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The survival of the popular folk-dances enables us to observe their choreographic patterns in succession, with their asyounding power of suggesting the atmosphere of the past and their astounding concentration of expression - patterns going back to the traditions of whole millenia. ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

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The original compositions in this book were inspired by the ancient Greek dances. Most of them are still alive today with modern names in dance companies throughout Greece. The dances of the ancient times were characterized as dances of war or dances of peace. The latter are distinguished as dances of theater, religious and worship, martial dances, symposia dances, mourning dances, etc. Each type of presentation - tragedy, comedy, and satirical play - had its characteristic dances, some staid and solemn, others featuring lewd miming. ... Read more

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This book develops an authentic and at the same time revolutionary musical analysis of ancient Greek poetry. It departs from the abstract metrical analyses of the past in that it conceives the rhythmic and harmonic elements of poetry as integral to the whole expression, and decisive in the interpretation of its meaning. David offers a thoroughgoing treatment of Homeric poetics: here some remarkable discoveries in the harmonic movement of epic verse, when combined with some neglected facts about the origin of the hexameter in a "dance of the Muses," lead to essential new thinking about the genesis and the form of Homeric poetry. He also gives a foretaste of the fruits to be harvested in lyric by a musical analysis, which applies a new theory of the Greek tonic accent and considers concretely the role of dance in performance. ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Thorough examination of the function of dance in Ancient Greece
This book examines the function of dance in ancient Greek religion. It does a very thorough job of examining it's function in various parts of worship.There are many translations of historical references in the text but also very good analysis of what the passages imply.It certainly gave me a very good understanding of how dance fit into religious life in Greece but I wish it had also gone onto discuss specific dances as well.The book covers an array of human transitions and how dance played a functional role in them such as the transition from being a boy to a man or a girl to a woman.It covers dance as it relates to both fertility/childbirth and death as well.I loved that it covered so many of the functions dance had in Ancient Greece.The only problems I had with this book (and subsequently the reason why it received only 4 stars) were that the author sometimes seemed to really be driving a point sometimes and in doing so sometimes reiterates his point far too much.Secondly, he gets a little wordy from time to time to the point where I found after having read the page I really didn't know what he was talking about anymore as I had gotten lost somewhere in the middle of what he was trying to say.I also thought he brought Plato's laws into play little too much and although I think he did an excelent job demonstrating how Plato's laws reflected the functionality and purpose of dance in Ancient Greece it seemed at times as though he was trying too hard. ... Read more

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When the eighteenth-century choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre sought to develop what is now known as modern ballet, he turned to ancient pantomime as his source of inspiration; and when Isadora Duncan and her contemporaries looked for alternatives to the strictures of classical ballet, they looked to ancient Greek vases for models for what they termed 'natural' movement. This is the first book to examine systematically the long history of the impact of ideas about ancient Greek and Roman dance on modern theatrical and choreographic practices. With contributions from eminent classical scholars, dance historians, theatre specialists, modern literary critics, and art historians, as well as from contemporary practitioners, it offers a very wide conspectus on an under-explored but central aspect of classical reception, dance and theatre history, and the history of ideas. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Chapters: The Birds. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 37. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Birds (Greek: Ornithes) is a comedy by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed in 414 BCE at the City Dionysia where it won second prize. It has been acclaimed by modern critics as a perfectly realized fantasy remarkable for its mimicry of birds and for the gaiety of its songs. Unlike the author's other early plays, it includes no direct mention of the Peloponnesian War and there are few references to Athenian politics and yet it was staged not long after the commencement of the Sicilian Expedition, an ambitious military campaign that had greatly increased Athenian commitment to the war effort. It is the longest of Aristophanes' surviving plays and yet it is a fairly conventional example of Old Comedy. Short summary. Pisthetaerus, a middle-aged Athenian, persuades the world's birds to create a new city in the sky, thereby gaining control over all communications between men and gods. He is miraculously transformed into a bird-like figure and, with the help of his friends, the birds, and with advice from Prometheus, he soon replaces Zeus as the pre-eminent power in the cosmos. Detailed summary. The play begins with two middle-aged men stumbling across a hillside wilderness in search of Tereus, a king who was once metamorphosed into the Hoopoe. They are fed up with life in Athens, where people do nothing all day but argue over laws, and they hope to make a new start in life somewhere else. They believe that the Hoopoe can advise them where that might be. They have almost given up the search when, in response to their antics, a very large and threatening-looking bird emerges from a camouflaged bower, demanding to know what they are up to and accusing them of being bird-cat...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=304147 ... Read more