In ancient Greece, dancing had a central civilian, artistic, pedagogical, and ritual function. It was present in all the “Mysteries” of the time, a term used to describe initiatory religions of an occult nature, which enabled neophytes to move from the secular to the sacred world. Among the most important Mysteries in which dance played a key role were the Dionysian Mysteries, cults dedicated to Dionysus.
According to the myth, the god was born to Zeus and a mortal woman, Sèmele. When his mother died before giving birth to him, Hermes sewed him into Zeus' thigh, where he could mature until his birth. The name Dionysus, in fact, means “born twice.” After his birth Zeus entrusted him to the nymphs of Mount Nisa in Helicon, who raised him as a son. There, upon reaching adulthood, he discovered the vine and its use. He began to wander all over the world, teaching viticulture, making women rebellious and wild. With a frenzied group of Satyrs and Maenads he arrived in Egypt, Syria and Phrygia, a region where he learned from the goddess Cybele the dances that became a key component of his rituals. At Thebes, in Boeotia, he introduced the Bacchanalia, festivals in which the entire people, invaded by a mystical delirium, traveled through the countryside hurling ritual cries. After the whole of Boeotia accepted his cult, Dionysus succeeded in establishing its rule throughout the world, punishing with vengeful fury anyone who tried to oppose the introduction of the rites. His power was finally recognized by all, and the god was able to ascend to Olympus, where he also had his mother, recovered from the Underworld realm, ascend.
God of wine, ecstasy and intoxication, Dionysus enjoyed great veneration throughout archaic and classical Greece. The cults in his honor were attended by a loyal procession of Maenads, literally “women in rage”, also called Bacchae or Thyiads. In depictions of the time, they are crowned with ivy, oak or laurel and carry in their hands the thyrsus, a tall staff wrapped in ivy or vine leaves that represented their emblem. Ritual clothing was the nebris (fawn skin), which had the dual function of protection from the cold and identification with the animal world. A fundamental element of the Dionysian Mysteries was the oreibasìa (literally “going for the mountains”), in which the Maenads, dominated by furious passion, ran through forests and valleys wielding thyrsus. The ceremony ended with an ecstatic dance accompanied by frenetic rhythms that promoted their arousal through the sound of flute, drum and percussion instruments, such as the timpani, cymbals and crotales, similar to castanets. It was not a matter of frenzy, or a simple state of intoxication, but of enthousiasmòs: “the condition of having god within oneself”. Indeed, it was believed that Dionysus could actually enter the Maenads, taking possession of their minds and bodies.
A fundamental step in the dance, which was performed barefoot or with low sandals, was a fast walk that became a run as the fervor increased. It would also seem that at a certain time the dancers would hop on one foot, in what is called the Dance of the Cranes (or Partridges), found in many other Mysteries related to the underground deities. The ritual use of "limping," or walking on one foot, signified having had contact with the Realm of the Dead, and initiation into the Dionysian Mysteries itself was marked by the dramatization of the novice's death and rebirth.
Actually, the Bacchic dance was mainly characterized by movements and bending of arms, torso and head, rather than steps. In fact, in most depictions the head bends or turns to look back. According to Kerényi, the rocking of the head allows one to reach a special state of suspension, a kind of ecstasy, and to experience at the same time sensations of sexual pleasure. Such rocking was accompanied by the tipping back of the hair, a manifestation of intense enthusiasm.
Then streams the earth with milk, yea, streams
With wine and nectar of the bee,
And through the air dim perfume steams
Of Syrian frankincense; and He,
Our leader, from his thyrsus spray
A torchlight tosses high and higher,
A torchlight like a beacon-fire,
To waken all that faint and stray;
And sets them leaping as he sings,
His tresses rippling to the sky,
And deep beneath the Maenad cry
His proud voice rings:
"Come, O ye Bacchae, come!"
Euripides, The Bacchae
The dances took place in the winter months, at night and in mountainous areas, especially on Mount Parnassus, near Delphi. The women who participated came from all over Greece: not only Delphi and the surrounding districts, but also Athens and other remote places. The rigidity of nature and the possession of Dionysian women - a possession that manifests the fullness of an almost unlimited energy - meet and complement each other. It is as if, even more exalted and out of themselves by the harshness of the petrous winter world, they have conjoined in themselves at once maximum movement and maximum rigidity. In many artistic representations the poses assumed by the Maenads are angular, with the elbow sharply bent, indicating a swift and decisive movement of the arms, while in others the arms are straight, or slightly curved.
Dancing whirlingly, as if in the grip of irrepressible energy, the Maenads released psychosomatic energies drawn from the deep, in a cult of life celebrated by the body. Through dance they manifested a strong desire to assert their identity and independence from their husbands: a primordial sign of emancipation, a stand against society's. «I have let fall the shuttle by the loom, and raised my hand for higher things, to slay from out thy land wild beasts!» states Agave in Euripides' Bacchae. Women, discriminated against by social and political life, leave the house and the loom and take refuge in the mountains. There, no one forces them to the rules of the family, no one oppresses them. They regress to the state of nature: they dress in animal skins, hunt, dance and forget the family. They celebrate the arcane joys of their obtained condition by overriding the narrow boundaries of existence. They are both free though possessed: this is the paradox.
Dance offered them the chance to forget their condition, contributing to the physical and mental liberation of the drudgery of daily life, albeit momentarily. Dionysus, in fact, is an anti-masculine god, defender of the feminine in the course of the imposition of Patriarchy on Matriarchy. His cult is configured as an instrument of revolt, punishment and revenge against the male social state.
Just as the women in Euripidean tragedy drew strength from their association with Dionysus, so too did the historical Bacchae enjoy privileges within the cult. In addition to participation in the dances, introduction to the Dionysian Mysteries offered them the opportunity to socialize with other women outside their immediate neighborhood and enter the public sphere without compromising the respectability afforded them by isolation.
Dance, music, and trance are primordial elements of the experience of the sacred, which historical religions have since almost completely set aside and yet were fully vital in classical Greece. While the original spirit of dance, its sacred and ritual value, is no longer easily found in contemporary times, the freedom of body expression in today's dance is an achievement and a return to the more distant past. Isadora Duncan, and later Doris Humphrey, would identify the undulating and continuous quality of movement, a dominant feature of ancient Greek dance and art, as the essence of real movement and human being.
Dance unites gods and men
at the same level of being.
Karl Kerényi
Written by Bianca Pasquinelli.
Translations: Text translated into English by Alberto Rabachin and Bianca Pasquinelli,into Spanish by Matteo Mascolo.
Bibliography:
- Arnold Van Gennep, I riti di passaggio, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin 2012, (I ed. Les rites de passage, Émile Nourry, Paris 1909).
- Doriano Modenini, Mitologia e significati delle presenze, luoghi viaggi ideali nel mondo antico, Spazio Tre, Rome 2000.
- Joseph Campbell, Le figure del mito. Un grande itinerario illustrato nelle immagini mitologiche di ogni tempo e paese, Red, Como 1991 (I ed. The mythic image, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1974).
- Euripide, Baccanti, Feltrinelli, Milan 2014, curated by Laura Correale, (I ed: BAXKAI).
- Lillian B. Lawler, The dance in Ancient Greece, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown 1965.
- Lillian B. Lawler, The Maenads: A Contribution to the Study of the Dance in Ancient Greece, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown 1965.
- Jenna M. Colclough, “The revels we shared in the days that are gone”: Examining female participation in the cult of Dionysos in ancient Greece and Rome, degree thesis, Acadia University, Wolfville, 2017, online: https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses%3A2069
- James Hillman, Le storie che curano. Freud, Jung, Adler, Raffaello Cortina, Milan 1984, (I ed. Healing fiction, Station Hill Press, New York 1983).
- John Martin, La Modern Dance, Di Giacomo Editore, Rome 1991 (I ed. The Modern Dance, A.S. Barnes & Co., New York 1933).
- Aldo Carotenuto, L’anima delle donne, Bompiani, Milan 2001.
- Karl Kerényi, Dioniso. Archetipo della vita indistruttibile, Adelphi, Milan 1992 (I ed. Dionysos: Urbild des unzerstörbaren Lebens, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1976).
- Giulio Guidorizzi, La follia sacra, 2020, available at the link: https://www.fondazionevalla.it/approfondimenti/la-follia-sacra/
- Laura Gianvittorio, Choreutika. Performing and theorising dance in Ancient Greece. Presentation of the volume, Pisa-Rome 2017, in «Engramma», Dionysus Beyond Borders, n. 148, 2017, online: http://www.engramma.it/eOS/index.php?id_articolo=3174
- Pierre Grimal, Dioniso, in Enciclopedia della Mitologia, Italian ed. curated by Carlo Cordié, Garzanti Libri, Milan, 2004, 39 voll., ad vocem, vol. 33.
Comments