the dancer’s body becomes an object of display. In addition to the gesture of bottom-slapping, the first generation of Athenian painters establish a series of dance ‘steps’ and repeat them dozens of times.44 Nonetheless, their dancing style is varied enough within each example to characterize it as non-repetitive, even if intended to portray sequential steps or arrangements.
Throughout the 6th century the bottom-slapping males decorate black-figure vases from other production centres of Archaic Greece, and it can be argued that the profile komast figure is the dancing figure of choice for painters. Dancers of this category inhabit diverse settings largely dictated by a painter’s preference and/or regional concerns. Thus, komast dancers on an Athenian cup, kratēr, or amphora might be inserted into the scene of a symposion where they appear to entertain the guests, participate in sexual activities (Figure 5), and even take a drink themselves. Similar figures are seen attending a religious festival on a Boeotian tripod-kōthōn (Figure 6), where they perform simple moves in conjunction with a procession and an animal sacrifice – occasions at which this elegant ritual vessel may well have been used. In these examples, the dancer is embedded in totally different contexts (symposion, cult), but is immediately recognizable based on the familiar gesture: bottom-slapping has become both ritual and routine. Despite such gestural regularity, in a large number of examples their rhythmic movements seem spontaneous and unrehearsed. Bottom-slapping, be it their actual dance gesture or not, is highly significant visually. Not only is it recognized on black-figure vases from every region, but also it comes to signify – by the painter and for the viewer – that dancing is the intended activity being shown, regardless of imagined setting. Put another way, in 6th century Archaic black-figure vase-painting, if an artist should choose to display male dancing, chances were very high that a bottom-slapping komast would be selected for inclusion in the scene.45 The exact circumstances of performances changed according to geographical locale, but the ritualized (if non-repetitive) gesturing of the komast figure would have left little room for doubt that one was witnessing dance.
Athenian black-figure amphora detail, Tyrrhenian Group, ca. 560 BC. Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen 1432
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: public domainBoeotian black-figure tripod-kōthōn, mid-6th century BC. Berlin, Staatliche Museen F 1727
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: © bpk Bildagentur / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Ingrid Geske / Art Resource, NYThe second major category of dance on vases are those where the performers are organized in rows, lines, or a circle. This type of repetitive dancing, where figures are touching, linked, or join hands, is first recognized in Late Geometric vase-painting and still appears on objects of late Archaic and Classical date. The processional nature of such scenes, and the fact that the participants are most often young girls has generated much discussion about the identity of the figures and the occasions shown. In the earliest versions, it can be noted that the monotony of the figures is consistent with the overall style of Geometric vase-painting (Figure 3), where the duplication of features (animal, human, ornament) is standard, and male dancers may also be included.46 However, on Archaic and Classical vases, lines of females dominate the images, as on East Greek ‘Clazomenian’ wares (Figure 7), in the Corinthian ‘Frauenfest’ series associated with local cult rituals (Figure 8), and on any number of Athenian examples, such as a black-figure pyxis described as a “chain of women holding hands” (Figure 9).47 Interpretations of these images accentuate the role of young girls in cultic or ritual contexts, and an altar or other elements of a religious setting are sometimes included.48 To quote Beaumont: “emphasis is placed on the performance of women and of parthenoi, or pubescent girls of marriageable age. They appear in groups, are dressed in fine and modest apparel, and are linked one to another by joined hands as they move in unison”.49 Where non-repetitive gesture belonged in large part to the male world of kōmos and symposion, repetitive dancing on vases is being practiced by female figures, at different life stages, performing in an overtly religious framework.
East Greek ‘Clazomenian’ amphora, mid-6th century BC. London, British Museum 1888,0208.66
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo © The Trustees of the British MuseumCorinthian oinochoē detail, Anodos Painter, ca. 600 BC. Paris, Musée du Louvre E603
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NYAthenian black-figure pyxis, from Athens, Polos Painter, early 6th century BC. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 316
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Drawing: D. Weiss, after Roberts 1978, pl.1.1On other vases throughout the 6th century, there are scenes where the gestures and poses of dancers are identical, indeed repetitive, but the bodies of individual dancers neither touch nor overlap. Such examples encourage questions about the origins of dramatic performance and how such figures might represent a choros rather than a kōmos.50 According to Naerebout: “A chorus is characterised by moving in unison. In the kōmos on the other hand every participant does his or her own thing – by which I do not mean to say that this would be purely spontaneous uncoordinated movement. In the kōmos too there might be, and most likely were, recurring patterns; also, the dancers will usually not have moved in splendid isolation, but will have coordinated their movements with others in the same kōmos”.51 The fusion of kōmos and choros is evident on the Boeotian black-figure tripod-kōthōn mentioned above, where male komast figures form a chorus-line (Figure 6), or on any number of Corinthian aryballoi, on which draped dancers encircle the object slapping their bottoms simultaneously (Figure 1).52 But, for the most part, in Greek vase-painting the non-repetitive and the repetitive styles of dancing are kept distinct in scenes, include different groups of participants and arrangements, and disclose separate classes of ritual activity.
4 Gender, Sexuality, and Gesture
Having recognized two broad styles of dance on vases, the non-repetitive and the repetitive, and noting a basic division therein between male and female participants, the matter of gender, sexuality, and gesture seems worth pursuing further. This, however, is not as simple as it seems. For a start, we have already observed that females can join males in non-repetitive komast scenes and that males too can perform in monotonous rows. What happens, then, when the boundaries of gender and dance blur and the segregation of male and female ceases to be absolute? The ‘Frauenfest’ vases made in Corinth, and mentioned already, are a case in point. The meaning behind this group of vases has been greatly debated but all would agree based on their iconographic details that images of cult ritual are being portrayed. On the vessels, chains of females are presented in repetitive formation, even if one unexpectedly rotates her body to face the person behind/beside her (Figure 8). The inclusion of cult paraphernalia in some of these scenes indicates that the setting is religious. In some examples, such as a lidded-pyxis in Berlin, the regulated rows of women are joined by komast dancers in short red tunics who demonstrate familiar poses and gestures.53 The vase-painter is careful, however, to separate the males from the females, and thus not to mix the two types of dancing in a single composition. It seems possible that we are viewing discrete moments of a religious festival, either occurring simultaneously, in succession, or on different days; and the painter here, it seems, is using non-repetitive and repetitive routines to emphasize either a temporal progression, a spatial separation, or both. Each type of dancing, with its own set of ritualized gestures, is integral to a grander ritual occasion. The physical separation of the groups on a single vessel further emphasizes the need to juxtapose, yet connect them.
The confusion of male and female roles is observable in the costuming of the dancers. Added to what has already been said about dress, we may observe that Corinthian vase-painters sometimes included fully nude females dancing alongside the draped males, while Athenian painters undress the men and cloth the women. In a few examples, such as a kratēr attributed to the KY Painter, the men and women dance together wearing the identical short chiton.54 Furthermore, the anatomy of both males and females is the same, and all dancers display the exaggerated thighs and buttocks commonly seen on human figures in Archaic Greek art. What, then, distinguishes the boys from the girls? It is the standard convention of black-figure vase-painting to show male figures with dark skin, indicated by the black glaze, and to show women with white skin by applying added paint to their flesh. Although it was long ago suggested that these female dancers are actually men dressed as women, as I have argued elsewhere, they are most likely women dressed as men, sporting their identical clothing and dancing with their same poses and gestures.55 The situation is observable again on a West Greek ‘Caeretan’ hydria, made in Etruria in the mid-6th century, where again males and females dance as a group, but in this instance the males are fully nude and the women wear short garments that expose their genitals and clearly mark their female sex.56 To further accentuate their differences, the painter gives the males and the females dissimilar dance moves. The heterosexual nature of the scenes is comparable to many other black-figure examples where female dancers wear female dress (short, loose garments) in the presence of lightly clad or fully nude male partners.
A related consideration is the inclusion of wine in a number of these images coupled with the fact that many vessels were designed for wine-related activities. We contemplate how intoxication might play a role in the behaviour of the revellers and their female companions as well as in the gestures and movements demonstrated. For example, black-figure amphorae assigned to the Tyrrhenian group often highlight the erotic encounters of the revellers as well as their inappropriate behaviours that might be the result of drunkenness (Figure 5). Furthermore, the poses and gestures of the dancers on this group of vases tend towards the energetic, even acrobatic. A comparable figure described by Oakley as a “drunken reveller” (Figure 10) performs his solo gymnastic routine, cup in hand, on one side of an Athenian skyphos (ca. 500) painted in polychrome (Six’s technique) – his balancing act on a single leg and foot is certainly reminiscent of komastic antics, as are his obviously exposed genitals.57
Fragmentary Athenian skyphos, ca. 500 BC. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 76.AE.127
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: Creative CommonsIn red-figure vase-painting female figures are shown dancing on drinking-cups and occasionally other shapes. Their dress styles vary, yet they have been described as “girls of servile and low-class status whose dance skills were acquired for the purposes of entertainment”.58 These female dancers take on the role of solo performers of an entirely new type. The interior of a late 6th century red-figure cup painted by Epiktetos (Figure 11), where a woman wearing an animal skin holds krotala and dances with hands raised to the tunes of a youthful male aulos-player, has nothing in common with the chains of females on vases discussed previously who prefer repetitive dancing in a linked circle or a line.59 Her unbridled routine is underscored by the fact that she is wearing an animal skin, recalling the dress of entranced maenads. Another Dionysian aspect of her routine is the raised arm gesture, which is commonly practiced by dancing satyrs.60 Because the setting seems to be mortal rather than mythical, we must question the woman’s dress style and what it might suggest about her setting and audience.
Athenian red-figure cup interior, Epiktetos, late 6th century BC. London, British Museum E 38
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: © The Trustees of the British MuseumAnother illustration of this ambiguity is in evidence on a black-figure amphora in New York (Figure 12) attributed to the Kleophrades Painter (ca. 490), with two satyrs dancing in opposite directions who turn back to face a female figure between them.61 The satyrs execute the same gesture and one that is again common to satyr-dances: elbows bent, fists clenched, positioned at stomach level. Ironically, each satyr has the anatomy of a human male komast. The white-skinned female, meanwhile, dances to the right, is fully draped with an animal skin tied over her garment, and holds krotala in one raised hand and ivy branches in the other.62 Again, there is a certain amount of confusion inherent in the scene. The males look like komasts, yet dance like satyrs; the female’s dance is familiar from other vases, making the nature of the scene – mythical, cultic, or dramatic – impossible to discern. Interestingly, the painter uses the animal skin on the female figure in a most extraordinary manner to emphasize the relationship between dance, gesture, and ritual. The skin is tied by two paws at the neck of the dancer, leaving the rest to drape like a cloak down her back. The two paws that hang down look like hands and seem to flare out to the sides with the motion on her dance, as if gesturing towards the two satyrs.
Athenian black-figure amphora, Kleophrades Painter, ca. 490 BC. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 41.162.189 (Rogers Fund, 1941)
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Photo: public domainLike the female dancers on the ‘Caeretan’ hydria mentioned above, the sexuality of male dancers may be obvious or exaggerated. Males perform routines with their genitals exposed, as on a Corinthian kratēr in Paris where draped bottom-slappers revel on both sides of a standing frontal male with legs spread and bent, exposing the viewer to “une variation acrobatique”.63 In other cases, the erect phallus is obvious on figures who continue to dance uninhibited or masturbate publically, their gesture of self-pleasure reminiscent of satyrs.64 As already noted, many komast dancers occur in conjunction with the symposion, and it is arguable that sometimes the symposion setting may be identified based on the combination of dancing and/or sexual encounters, in the absence of other visual indicators (e.g. dining-couches, drinking-vessels, music).65 In the scenes, dancers touch one another while still in motion, engage in homosexual courtship or heterosexual intercourse, while surrounded by revelling companions (Figure 5).
What becomes clear overall is that the sex and identity of some figures remains open to debate and that their gender roles as dancers may differ according to context. In these instances, and in both black-figure and red-figure examples, gesture aids, and must always be used, in defining dance as the intended ritual activity. The separation of dance style along gestural lines, again, not only serves as a visual aid but also as a way to define ritual categories: symposion or cult, informal or formal, ludic or serious.
5 Gods and Myths
When mortal dancers are joined on vases by mythological figures, including the gods themselves, additional interpretative issues arise. Satyrs, for example, have long been associated with komasts and with female dancers, misleading many into believing that Dionysos, as god of wine and drama, is the focus of all dancing activity on vases. However, enough is known about the history of Greek dance as documented in the ancient sources to realize that such a suggestion is highly unlikely because dance was appropriate to everyday occasions, mythological narratives, and religious festivals. With regard to gesture, it seems clear that vase-painters make the deliberate choice to distinguish mortal male revellers from dancing satyrs.66 In some cases, it has been suggested that the satyrs on vases do not belong solely to the realm of mythology; rather, they are men in satyr costumes, taking part in the ritual performances of the dramatic stage. An example of this can be seen on a Corinthian kratēr where a dancer of the typical komastic variety has a face that resembles a satyr or, at the very least, a satyr-mask (Figure 13), yet dances alongside regular revellers. Again, on an Athenian Komast cup by the KY Painter, one of the three clothed male dancers has an unusually long beard, yet he performs with gestures identical to those employed by other mortal komasts by this painter.67 Is it possible on these vases that one of the ensemble is ‘playing the satyr’? Because these figures are many decades earlier than the emergence of formal staged drama, including satyr-plays where chorus members were dressed as satyrs, such scenes might reflect the origins of drama, and the setting of the dance may well be a symposion.68 The painter makes a point of using the standard gestures of mortal male revellers on black-figure vases, combined with elements of costuming, rather than introducing different styles of dance to distinguish the figures.
Corinthian kratēr detail, early 6th century BC. Paris, Musée du Louvre E 632
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Drawing: D. Weiss, after Steinhart 2004, 44, fig. 13Dancing figures also perform their spectacles in the presence of the divine, where no known myth is being shown. A Boeotian lekanis in the British Museum inserts the nude bottom-slappers into a procession of humans and animals towards a statue of the goddess Athena, and it may be concluded that the dancers are taking part in a religious ritual.69 A rather different situation occurs on an Athenian black-figure amphora attributed the Amasis Painter (ca. 540 BC) and now in Paris, on which Dionysos stands, holding his kantharos, facing a pair of well-dressed females who extend offerings towards him.70 Based on the animated movements and lively gestures of the women, it appears that they are dancing before their god. In this well-known example, as in others portraying Dionysos, all figures are linked by touch, adding a sensorial aspect to what is being shown. The women hold up a hare as gift to the god, who in turn touches the animal with his fingertips. Scenes like these are difficult to understand. Are these human maenads honouring their god who greets them as an epiphany; or, rather are these mortal nymphs who attend the deity? A series of scenes by the same painter substitutes fully nude, youthful males, who bring offerings to the same god and dance in his presence. Such figures alongside Dionysos allow us to question how vase-painters might be using touch as a gesture in the scenes that comprise dance and religious ritual.71 It is arguable that the dancers are also taking part in a festival and the god’s embodiment is an indication that he is aware of their presence, pleased to receive their offerings, and a witness to their celebration. “The psychological and spiritual function of dance and movement in religious rituals” is well-studied throughout the world, and there is no reason to assume that the Greeks were immune to making such connections both through lived performative experience and through display in the visual arts.72
Dance gestures on vases acquire new meanings when the figures are included in scenes of mythology or a narrative context. The best-attested story on vases that includes komast dancers is the Return of Hephaistos to Olympos. Various textual sources combined with imagery enable us to recreate the components of the myth in which Dionysos, using wine, entices earth-bound Hephaistos to re-join the Olympians.73 Hephaistos, as god of the forge, is described in literature as lame either in one or both legs. His disability is made obvious by vase-painters who turn one or both of his feet backwards, and set him on the back of an equine in order to accentuate his limitations (i.e. lameness and drunkenness), as on the inside of a Laconian cup from Rhodes where the god sits side-saddle on a mule, holds a drinking-horn, and has two obviously deformed feet.74 The story of the Return is first portrayed on Corinthian vases and from the start dancing figures are added to the scenes. Although the myth with human revellers involved is seen on several black-figure vases from different regions of Greece, on Athenian red-figure vases satyrs replace komasts as members of the god’s entourage. Both types of scenes have been associated with ritual – namely, drama (and its origins) and cult processions connected to festivals of the god.75 Most intriguing, however, are the fully human komasts who dance on lame feet often without either Hephaistos or Dionysos present (Figure 14). The dancers use familiar movements, and most notably they may show off the bottom-slapping gesture. There are various ways to interpret these disfigured dancers. Are they simple imitators of the lame-footed god, who take turns ‘playing Hephaistos’ either as part of a religious ritual or sympotic event? Are such scenes intended to be humorous, acting as performative parodies, and thus related to the beginnings of comic theatre?76 Does their disfigurement further reject the ideal human form? After all, we have already noted that the dancers themselves, at least during the Archaic period, may display grotesque anatomy. Yet another explanation is that dancing in practice can cause disfigurement of the feet, and we may thus be witnessing the appropriation of an acquired disability as a part of gestural language.77 The lame-footed dancers occupy their own category of performance ritual, and one that is unambiguously tied to the divine.
Corinthian oinochoē fragment, early 6th century BC. Corinth, Archaeological Museum, C-73–73a
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Drawing: D. Weiss, after Ziskowski 2012, fig. 56 Dance, Gesture, and Ritual: the Ceramic Stage
Finally, any study of vase-iconography, regardless of focus, must also consider the shape and function of the vessels being decorated, because these remain fundamental to understanding the desires of the artist and his audience. Dance maintains an exceptional position with regard to shape because painters were able to utilize the natural curvature of a vase surface to enhance dance motion and to exaggerate a dancer’s anatomy and gestures. Additionally, a vase’s intended usage in ritual, be it for drinking wine at a symposion, dedicated as a votive offering to Athena on the Acropolis, or deposited in the grave of a deceased individual, may clarify why certain visual choices have been made.78 Because dancing played a part in each of these settings, we have the opportunity to seek out what might be construed as the unique intentions of the artist coupled with the needs of the vessel’s viewer or user. Indeed, the combination of (dance) images and (vase) forms, has the potential to reveal new ways of understanding gesture in performance, and to unlock some of the perceptions of dance in relation to ritual activities, be they social rituals (i.e. symposion/kōmos) in a private setting or religious rituals (i.e. cultic activity, mortuary practices) in a public one.
Interestingly, it is in the category of repetitive dance movement (as opposed to non-repetitive) that we encounter some of the best examples of the interplay between form, function and iconography. Vase-painters take advantage of the round spaces available, both of the interior and exterior of vessels, in order to convey the processional quality of such dances. Repeatedly, vase-painters after the Geometric period choose a shape such as the pyxis (Figure 9) for the circular or line-dance that enables an uninterrupted or continuous composition of performers. The Amasis Painter places this type of scene on the shoulder of a lēkythos now in New York, which shows a wedding procession on the body of the same vessel (Figure 15). In this case, it is easy to argue that the dancers are connected to the wedding, be they honouring the bride or taking part in pre-nuptial rituals.79 There is an important distinction to be made between the pyxis and the lēkythos. On the pyxis the female figures with hands joined form an uninterrupted chain, thus suggesting circular organization. By contrast, the lēkythos has a handle that meets the shoulder creating a natural obstacle: the young women are literally unable to form a circle. The Amasis Painter also places two seated musicians at regular intervals and in harmony with the handle to create three distinct sets of line-dancing girls.
Shoulder of Athenian black-figure lekythos, Amasis Painter, ca. 540 BC. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 56.11.1
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Drawing: D. Weiss, after Lonsdale 1993, fig. 25In his study of Near Eastern dance, Garfinkel is careful to distinguish between “circle dance” and “line dance”, both in artistic representation and in implementation. The former has “all dancers on equal terms”, there is “unified mood and action”, and “each dancer is at the same distance from the center”; while in the latter, the line dance, is an “opening of the circle”, and “the stress is on the progression rather than on dancing around a focal point”.80 With regard to representation he adds that “technically, the depiction of a circle dance is easy to execute on a rounded object, such as a pottery vessel … but very complicated on a flat surface. The opposite is the case when a line dance is depicted …”.81 An Athenian phialē in Boston painted in the white-ground technique (ca. 450; Figure 16), reflects the method used by one painter to compose a line dance within a perfectly round space.82 The tastefully draped females hold each other by the wrist as they move in time to the right behind a pipes-player. They ‘follow’ the musician and their common destination is the lit altar, the very location where the phialē – using the requisite pouring gesture – would have been instrumental in the ritual of making a liquid offering to the divine. We should envision the figures as moving in a line, with a clear beginning and end. It is also possible that their dance is in a circle, surrounding the altar, but the painter being eager to include all of the necessary elements flattens his composition.83
Athenian white-ground phialē, The Painter of London D12, ca. 450 BC. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 65.908 (Edwin E. Jack Fund)
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Photo: public domainBy comparison, the dancers on vases identified with non-repetitive movement, such as the komasts, interact with the vessels they decorate in a variety of ways. On the sides of a Corinthian aryballos (Figure 1) or on the exterior of an Athenian drinking-cup (Figure 2) the large buttocks of the figures are placed at the extreme curvature of the vessel’s surface in order to maximize the anatomical effect. When dancers decorate cup interiors or the inside surface of a plate, painters use several strategies to fill awkward spaces with the animated figures. Laconian artists are among the most creative at populating the round curved cup interior with dancing compositions. Figures revel in straight lines on both sides of a kratēr, dance in a circular formation around a tall, centrally placed musician, or are themselves different sizes, lending unexpected depth and perspective to the scenes.84 With any of these examples we must imagine the way the user of a vessel, the drinker himself, transfers his own gestures onto the object – consumption, party-tricks, drinking-games – as each of these actions is attested visually, and associated with the symposion or with the playfulness of satyrs.85 Dancing females, some with krotala, re-enter the scene on an Athenian white-ground alabastron by the Sappho Painter (ca. 490–480; Figure 17). The cylindrical object has no handles and is small enough to be held easily in one hand. In fact, the viewer becomes a participant in the ritual of the dance, and must turn the object in order to experience the progression of gesture, movement, and music.86 Gestures of performance as the mechanisms of visual communication thus function on several levels: the dance in real space, the dance portrayed by the artist, the moving vase that animates by virtue of its materiality and tactile nature.
Drawing of Athenian alabastron, Sappho Painter, ca. 490–480 BC. University of Illinois, Krannert Art Museum AM 72.13.2
Citation: Greek and Roman Musical Studies 9, 1 (2021) ; 10.1163/22129758-12341377
Drawing: D. Weiss, after Badinou 2003, pl. 39Comprehending gesture in Greek art is a problem neither confined to vases nor unique to dance. Scenes of departure and asylum, pursuit and marriage, death and mourning, all disclose a defined visual vocabulary – a gestural language – connected with ritual activities. Dance most certainly belongs to this list, but as we have seen, it presents a unique set of interpretive challenges.87 Even in theorizing modern dance it is said that “dances by and large simply disappear from memory, or more problematically are transformed by it” and that “dance is more fluid, more transient, and less amenable to codification in history than other arts, including painting …”.88 Nonetheless, the gestures of dance on vases reflect the formality and mood, the context and participants, and enable us to shift priorities away from questions of specific occasions, named routines, or reimagined lost dance events.89 By consistently employing the non-repetitive and repetitive framework to the study of dancing figures on vases, we unlock the patterns and intentions of the painter, distinguish an actuality behind these frozen images of movement, and better appreciate the connective fabric of dance, gesture, and ritual.
Acknowledgments
I thank Carolyn Laferrière and Sarah Olsen, who organized the panel at the annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies (Washington D.C., January 2020) where a version of this paper was presented; Vasso Zachari for encouragement to publish on this topic; Nathalie M. Choubineh for fruitful discussions of female dancers on vases; Dylan K. Rogers and Frederick Naerebout for bibliographical assistance; and Daniel Weiss for help with illustrations. The anonymous reviewers provided helpful feedback and many excellent suggestions. Much of the research for this paper was undertaken while a Visiting Scholar at L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) during Spring 2017. I am grateful to Cléo Carastro, Cecilia D’Ercole, and Gabriella Pironte for allowing me to speak in their seminars, and to the Bibliothèque Gernet-Glotz – Anhima. My thanks are also owed to the Center for Hellenic Studies (Harvard), the British School at Athens, and the Intersectionality Interest Group in the Art Department at the University of Virginia.
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Cf. Figure 9, below. On music and musicians in the scenes, see Smith 2010a, passim.
Smith 2010a, 173f.
Calame 2001; Tölle 1964. See also Hunt 2004, on ancient and modern Greek dance.
For an overview of types, see Lawler 1964; and Bierl 2009, esp. 67–75, on choral dance and ritual.
On the problem: Naerebout 2006.
This problem is compounded by examples in which an isolated dancing figure or a group of dancers are shown on a vase, but they are not actually at that moment engaged in dancing; Smith 2010a, 63f.
See, e.g., Junker, 2012, who encourages careful looking at an image alongside “external aspects”.
See Garfinkel 2003, 15–22, on dance in “a static medium”; Carter 2004; Noland and Ness 2008, xvii.
Wallace 1986, 107–25.
On the former in Athens: Smith 2010a, 66–8, 108–17. On the latter: Calame 2001, 98–101.
Highwater 1992, 13–21. See also Barber 2013, 267–90, on ancient Greek dance and religious ritual, written from the perspective of dance history. The term “religious dance” (as opposed to “secular dance”) is also used, as in Paper 2007, 151f.
For reconstructing early modern dance see Thomas 2004.
Cf. Naerebout 2015, 112–14, on categorisation.
E.g. Gianvittorio 2017b; Ley 2007, 150–67.
Brandstetter 2015, 241f.
Delavaud-Roux 1993, 9–22. Another follower of Emmanuel was ‘dancer-scholar’ M.A. Hincks; Naerebout 1997, 66f., n. 196; and Ley 2007, 162–4, for a more favorable view of Prudhommeau.
Sachs 1937, 26, pl. 12.
Emmanuel 1896, 184f., 202f. See further Smith 2019, esp. 189–95.
Emmanuel 1896, 9, 24–30.
Smith 2010b, 83–9.
Leontis 2019, 154–64.
Cf. Plut. Quaest. conv. 9.747.
Naerebout 1997, 63, and 65f., n. 193, on Anna Pavlova’s study of Greek art in museums. See also Leontis 2019, 68f., 140f.
Ley 2007, 151; Carter 2011.
Mitchell-Smith 2001, 127.
See Naerebout 1997, 64f. n. 190 (‘Körperkultur’); Jowitt 1985–86, esp. 23f.; Daly 2002, 262–4.
Macintosh 2011, 50; Hart 1991.
Ginner 1960, 67–72.
Macintosh 2011, 50.
Perkins 1988, 299. Cf. Delavaud-Roux 2014.
Schnabel 1910.
Smith 2010a, 27f.
Naerebout 1997, 273. His collected “vocabulary of dance” from ancient sources includes movement, steps/kicks, jumps, turns, bends, etc., and also spatial arrangements (ibid. 279–85).
Smith 2020.
Naerebout 1997, 138f.; Ley 2007, 162f; Smith 2010b, 89–91.
Gianvittorio 2017a, 101–3; Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 207–97.
Lawler 1964, chs 6–7. Cf. Ley 2007, 156–62; and Royce 2002, 94–7.
Smith 2010a, 4f. See also Garfinkel 2003, 23f., 28–34, for a similar approach to dance in the art of the ancient Near East.
Naerebout 2006, 40 n. 13; Naerebout 2017, n. 2; and see Ness 2008, esp. 3–13.
Hobden 2016, with bibliography.
Smith 2010a, 52–6.
Despite the changes brought about by the invention of the red-figure technique in Athens during the last quarter of the 6th century, male dance iconography retains an informal feel to the routines and the movement is unregulated. For examples, see Boardman 2001, figs 114, 115, 238, and 240.
Perkins 1988, 249–54; Langdon 2008, 166–74; and Boardman 1998, 23f., and figs 85 and 99.
Boardman, 1998, figs 340ff.; Lewis 2002, 46, fig. 1.26; Pemberton 2000; Roberts 1978, 10, no. 2, pl. 1.1. (Athens 316).
Beaumont 2012, 149–52; and Pemberton 2000.
Beaumont 2012, 168.
Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 258–85; Shaw 2015, 26–55.
Naerebout 2017, 47f., and fn. 1 for the distinction of “so-called komast dancers” from Classical kōmos.
Smith 2010a, 25–7, 161–3.
Lonsdale 1993, 12–16, fig. 4 (Staatliche Museen V.I.4856).
Berlin, Staatliche Museen 1966.17; Smith 2010a, pl. 9c.
Smith 2010a, 64f.
Paris, Musée du Louvre 10.227; Smith 2010a, pl. 39c–d.
Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 76.AE.127; Oakley 2013, 143, fig. 6.
Beaumont 2012, 149. Cf. n. 45, above.
British Museum E 38; Boardman 1975, fig. 75.1.
Cf. satyrs and maenads on an Athenian black-figure ‘Nikosthenic’ amphora (British Museum 1842,0407.22; ca. 530); Oakley 2013, 25, fig. 13c.
Metropolitan Museum of Art 41.162.189; Padgett 2017, 155, fig. 7.
Cf. Oakley 2013, 59, fig. 20.
Musée du Louvre E 620; Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 243f., fig. 93.
E.g. Smith 2010a, figs 14a and 15b (both Tyrrhenian Group).
This line of thinking is complicated, however, by the fact that Greek vases have been discovered in a variety of archaeological contexts (i.e. graves, sanctuaries, cities, etc.), including in the non-Greek setting of Etruscan tombs. See Bundrick 2019.
On dance, repetition, and semiotics: Steiner 2007, 12f., 160f. (kōmos), and 188–90 (satyrs).
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1990.318; Brijder 1991, 473, no. 2, pl. 157f.
Steinhart 2004, 40–9; and see Wyler 2014, esp. 74f., on the human/divine sphere.
London B80; Boardman 1998, fig. 450.
Cabinet des Médailles 222; Boardman 1974, fig. 85; cf. Boardman 2001, fig. 79.
On the visual and material aspects of the subject, see Platt and Squire 2017, esp. 97.
De Marinis 1990.
See Brommer 1978, on textual and visual evidence; Hedreen 1992, ch. 1; and Ziskowski 2012, for a political reading.
Boardman 1998, fig. 419.
Shaw 2015, 30–43; O’Sullivan and Collard 2013, 24.
Smith 2009; Hall 2018.
See Nakajima and Brandstetter 2017; and Wannagat 2015, 45–95, on dancers and disability.
On the regional find-contexts of komast vases, which may or may not reveal their intended primary function, see Smith 2010a, passim.
Metropolitan Museum of Art 56.11.1; Lonsdale 1993, 217f., fig. 25; Webster 1970, 6, no. 123, pl. 5.
Garfinkel 2003, 42f.; and Stansbury O’Donnell 2006, 108.
Garfinkel 2003, 41, and 99.
Museum of Fine Arts 65.908; Lewis 2002, 50, fig. 1.31.
Cf. the interior of an Athenian black-figure cup, ca. 550 (Tarquinia RC 4194) where women (Nereids?) form an enclosed circle with joined hands; Stansbury-O’Donnell 2006, 91, fig. 20, and 108.
Smith 2010a, 129–33.
Lissarrague 1987, ch. 4; Lissarrague 2013, ch. 7.
University of Illinois, Krannert Art Museum AM 72.13.2; Badinou 2003, 156, A8, pl. 39, and 41–7, on space and movement.
Notably, neither McNiven (1992) nor Bremmer (1992) includes dance.
Fleming 2000, 259.
Naerebout 2006, 39f.
