Ancient Greek Chorus

The Trojan Women is the tragedy of change. Troy has fallen, and women wait to be taken to Greece as slaves. The Trojan women have to adapt to this new situation and exhibit their resilience to their sudden change of status. In her words, Hecuba has to peacefully endure her change of fortune (line 101). The Trojan queen is the only character who literally remains in her place throughout the play, while others come and go. She remains still on stage, although she is being struck by blow after blow.
Hecuba, in the face of distress, chooses to adapt and accept her faith. The heroine often emphasizes her difficulty to move which coincides with her inability to dance (lines 98-99, 112-119, 138-139, 149-152, 191-192, 466-468, 506-509). She has only a brief change of heart at the end of the play when she makes a series of sudden movements and attempts to enter the pyre that burns Troy (lines 1271-1283). Hecuba’s resistance to change is considered a sign of temporary madness (line 1284). Her restraint -that goes hand in hand with her limited movements- is further emphasized when contrasted with Cassandra’s frantic choreia that expresses her emotional state (lines 308-340).
It is not a coincidence that in the descriptions of the choral activity of the resilient Hecuba, the kinetic element of her choreia is almost absent. As other scholars have noticed, the kinetic element of choreia that has great potential to express excessive emotions, to excite, and emotionally involve the audience.  In this paper, I suggest that Hecuba is represented in the Trojan Women as a person who tries to successfully adapt to change.  I examine how and to what extent her ‘immobility’ is an expression of her inner world and a manifestation of her successful struggle to face a series of unwanted changes.

In a brief description, the chorus in Greek tragedy was a group of singers and
dancers who entered the stage soon after the play's prologue and stayed there until the
end of the performance, to sing the odes that separated the parts of the tragedy. A deeper
look into this tragic device reveals, however, a living, dynamic and complex organism,
whose functions go far beyond the merely technical aspects of the play. In this article we
revise the modus operandi and the functions of the chorus in Greek tragedy, making use of
excerpts from tragic texts to clarify them. We conclude that the roles of the chorus are
varied and subtle, ranging from amplifying the sensorial appeal of the play through
rhythm, music and dance, commenting the plot, facilitating understanding, encouraging
catharsis, perpetuating moral and traditions, and even working as a meta-referential
element, or a mediator between the public and the actors, among other functions.

The Greek chorus had a fundamental purpose for ancient Greek theater, but with the passing of time and the creation of new acoustic tools and new media, it seemed to disappear through the wrinkles of history. It was 1995 when a popular neurotic director from New York decided to incorporate the lost element of Greek chorus in one of his less-known movies, Mighty Aphrodite.
In this essay, it will be asked how the switch between the media of theatre and one of the films changed the function and use of the Greek chorus, from a transmedial perspective.
To narrow the discussion, several examples of the presence of Greek chorus in contemporary cinematography will be mentioned, but the main focus will be on Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, as it was chosen due to its consistent use of the chorus, which, it will be argued, highlights a proper evolution of this ancient theatrical element.
The theoretical works of Aristotle and his reflections upon imitation will be used to analyze Woody Allen’s style choices, while the works by Christopher B. Balme, Chiel Kattenbelt and Marshall McLuhan will be used to locate the discourse in a transmedial framework.

This paper examines two scenes of Aeschylus’ Supplices (825-910 and 1019-73) where the presence of a secondary chorus is usually assumed. The paper makes three points: (1) ll. 836-42, 847-53 and 859-65 are sung by the Herald, i.e. the same character who speaks trimeters in the next section of the dialogue; (2) the third strophic pair (1052-61) should be assigned as follows: A 1052-4, B 1055, A 1056, B 1057-9, A 1060, B 1061 (already Bamberger); (3) the whole exodic song is performed by the Danaids: the third strophic pair is delivered by two semi-choruses, while the first two are probably sung by the Chorus in unison.

The Bahktinian chronotope, Lacanian theory, and Kristeva’s chora, along with concepts from Derrida and others, combined with research into choreia, Dionysus, rituality, metatheater, performativity and, last not least, philological and literary close-reading, all aided in determining a specific Bacchic chronotope in archaic and classical choral song culture, a new structural interplay of time and space in Greek literature. It is deeply rooted in chorality and choric culture. Dionysus as the total Other, the unconscious, the god of the middle-ground, of mediation and transformation, serves, in a way, as the emblem of this chor(a)ic constellation. From chora emerges choros, his special medium of vitality in performativity. The Bacchic chronotope is permeable, hybrid, fluid and shifting. Moreover, his chora is a space of arrival in procession where the god transgresses boundaries in sudden epiphany.
After identifying briefly the major features of the Bacchic chronotope in the parodos of Bacchae the main focus of the paper is on the fifth stasimon of Antigone, an exemplary tragic song in this regard. This Bacchic chronotope is a whirl of concentric choruses extending even to the cosmic level. It is highly metatragic and a powerful mise en abyme, since it references back to the choral performance executed in honor of Dionysus and displayed in the orchestra of the Athenian theater of Dionysus.

This article questions a longtime credo concerning Plato's Laws, namely that the three choruses introduced in Book 2 are institutions of the dialogue's political project. A detailed analysis of relevant passages shows that the evidence is insufficent. Rather, it is argued, this part of Book 2 is essentially plurivalent: on three separate semantic layers, the choruses illustrate political, moral-psychological and key educational issues of the Laws. Apart from explaining the disappearance of the choruses after Book 2, the proposed reading aims to bring to light an impressively artful philosophical and literary strategy of Plato's.

in: VERONIQUE DASEN, MARCO VESPA (dir.), Jouer dans l’Antiquité classique. Définition, transmission, réception.
Play and Games in Classical Antiquity.
Definition, Transmission, Reception, Presses Universitaires de Liège (Jeu /
Play / Spiel, 2) Liège 2021, 29-47

Paizein (‘to play’) is one of the termini technici for dancing in Greek culture. This paper explores the anthropological implications of this intriguing fact. After a glance on Plato’s explanations and its use in archaic poetry, the author investigates how this notion stands in accordance and in contrast to the poetics of Greek tragedy and in what way it is more appropriate for comedy and satyr play. The exuberance of playing children (paides) expresses the gay happiness of the comic atmosphere and the activities of the satyrs who, to some extent, seem to be re-projected to their status as children. Tragedy, on the contrary, besides its alleged origins in Dionysian ritual, seems to have little to do with pure paizein as joyous self-expression in dance. Therefore it possesses a much greater tendency to subordinate the quintessentially playful dance to the dramatic role full of suffering. However, the purely ritual and choral nucleus of tragedy as paizein tends to become manifest in choral songs about Dionysus, especially when the god is mentioned together with Nymphs and Maenads as notional parthenoi. Paizein like khoreia as a whole has to do with education, internalization and habituation of sexual and gender roles by young persons. Through performative foils, models, distortions, myths, narratives and body scripts young members of the society received a tool to apprehend and internalize the gender-role that is expected from them as well as to experiment with counter-worlds. Especially girls are envisioned in playful dance to display their sexual attractiveness. Beauty is the central value that maidens are about to assume in processes of habituation. The cultural re-workings of rites of passage in single or choral dance and play possess a huge role in the acculturation and appropriation of the expected behavior, not just by words but in a multimodality where the body as medium of dance is decisive.

Tragedy takes its beginning from the ‘satyric’ and choral forms. As a dance genre that is strongly defined by the chorus, the satyr play, allegedly introduced later in order to compensate for the impending loss of a connection to Dionysos, continually relates back to its own performance.
How choral self-references function in connection to their specific embedding in a purely Dionysian context, which is strengthened through further ritual allusions, can be demonstrated nicely through the example of a fragment that is still controversial in its assignation as a satyr play: the so-called Hyporchema by Pratinas of Phleius (TrGF I 4 F 3). The new awareness of its performative and deictic phenomena as well as its playful character, which lends expression to the paradoxical, ambivalent Dionysian potential of the satyrs, i.e., dissolving order while simultaneously confirming it, makes it very probable that this fragment belongs to the genre of the satyr play and not the dithyramb, as many interpreters believe.

Both in the work of Pratinas, as well as in the Cyclops, the damming up and subsequent, explosive release of energy in dance and movement ensue as a genre-determining pattern that is linked to rituals and myths of Dionysus. Continuous choral self-references underscore its specifically Dionysian aspect in the context of the theater. In this way, it becomes evident that the satyr play stages how this carnal energy is acted out in ever new variations of its plot embedding.

The early fourth century was a period of determinative transformations for Greek comedy. Aristophanes’ last extant plays (Ecclesiazusae, Wealth) seem old-fashioned, still clinging to the modes of Old Comedy while contemporary comic drama was moving towards new directions (mythological burlesque, domestic comedy of stock characters and recurring plots). In his two final plays, Kokalos and Aiolosikon, Aristophanes acceded to the new tendencies, taking up myth burlesque and introducing love-affairs and recognitions. The most influential factor conditioning the form of comic drama in the fourth century was the diffusion of Athenian comedy in the entire Hellenic world (“pan-Hellenization”). This is attested by archaeological finds (South-Italian vases illustrating Attic comedies, widely diffused terracottas of stock comic personages, festival inscriptions of various cities), as well as by literary authors referring to theatrical events in the Macedonian court and elsewhere. The huge productivity of the major fourth-century comic poets is explained as a response to an equally great demand for plays posed by cities and festivals all around Greece. The comic poets became professionals that earned their living from the theatre. The decline of political mockery in fourth-century comedy was largely a result of this new reality. Full-scale political plays became extremely rare: the last specimens are concentrated in the time of the Macedonian expansion, which sparked off a serious political crisis in Athens and reinvigorated to some extent political playwriting. Otherwise, the references to political figures and affairs are only incidental jokes inserted in comedies with entirely different plot (e.g. myth burlesques or domestic plays), in order to give topicality to the script. The comic playwrights knew that their plays had to appeal to broader, pan-Hellenic audiences; a comedy concentrating on Athenian political affairs would have no chance of such broader success. Similarly, the decline of choral parts is connected with the new conditions of travelling troupes performing their repertoire in various cities. These troupes usually did not carry along their own chorus but expected to collaborate with a chorus locally provided by each festival. The time available for rehearsal of these choruses with the actors would have been very limited. This led to a drastic restriction of choral parts, eventually reducing them to mere interludes.

This paper argues that the Grex in Jonson’s 'Every Man Out of His Humour' synthesises the spatial configurations and theatrical privilege of the Aristophanic chorus with the personae of the Roman verse satirists, creating a satirical composite that eschewed personal attacks in favour of a more generalised mockery of foolish figures not only within the play but in the audience too. The idea that stage and page satire provides a mirror for its audience is key here, but Jonson complicates the metaphor, breaking his theatrical mirror and sharing among a series of characters, a dramaturgical strategy that problematises both authorial and audience privilege.

In the context of Greek tragedy, the study of the dramatic chorus still raises a number of issues related to its interpretation and function in the dramatic action. Its introduction in adaptations and free interpretations in contemporary theatre may render it as an anachronistic element. The aim of this work is to analyse the renovation experienced by the Spanish theatre in the 20th century, when the Greek tragedy played a pivotal role as reflected in the works by Arcadio López Casanova (Orestes, 1960) and Maria Josep Ragué (Clitemnestra, 1985), which comprise the corpus of this study.

There are worldwide not too many scholars who are concerned with ancient Greek dance, and Choreutika is the product of the cooperation among a number of them. This book presentation, which is based on the introduction of the volume, is to say which kind of research void Choreutika tries to fill and to outline its main issues and goals. http://www.engramma.it/eOS2/index.php?id_articolo=3174

Greek religious festivals were multi-sensory social practices involving the whole of the human senses beyond the visual cues of place and action. The festivals at the sanctuary of Apollo of Delos were distinguished by a rich aural environment of ritual performances including song and music and of linguistic affluence. The Delia included musical contests of rhapsodic recitation and dancing, paeans and music accompanied the processions sent by the city-states, choruses sang of gods and men. Other local Delian cults also relied on hymns, dance and music. Who then were the performers and the public of such musical and lyric rituals? Delos was considered the ethnic sanctuary of Ionian Greeks, but literary and archaeological data rather reconstruct the profile of a regional Cycladic sanctuary, in fact an ethnically permeable religious hub for the Aegean. The cultic community at Delos should be understood in its diversity of dialects and cultures since the archaic age, when the Delian maidens were praised for imitating the tongues of all men and their clattering speech (h.Hom. h.Ap. 162f.). What perception did these participants have of the aural environment of Delian festivals? The songs addressed the centrality of Delian Apollinean cult, but the paeans of the city-state’s theoriai added unique expressions of self-identification; and, beyond words, the linguistic, stylistic, and musical features of the performances did evoke diverse cultural messages in their own. From the perspective of auditive sensory experience, the Delian festivals are a statement of pan-Hellenism, not so much in purporting a common Hellenic ethnic identity, but rather expressing the communion and communication among the multiple intra-Hellenic ethnic and cultural identities of the Greeks who shared into the cult of Delian Apollo.

Оваа монографија за хорот во хеленската трагедија од проф. д‐р Весна Томовска е позната и користена литература веќе подолго време, уште пред да биде објавена во облик на книга. Станува збор за докторат, одбранет под истиот наслов на Филозофскиот факултет во 2003 година. Но потребата од повеќе примероци се покажа значителна во текот на годините што следуваа, како за студентите така и за оние класични филолози и истражувачи што се занимаваат со античката книжевност и особено за оние чиј потесен интерес се античката драма и античката лирика. Античката драма заедно со епот и со лириката ја сочинуваат хеленската книжевност. Драмата како книжевен род се создава временски последна во оваа низа и поради тоа покажува сложена структура, која интегрира два елементи: песна и говор, кои во епот и лириката се користат поединечно и исклучително. Во драмата песната се исполнува преку хорот, а говорот преку драмските лица. Тие елементи се во симбиотска врска во античката драма и не може да се разгледуваат изолирано.

From archaic Sparta to classical Athens the chorus was a pervasive feature of Greek social and cultural life. Until now, however, its reception in Roman literature and culture has been little appreciated. This book examines how the chorus is reimagined in a brief but crucial period in the history of Latin literature, the early Augustan period of the 20s and teens BCE. It argues that in the work of Horace, Virgil, and Propertius, the language and imagery of the chorus articulate some of their most pressing concerns surrounding social and literary belonging in a rapidly changing Roman world. By re-examining seminal Roman texts such as Horace's Odes and Virgil's Aeneid from this fresh perspective, the book connects the history of musical culture with Augustan poetry's interrogation of fundamental questions surrounding the relationship between individual and community, poet and audience, performance and writing, Greek and Roman, and tradition and innovation.

This paper calls into question a long-lasting but ill-founded tenet of Platonic scholarship, namely that Plato was not interested in, or aware of, the technical implications of the musical concepts he employed in the dialogues. By contrast, I will show how he exploited the technical features of the musical concept of symphōnía dià pasôn, in order to highlight the unique role played by temperance (sōphrosýnē) in the ideal city. More precisely I will argue that Plato’s musical images, far from being decorative or purely metaphoric devices, enrich our understanding of the ethical notion they depict precisely by means of their technical and performative implications, which were very familiar to the original readers of the Republic. Hence musical theory and practice, in addition to being central elements of the cultural context in which Plato’s reflections must be interpreted, represent also a repertoire of concepts that significantly informed his philosophical theories.

This paper argues that the interplay between the narrative and performance of Pindar’s eighth paean embeds it within the physical environment of Delphi, at the site of the Alcmaeonid temple for which it was composed. The use of choreographic and musical images to describe the temple’s mythical predecessors merges with the chorus’s own choreia, which thus has a doubling effect, visually and acoustically overlaying the Alcmaeonid temple with these older structures in a complex interaction of real and imagined space.

On the example of modern productions of Agamemnon this paper attempts to show to what degree the presentation of the chorus and the intellectual trends of specific epochs are mutually dependent. In other words it argues that theatre engages with and transforms modern cultural discourses in ways pertinent to its generic parameters. The pivotal role of the chorus in ancient tragedy makes its modern staging a particularly good example to show this. Anton Bierl tries to sketch a development which applies not only to this paradigmatic play but also to the rest of the trilogy and all the other tragedies; in the days of political engagement and semiotics of the 1970s and 1980s the choral realizations were focussed on forms of Sprechtheater. Simultaneously with the 'performative turn' there are serious efforts toward an adequate understanding of the performative, ritual and synaesthetic dimension of the chorus. In this new perspective we wonder again: How can we know the dancer from the dance? And parallel to this creative and performative handling of the chorus in productions of ancient tragedies we can speak of a renaissance of the theatrical means of the chorus on the German as well as European stage in the 1990s. For the German theatre one only recalls such authors as Einar Schleef, Frank Castorf, Botho Strauß or Christoph Marthaler. Last not least it became obvious that ancient tragedy and, within it, the exemplary Agamemnon (and the Oresteia) are at the forefront of theatrical experimentation and developments across Europe because of their close otherness as well as privileged position in Western theatre.

The fascination for recreating historical artistic modes has stimulated the development of styles and aesthetics in dance. Like trying to form a tradition and, at the same time, go back in time, such procedures postulate what are called 'constructed genealogies': expressive mediations between the past and present. In this paper, I discuss these genealogies through the study of recent reinterpretations of Greek dance.
O fascínio por retomar modos artísticos históricos tem impulsionado a elaboração de estilos e estéticas na dança. Buscando formar uma tradição e, ao mesmo tempo, se inserir no tempo, tais empreendimentos postulam o que podemos chamar de genealogias construídas, ou seja, mediações expressivas entre passado e presente. Neste artigo, procuro debater estas genealogias por meio do estudo de recentes reinterpretações da dança grega.

Chorus, myth and tragedy. What is the connection between these three elements when one reads Euripides´Phoenician Women? This article aims to examine how the choral activity affects the dramatic action within this play. The chorus takes upon itself above all the task of reporting the mythical tales which enclose all the theban history from its foundation down to the present moment of the plot. I argue that the myth perform and consolidate tragic meanings in the course of the action.

Résumé :
Le nō et la tragédie grecque ancienne ont souvent été comparés et décrits avec un vocabulaire commun. Ainsi en va-t-il du groupe de chanteurs du nō assimilé dès l’ère Meiji par les intellectuels européens à un « chœur ». Le retour aux catégories et aux pratiques japonaises remet en cause cette assimilation. En comparant deux pièces qui partagent une thématique commune, le nō Shunkan et le Philoctète de Sophocle, nous pouvons explorer les différences des deux traditions. Nous constatons que le groupe de chanteurs du nō (ji-utai) ne correspond pas au chœur grec : il s’agit non pas de choreutes mais d’un groupe choral, non pas de personnages, mais de la voix collective d’un récitant.

Abstract :
The comparison between ancient Greek tragedy and noh is a commonplace that led modern scholars to share the same vocabulary for both traditions. The use of the word “chorus” is an example of this assimilation going back to the Meiji era. However, if we turn to the Japanese categories and to the scenic tradition of noh, we discover another reality. When comparing concretely two apparently similar plays, the noh play Shunkan and a tragedy, Sophocles’ Philoctetes, we discover that the differences overcome the similarities. The group of singers in the noh (ji-utai) has nothing to do with the tragic chorus: they could be described not as a chorus but as a choir, not as a group of characters, but as the collective voice of a storyteller.