« Corporeal Technologies » in Graeco-Roman Pantomime Dancing
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1One of the greatest aesthetic attractions in the post-classical world was pantomime dancing, a ballet-style form of stage entertainment predicated on the human body’s silent delineation of action, character and passion. It featured a masked, (usually) male dancing soloist, who impersonated in close succession a series of mythical characters (both male and female) to the accompaniment of instrumental music and verbal narrative – partly recited and partly sung by a chorus. What set pantomime apart from every other performative genre was the fact that its principal meaning creating instrument was not the human logos but the human body. With every nerve and muscle under perfect rhythmical control, the dancing soloist reached out to his audience by means of an affective vocabulary of steps and gestures. “Speaking through the entrancing quiver of the palm1”, he was master of a “wonderful art” (mirabilis ars)2, which intrinsically downplayed verbal language as a mode of communication in favour of conversing “through gesture, nod, leg, knee, hand and spin3” and especially by means of the “articulate silence4” of his “speaking fingers5”, “palms that take the place of a mouth6” and “multiply expressive hands7”. One of the few aspects of Graeco-Roman pantomime on which our sources are unanimous is the perception of such dancers as possessing “as many tongues as limbs8”. In the eyes of its admirers, the pantomime’s corporeal eloquence was even able to bring to life those ineffable regions of human feeling and experience that verbal language could never reach: “by means of gestures it makes intelligible what could hardly be expressed by means of oral narrative or written text9”, enthuses Cassiodorus, in the sixth century AD.
2Unravelling the secrets of pantomime’s corporeal dramaturgy is not an easy task, because of the treacherous nature of our primary sources: they are not objective accounts, reproducing in descriptive terms the spectacle’s artistic and cultural parameters, but documents engaged in their own discursive struggles, pulling pantomime into their own orbit and projecting onto it their own culturally conditioned anxieties and fears10. The present essay’s engagement with primary sources is twofold. Sections 1 and 2 deals with sources which either do not have an explicit anti-pantomime axe to grind or refract imaginatively the pantomime experience in their own, nonpantomime related, narratives. Section 3, conversely, takes a plunge into turbulent waters in order to offer a glimpse of the kind of problems a researcher encounters when s/he attempts to reconstruct the pantomime’s body with the aid of narratives which are overtly prejudiced, such as those affiliated to the early Church’s anti-theatrical polemic. In both cases, my primary interest does not lie in the reading of cultural perceptions of the pantomimic body but in ways in which we can piece such perceptions together in order to reconstruct the physical underpinnings of the pantomime’s art or, as Ruth Webb has put it, “restore the corporeal dimension to an art form that is known to us almost entirely through words11”.
Pantomime dancing and the aesthetics of the body “in transition”
3If we were somehow able to ask the average theatre-goer in imperial Rome what he considered as pantomime’s elemental core, I have no doubt the answer would be: the dancer’s extreme mimetic flexibility, his ability to “fashion himself into everything by means of the dance12”, rivalling even the shape changer Proteus13, and splitting his single body into a multiplicity of characters14 emerging from and through each other15 in succession:
“Indeed, the most amazing aspect of it all is that on the very same day we are shown at one moment Athamas in the throes of madness, at another Ino in terror; the same person is now Atreus, a little later Thyestes, then Aegisthus or Aerope. And all these (characters) are (in reality) a single man”,
4argues the pantomime admirer Lycinus in Lucian’s On the Dance16. Most importantly, however, what seems unique to pantomime is the genre’s sustained focus on the very process of metamorphosis–a theme grafted, almost self-reflexively, onto a substantial number of pantomime plots. As Lucian stipulates, the dancer
“will not fail to know all the fabulous transformations, the people who have been changed into trees or beasts or birds, and the women who have turned into men, I mean Caeneus and Teiresias and their like17”,
5together with all the “forms into which Zeus changed himself” in the course of his adulterous love affairs18.
6Changed into trees or beasts or birds… What could this possibly mean in performative terms? If we did miraculously acquire a time machine in which to travel to a Roman theatre while a saltator danced Cadmus or Daphne or Deucalion and Pyrrha19, what do we think we would see? Perhaps the coiling, creeping, gliding motions of a Cadmus slowly turning into a snake? Feet taking root and arms changing by shades into branches to depict a Daphne gradually changing into a tree? Stones growing progressively soft, relinquishing their rigidity in order to re-enact Deucalion’s re-population of the earth after the flood? Or would each transformation have been shown to us only when completed, denying us thus the thrilling moment of transition?
7Let us first take a look at this precious extract from Sidonius Apollinaris, which offers a glimpse of the pantomime in the role of jealous Mars transformed into a wild boar before slaying Adonis:
“Roughening his head and back with bristles, curving the smooth ivory upward from his shaggy jaws, and the hairy-backed monster is shown sharpening his up-bent weapons by diligent rubbing20.”
8It may well be the case that what we have here is simply Sidonius’recollection of the way in which star pantomimes of his day21 danced out the boar in action, as it was preparing to charge. If we were to shift the angle ever so slightly, however, we might be able to read Sidonius’description as informed by his vivid impression of a pantomime’s body in the midst of its effort to translate into visible, corporeal terms the divine character’s transformation into a boar, as required by the libretto’s narrative. What we have here may be the poetic distillation of Sidonius’amazement at the dancer’s attempt to act out, blow by blow, the physical journey of the human frame towards a shape which could be taken by an audience as the recognisable form of an attacking boar. In other words, Sidonius’narrative may have captured something of the dancing body’s lost to us yet quintessential performative struggle to free itself from its own limitations in order to align itself with the physical demands of its part–in this case, the “part” happens to consist of a hairy, bristly back and a tusk. The somatic experience that can be said to inform and underpin Sidonius’perspective in these lines is the kind of sensational process referred to by Lucian’s Lycinus, who stipulates that the dancer should adopt the mode of operation of the cuttlefish or octopus, “clinging close” to or even “growing into” (prosphynta) his subject matter and “dwelling together with” (sunoikeioun), i. e. conforming to, each of the danced actions, in other words, assimilating himself to the characters populating the fabulas he dances22.
9Needless to say: I have no iron-cast proof for this contention. There is, however, a handful of literary texts that can be read in tandem with Sidonius’verses as luminous examples of the way in which the “lowly” and despised pantomime genre colonised and saturated the “high“culture of the literate élite23: Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Seneca’s tragedies, Callistratus’Ekphraseis and parts of Nonnus’Dionysiaca can all be thought of as informed, to a greater or lesser extent, by the aesthetics of the pantomime genre24. In particular, I would like to suggest that they bear the traces of the experience of the pantomime body as a “body in the making”, in the process of self-fashioning; a body exhibited as a flow of physical transformation, with each configuration of the limbs and torso melting away to yield its place to another, as a new identity is being fleshed out right before the viewer’s eyes. Space does not allow me to expand on this suggestion, so a couple of examples will suffice.
10Let us turn first to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in particular those masterful narrative moments where a change of physis, nature, is involved. Let us think of the way body-matter is portrayed, changing as we watch, growing harder or softer by the minute, arresting our gaze in mid-point, while the old and the new are still vying with each other. Here is one of those delightful Ovidian descriptions of a body becoming at variance with its own essence, the Sicilian nymph Cyane, whose solid frame experiences progressive liquefaction, melting away under the reader’s concentrated gaze: “into the pool”,
“She spread dissolved. You might have seen her limbs
Soften, her bones begin to bend, her nails
Losing their hardness. All the slenderest parts,
Her wave-blue hair, her fingers, legs and feet
Were liquid first; […]
Next
Her shoulders, back and sides and breast dissolved
In slender rivulets and disappeared,
And last, in place of warm and living blood,
Water flows in along her wasted veins
And nothing now that you could grasp remains25.”
11I find it very difficult to imagine that in Augustan Rome, at a time when the meteoric success of the emergent art would have been the talk and craze of the day, such Ovidian passages on changing forms would not have been mediated, even if only subconsciously, by the poet’s direct experience of the pantomime’s dancing body26.
12Centuries after Ovid we encounter the frustratingly elusive Callistratus, whose collection of Ecphraseis, Descriptions of Statues, foregrounds a body which shares nothing with the self-contained, static body traditionally associated with the plastic arts but reminds us in all respects of the constantly mutating, fluid body of the pantomime dancer. For Callistratus, who uses unmistakably theatrical language27, does not describe his sculptures as finished artefacts but raw materials, in the process of creating themselves, “rehearsing” themselves into their ultimate positions, adapting themselves (cf. Lucian, Salt. 67) to the mythological characters they are supposed to represent:
“You could have seen how the marble, uniform though it was in colour, adapted itself to the expression of his (i. e. Narcissus’) eyes, preserved the record of his character, showed the perception of his senses, indicated his emotions and conformed itself to the abundance of his hair, as it relaxed to make the curls of his locks. Indeed, words cannot describe how the marble softened into suppleness and provided a body at variance with its own essence; for though its own nature is very hard, it yielded a sensation of softness, being dissolved into a sort of porous matter28.”
13Like the pantomime, who must be “loose”, so as to “twist himself like a withe”, but at the same time “firm”, whenever his “characters” require it,29 Callistratus’bronze or marble fashions itself in line with its model’s image, now following a bend (kampê), now becoming hard and tense (suntonon):
“…where the figure wished to bend, the bronze would relax itself to the bending, and where the figure would make tense its limbs, the bronze would change and become rigid30”.
14As readers/viewers of Callistratus’ecphraseis, we are called upon to marvel at the artwork in the same way we marvel at the dancer, a body forever moulding itself in the likeness of the character or thing it imitates. The pantomime addict’s gaze, no less than the Callistratean reader’s gaze, is required to become a close accomplice in the very process of creation, as raw material (whether flesh or marble or bronze) is constantly evolving, from its natural state of being to an array of new configurations:
“We were struck dumb at the sight as we were looking at the bronze constructing the works of nature and stepping out of the confines of its own proper kind. For while it was bronze, it turned red and, although hard by nature, it dissolved, full of softness, yielding to art all of its desires; and though it lacked any sense of life, it was capable of looking as if it had indwelling senses31.”
15As I have argued elsewhere in detail32, we can only fully understand the strange “body-in-the making” of Callistratus’statues when we embrace the possibility that it is mediated by the poet’s first-hand acquaintance with the aesthetic experience and performative practice of the pantomime stage.
16We are now getting closer to acquiring a glimpse, however faint, of what might have constituted the overarching aesthetic principle guiding the manifold configurations and deployment of pantomime bodies on the stages of imperial Rome. The principle in question must have been the silent poetics of a body displayed “in transition”, constantly “on the move” between Athamas and Ino, Atreus and Aerope, always “on its way to becoming” its appointed character. Perhaps the most genre-specific moment of the pantomimic body is the moment when all borders are open, when the categories of human, bestial and divine, male and female, living and inanimate interpenetrate, flow freely into one another, as if from porous matter. Perhaps ancient pantomime celebrated the aesthetics of a body feeling most “at home” when transgressive, liminal, unclassifiable–“neither nor”, yet “both”.
Pantomime’s pictorial and athletic bodies
17Are there any further visual anchors, any tangible reference points to orientate us in our imaginary reconstruction of the overall impression created by the pantomimic body in action? Space does not permit elaboration, so I will only highlight two relatively neglected aspects of the genre’s corporeal dramaturgy.
18First, pantomime existed at the intersection of drama and the figurative arts, being closely affiliated to both sculpture and painting33. Libanius draws our attention to a fully fledged pictorial dramaturgy, the dancer’s action culminating in a veritable tableau-vivant on stage:
“What would someone admire more? The continuity of their many pirouettes or, after this, their suddenly crystallised posture or the figure held fixed in this position? For they whirl round as if borne on wings, but conclude their movement in a static pose, as if glued to the spot; and with the stillness of the pose, the image presents itself (i. e. takes shape, emerges)34.”
19One of the thrills of ancient pantomime must have consisted in watching the dancer’s flowing movement stilled for a fraction of time, then artfully resumed35. In competent choreographies such pictorial configurations, only seemingly at rest yet spawning their sequel, might have been exploited for their expressive force, underscoring moments of extreme passion.
20Secondly, we must beware of overlooking the pantomime dancer’s acrobatic brilliance36, namely his impressively high, soaring leaps; his multiple revolutions along the axis of his own body, and his rapid, gliding motion as he traverses the stage. Lucian, for example, speaks of “turns and twirls and jumps and back-flung poses37”, while the medical writer Galen speaks of
“the jerky movements of the dancers, during which they perform the greatest leaps and whirl around as they rotate with the greatest speed and after sinking down with bent knees they rise up again and sweep their legs forward and to the side and cleave them asunder as much as possible and, in a word, move extremely quickly38…”
21Even the hostile John Chrysostom cannot withold a gasp of admiration for the dancers floating on the orchestra, “using their limbs as if they were wings39” and providing a stunning spectacle.
22The importance of virtuosic dancing in ancient pantomime cannot be overestimated; if we fail to appreciate it, we may be tempted to believe that the dancer’s corporeal dramaturgy was exhausted at the level of eloquent gesture and expressive yet sedate movement. This was the mistake of Jean-Georges Noverre, who gave ancient pantomime a new lease of life in the eighteenth century by making it the source of inspiration for his own contribution to European dance history, the so-called ballet d’action, precursor of the classical, romantic ballet. A gifted choreographer, Noverre nevertheless misleadingly reconstructed Graeco-Roman pantomime in the style of a spectacle that his contemporaries called “terre à terre” dancing, a kind of measured walking40. Indeed, Baron Grimm was under the impression that in Noverre’s pantomimic reconstructions “dancing for the sake of dancing cannot occur except when the danced drama is over41”. At the same time, Noverre made no secret of his derision of the dance tradition of the italian “grotteschi” dancers, renowned throughout Europe for their spectacular, aerial style, their technical virtuosity, rigorous athleticism and acrobatic skills42. Their kind of dancing, Noverre declared, had nothing to do with ancient pantomime, a noble art form. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In ancient pantomime, the explicitness of gestural narrative seems to have been tightly interlaced with pure sequences of breathtaking, flamboyant dancing, every bit as acrobatic, vibrant and energetic as that of the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Italian grotteschi43.
A “female” body for a “female” art?
23In the previous sections I have chosen to showcase the pantomime’s body as (a) “protean”, displaying itself in a state of flux, always “in the making”; (b) wedded to the aesthetics of a pictorial dramaturgy, and (c) an athletic, acrobatic body. Althouth my list is by no means exhaustive, these suggestions are, I think, indicative of the range of our relative certainties about the ancient dancer’s body. In the field of pantomime studies, however, the very notion of “certainty” as a semantic category is emblematically elusive: it slips away through our very fingers just at the moment when we think we have it in our grasp. A notorious area of semantic instability with respect to pantomime dancing concerns the genre’s and the dancing body’s multiple filiations with “femininity”. I have chosen this particular discursive area as a crucible on which to examine our own ways of looking at the ancient evidence because it is here par excellence where conclusions are perennially at risk of getting swamped by ever-rising murky waters and even the most methodologically prudent steps seem precariously uncertain. Was our ancient male dancer’s body a “feminine” body?
24Even though I can do no more in the context of this paper than nudge at the tip of the iceberg as far as the incohate, unhomogeneous pile of our primary evidence is concerned, I hope the exercise can still give a flavour of the magnitude of the interpretative problems facing the student of ancient dancing who decides to think about the pantomime’s “play” with gender. For the overarching question here is neither simple nor inconsequential. Where on the gender map are we supposed to locate the real-life pantomimic body? A substantial number of sources do not mince words but present it as gender-bending, effeminate, its fame commensurate with the degree of its encroachment on female ground. “Men are emasculated”, laments St Cyprian in his epistle to Donatus,
“the entire honour and vigour of the male gender is softened up because of the dishonour of a sinewless body (i. e. the pantomime’s body), and whoever goes to greater lengths in order to break down virility into womanishness gives the greatest pleasure on this matter44”.
25How are we supposed to read this kind of source? How much faith can we put in it or how insouciantly are we allowed to dismiss it? Is it the case that polemical authors have thrust upon the genre “female genitals”, in accordance with the diachronic, pan-cultural logic that one “feminises” what one needs to demote and disparage45?
26To be sure, the desire for cultural demotion is very much in evidence with respect to ancient pantomime, a genre that could be easily constructed as a meaningless, low-brow kind of entertainment or, as Crato puts it in Lucian’s De Saltatione, a “trivial, feminine thing”, unworthy of the attention of the educated man46. In general, as I have argued elsewhere in detail47, pantomime paid the price for the imperial socio-cultural élite’s deep-seated need of a series of feminised “Others” to be trampled underfoot, so that the masculinity, and hence supremacy, of legitimate cultural expressions could be better recognised, ring-fenced, celebrated. But could it also be the case that, over and above the artificial, discursive feminisation of the genre, pantomime exhibited the marks of a quintessentially “female” art?
27One could easily write a book on this question alone, but we can get a fleeting glimpse of the problems involved by focusing on a particularly stubborn, intriguing cluster of Greek and Roman sources which are unanimous in their presentation of the pantomime’s body as “fractured”, “broken into bits”, “fragmented”, “snapped off”, “twisted” and “bent48”–in all cases with obvious connotations of effeminacy49. How do we deal with this type of source? Do we simply brush it aside as a suspect rhetorical construct which has everything to do with each writer’s own, socially and culturally determined agenda but is totally irrelevant to the physical body of the real pantomime, the ancient dancer in flesh and blood?
28Before even attempting to tackle this question, let us take a brief cultural détour, from antiquity to an entirely different dance context. I mean the first performance in 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, star dancer of Sergei Diaghilev’s “Ballets Russes”. The original choreography for that iconoclastic work which first propelled the classical ballet on the road to modernism is now lost. Yet, by all accounts, Nijinsky seems to have consciously set out to assault everything the balletic technique of his days held dear, especially ballet’s foundational premise of the dancing body’s verticality: the un-broken line of an elongated and straight, stretched-out spine50. Interestingly, when we read contemporary reviews, we come across descriptions which, for us, classicists, recall precisely the suspect rhetoric of some of our most biased primary sources, with their prejudiced talk of “twisted” and “contorted” bodies. For it seems that Nijinsky’s original choreography demanded awkward and contorted postures: drooping spines; contracted torsos; angular, enfolding arms; sharply bent and turned inward knees; feet curled in; bowed necks. Even an admiring critic like Jacques Rivière, who hailed Nijinsky’s choreography as “le retour au corps51”, homes in on what we might be tempted to call an aesthetic of “fragmentation”:
“En brisant le mouvement […] Nijinsky a fait rentrer l’expression dans la danse. Tous les angles, toutes les cassures de sa chorégraphie empêchent le sentiment de fuir […]. Il prend ses danseurs, il leur arrange les bras, il les leur tourne, il les leur casserait, s’il osait; il travaille ces corps avec une brutalité impitoyable, comme des choses; il leur impose des mouvements impossibles, des attitudes qui semblent contrefaites52.”
29I am not highlighting this passage in order to propose anything like a direct equivalence between Nijinsky’s iconoclasm and the elusive aesthetic of ancient pantomime dancing53. I do nevertheless contend that, if we allow ourselves the luxury of looking at our suspect evidence through the prism of different corporeal narratives, we may feel better disposed towards linking the intriguing (Christian and pagan) rhetoric of the “broken” and “fragmented” pantomimic body to the physical, corporeal “technologies” rather than the sexual and moral inclinations of the pantomime dancer. In other words, if we do care to broaden up our horizons, we may perhaps succeed in salvaging a little bit of something from the fangs of hostility displayed in some of our anti-theatrical and anti-pantomimic sources. What would that “little bit of something” be? What sort of “tangible” information could we possibly derive from the Christian’s or the moralist’s denunciation of the pantomime’s body as “broken” and “fragmented”, “twisted”, “sinuous” and “bent”? Before I hazard an answer, let us take the following two points into account.
30First and foremost, we do know that pantomime was brimming with female roles54, many among which either positioned the female body in its most corporeal, gender-defining acts, such as the act of giving birth55, or showcased it in the grip of that most feminine of passions: love or, even worse, uninhibited lust. In other words, not only does the dancer “play at being a woman” on the stage, but he even deigns, as Crato, the anti-pantomime voice in Lucian’s dialogue, complains, to “imitate amorous, sex-crazed little women, the lewdest among those in antiquity, such as Phaedra, and Parthenope and Rhodope56”, a list to which we may add, from a variety of other sources, figures like Myrrha and Canace (famous for incestuous passion), Pasiphae and Stheneboea, Circe and Clytemnestra, all female protagonists in narratives of yearning, passion, unquenchable desire57. After years of merciless training58 in order to become in perfect control of every limb, every nerve and every muscle, the dancer’s male body was expected to create the bodies of those whom society deemed out of control, female bodies lacerated by illicit love or visited by madness or crumbling under the weight of physical pain. Second, it seems to be the case that pantomime as a genre was wedded to a “realistic” depiction of action, character, and passion and an overall “aesthetic of verisimilitude”, the dancer’s aspiration being, as Choricius of Gaza puts it in the sixth century AD,
“to persuade the audience in the theatre not that he is in the process of imitating others, but that he really is by nature the object of his imitation59”.
31But, if we are right in thinking of pantomime as a genre where the exactitude (akribeia)60 and vividness (enargeia) of a realist, illusionistic representation of the female form did matter61, it doesn’t take such a momentous leap of the imagination to entertain the possibility that, consciously and provocatively, the pantomime’s male dancing body did borrow the manifold corporeal dialects which an age-old tradition of female dancing had branded as “feminine”–from the fluid softness of the arms to the beautiful rippling of the spine and from the bending of the torso to the swaying, quivering and twisting of the hips and loins62. It can be no coincidence that some of the “technical” terms in pantomime dancing, such as the verb lygizein, which means “to bend or twist like a willow shoot” and lygisma or lygismos, i. e. “sinuous bend”, “twist”, are also staples in the vocabulary of female body-language63. Nor can it be a mere dose of anti-pantomime bile that we taste in the derogatory terms mollis/μαλακός which are attached to the dancer in our sources64. Beyond the moral smear of the “unmanly65”, they do convey to perfection the image of a body of ribbon-like softness and plasticity, a body “pouring” itself out into whichever shape it desires to represent66. It is, I suggest, precisely this paramount, quintessential quality of corporeal “softness” and “fluidity67” which constitutes the “missing link” behind the Ovidian metamorphosis of Cyane we have looked at in Section 1; Lucian’s reference to a dancing body which can (and must!) imitate the “liquidity of water68”; “liquid” choreographies necessitated by plots such as “the battle between Heracles and the river Achelous” mentioned by Lucian69 or Silenus’imagined dance in Nonnus’Dionysiaca, which culminates, once again, in the dancer’s liquefaction:
“At last his knees failed him; with shaking head he slipt to the ground
and rolled over on his back. At once he became a river: his body was
flowing water with natural ripples all over, his forehead changed to a win-
ding current with the horns for waves, the turbulent swell came to acrest
on his head, his belly sank into the sand, a deep place for fishes. As Seilenos
lay spread, his hair changed into natural rushes70…”
32In view of such considerations, then, it is entirely possible that, like Nijinsky’s choreography, pantomime as a genre did privilege a repertoire of bodily tropes gravitating around non-straight lines: coils, curls, arches and spirals, the serpentine and undulating deployment in space which would have caused the dancing body to appear exactly as our suspect sources suggest: sinewless and broken, all twisted-up. Moreover, it may well have been the case that pantomime did include even the kind of constricted, inverted, angular positions which caused so much offence and outrage in Nijinsky’s revolutionary choreography and would have been most suited to the realistic evocation of a body in the grip of affliction, be that pain or madness or any all-consuming, lacerating passion, passion, that is to say, of the kind which saturated ancient pantomime plots.
33Why did such corporeal dialects strike contemporaries so forcefully as “feminine”? The answer seems to me self-evident enough. It is because the swaying and bending, the folding and unfolding of the male body flouted upper-class expectations regarding the proper way in which manliness should be embodied and, more specifically, paid scant respect to what we might call “the law of verticality” or “the cult of the straight line” which governs élite masculinity in all periods of Greek and Roman culture, but especially under the Empire. One need only bring to mind here the incredibly detailed rules laid down by rhetoricians in their attempt to codify the respectable speaker’s bodily deportment as virile and upright (no unmanly softness in the neck!), resplendent without ostentation, always true to itself, and unfailingly integrate–in a word, irreconcilable with the pantomime’s body71. Besides, a genre wherein gender categories were not only permeable but also interchangeable, with “male” and “female” flowing so freely into one another that, as Libanius puts it, before the dance has a chance to showcase “woman” clearly, its focus has already shifted on to “man72”, was hardly likely to escape a profound conceptual link to femininity. Destabilising the gender binarism firmly entrenched in Graeco-Roman culture, pantomime constructed gender identity as in a state of flux, that is to say, as part of open-ended, unfinished, continuous representational and narrative processes. Pantomime’s bodily tropes must have assaulted élite manliness as forcefully as Nijinsky’s choreography was said to have struck at the vitals of the nineteenth-century Romantic ballet. Both Nijinsky and the ancient pantomime dancer paid a heavy price for that assault, the latter by being besmeared in anti-pantomime discourses as a man “fragmented in all his limbs”, “twisting his body in unnatural contortions”.
34Moving now towards a conclusion, it is most likely that the ultimate thrill and outrage of παντόμιμος ὄρχησις resided in the exhilarating yet uncanny hybridity of the dancer’s performing body, a body dancing at all times at the interstices of gendered discourses, on a knife’s edge between two corporeal gender languages. A living kaleidoscope of gender positions,
“now enchanting the stage with masculine bodily configurations, whenever he dances the Thessalian or the Amazon’s young lad or some other male figure, now imitating most skilfully the much-desired daughter of Briseus and Phaedra in love73”,
35the dancer both delighted and shocked by means of his continuous “gender-tourism”, a dimension which puts the genre well apart from the traditional cross-gendered performances of the tragic and the comic stages. How emotionally poignant the pantomime’s gender-shifting could become within a danced fabula may be inferred from the ever-popular stories of Zeus’adulteries, requiring the single male body to portray convincingly and realistically such diametrically opposite subject-positions as male sexual predator (in the form of an animal or bird) and passive, desired, raped and victimised female. On the aesthetic side too, however, the pantomime connoisseur (τòν ἔμπειρoν ὀρχήσεως), the kind of spectator who, as Plotinus tells us, can affirm that
“to fit a particular figure, one of the dancer’s limbs is raised, another bent together, one is hidden, another lowered74”,
36would have been relishing each and every opportunity to assess a pantomime’s ability to negotiate the frictions between the body-languages of masculinity and femininity. Who will be best at “fitting his pliable flank to suit either sex75”, showing persuasively not only Achilles “playing the part of a maiden” (παρθένoν ὑπoκρινóμενoν) among the daughters of Lycomedes (Libanius, Or., 64.68) but also Achilles “the man in Troy” (τòν ἐν Tρoíᾳ), killing and brandishing his spear and spreading panic and slaughtering Hector and dragging his corpse and “leaping further than the pentathletes”76? Who will be best at presenting his body “loose” and “solid” by turns, so that he can either “pour” himself out in ripples of graceful (i. e. feminine) vibrations or root himself firmly (i. e. in a manly way) in the ground whenever movement must fade into stillness77?
37The pantomime’s androgynous aesthetic caused admirers to hail the “marriage” of male dynamism, athleticism and strength with female sensuousness and “liquidness of limbs78” or, as Lucian’s Lycinus puts it, the paradoxical amalgamation or co-habitation, within a single human body, of Heracles’prowess and the exquisite delicacy, daintiness and charm belonging to Aphrodite79. In cross-cultural terms, the best analogue for such mesmerising fusions can be sought in the androgynous sensibilities created by and for the ballerinos of the Ballets Russes (1909-29), the “Muses”, lovers and choreographers associated with Sergei Diaghilev. Vaslav Nijinsky, chronologically the first in line, succeeded in dethroning the nineteenthcentury’s ethereal ballerina by placing in her stead a dancing creature surrounded by the most haunting “androgynous mystique80”, a body capable of spectacularly Heraclean fits of muscular virility (the powerful elevation of Nijinsky’s leaps has remained proverbial) but also of deliciously unmanned and un-manning dissolutions into languid poses and voluptuous undulations81. Nijinsky’s most alluringly danced roles, such as ‘Faun’ in Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un Faune (1912), “the Rose” in Le Spectre de la Rose (1911, choreographerd by Michel Fokine) or “Golden Slave” in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Schéhérazade (1910, choreography by Fokine), could offer us invaluable (albeit treacherously indirect) glimpses into the much maligned doubleness of the ancient pantomime’s body. In the spectacle offered by Russian Ballets and ancient pantomime alike, the tropes and languages of the female body became integral to the physical vocabulary and expressive technique of the male dancer. Simultaneously, however, it was primarily the dancer’s doubly accented bodily discourse which caused detractors of the genre, like Gregory of Nazianzus, to fulminate against the orchestai as freaks, frustrating the ontological distinction between “male” and “female”: “breaking up their nature in tandem with the bending of their limbs,| men, women, effeminate males | frankly speaking, neither male nor female”.82 Without an undisputed place on either side of the gender map, they hover between the gender (male) which their chosen way of life (tropos) prevents them from sustaining, and the one (female) which their anatomy (physis) precludes them from acquiring83.
38The admirer’s fetish–the detractor’s anathema. Not everybody saw the same thing when looking at a pantomime in action. It is for this precise reason that I will bring this paper to a close by highlighting what I take it to be our single absolute certainty with respect to pantomime dancing. I mean the fact that, with the possible exception of some factual inscriptions, none of our literary and artistic sources offers us an un-mediated and un coloured description of the genre and its artist. They merely “refract” the pantomime body’s presence, allowing us to see how it was gazed-at by other bodies–in admiration or disgust, adulation or vituperation. And while we owe even this partial view to all those who focused on pantomime while holding their pen or brush or chisel, we are painfully conscious that they have irrevocably adulterated their object, appropriated it and made it part of their own textual or artistic discourse. We can now only “read” their “reading” of the pantomime’s real body.
Footnotes
1 AP 9.505, 17: ϕθεγγομένη παλάμης θελξίϕρονα παλμόν.
2 See Anonymous, Latin Anthology, I. 1 [Shackleton Bailey] 100, 9.
3 Sidonius Apollinaris, C. 23.269-70: clausis faucibus et loquente gestu | nutu, crure, genu, manu, rotatu.
4 AP, 9.505, 18: ϕωνήεσσαν... σιωπήν; pantomime literature is full of such conjunctions of contradictory terms; see, e. g. Cassiodorus, Var., 4.51.8: silentium clamosum (“clamorous silence”); Nonnus, Dion., 19.156: αὐδήεσσα σιωπή (“speaking silence”).
5 See, e. g., Cassiodorus, Var., 4.51.8: linguosi digiti; cf. Nonnus, Dion., 7.21.
6 Nonnus, Dion., 7.21.
7 AP, 16.290, 7: παμϕώνοις χερσί. Speaking hands or palms are one of the most common themes in pantomime related literature.
8 Anon., Latin Anthology, I. 1 [Shackleton-Bailey] 100, 9: tot linguae quot membra viro.
9 Cassiodorus, Var., 1.20.5: quibusdam gesticulationibus facit intellegi, quod vix narrante lingua aut scripturae textu possit agnosci.
10 See further Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence: Lucian and Pantomime Dancing, London, Duckworth, 2007, p. 13-18 and Webb R., “Inside the Mask: pantomime from the performer’s perspective”, in Hall E. and Wyles R., New Directions in Ancient Pantomime, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 43-44.
11 Webb R., “Inside the Mask”, op. cit.
12 Plotinus, Enn., 6.1.27: ὥσπερ ὁ τῇ ὀρχήσει πάντα αὑτòν ποιῶν; cf. Cassiodorus, Var., 4.51.9, deriving the term pantomimus “from multifarious imitation”: a multifaria imitatione nomen est.
13 See especially Lucian, Salt., 19, 67; Aristaenetus, Ep., 1.26, 11-12; Libanius, Or., 64.117.
14 See, e. g., Lucian, Salt., 66, on the “barbarian” who failed to understand that the pantomime’s single body is endowed with many souls: σῶμα μὲν τοῦτο ἕν, πολλὰς δὲ τὰς ψυχάς ἔχων; Manilius, Astron., 5.480b-1 (most probably) on the pantomime as assuming all the dramatis personae one after another and in his single body representing a crowd: solusque per omnis | ibit personas et turbam reddet in uno; Cassiodorus, Var. 4.51.9: ut in uno credas esse multos tam varia imitatione discretos (“so that you would have thought that in one body there were many, differentiated by such a variety of impersonation”).
15 See especially Libanius, Or., 64.113: καὶ τò μέν’Αθηνᾶς δεικνυμένης’Αθήνᾶν ἐννοεῖν καὶ Ποσειδῶνος Ποσειδῶ καὶ ‘Ηϕαίστου γε Ἥϕαιστον οὔπω πάμμεγα, τò δὲ δι’ ’Αθήνᾶς μέν τòν Ποσειδῶ, διὰ δὲ Ἡϕαίστου τὴν’Αθηνᾶν, διὰ δὲ Ἄρεος Ἥϕαιστον, διὰ δὲ Γανυμήδους Δία, διὰ δὲ’Αχιλλέως Πάριν, ταῦτα ποίων οὐ γρίϕων ἱκανώτερα ψυχὴν ἀκονᾶν; This gem of a passage, invaluable for the understanding of the dancer’s corporeal “technologies” is now beautifully elucidated by Garelli M.-H., Danser le mythe: la pantomime et sa réception dans la culture antique, Louvain, Paris, Dudley, MA, Éditions Peeters, 2007, p. 225: “Il ne s’agissait pas d’imitations successives de tous les personnages dans toutes leurs actions, mais plutôt d’une série de choix successifs de ‘points de vue’ à partir desquels l’action pouvait être représentée.”
16 Lucian, Salt., 67 τò γούν παραδοξότατον, τής αυτής ήμέρας άρτι μέν ‘ Αθάμας μεμηνώς, άρτι δὲ’Ινώ ϕοβουμένη δὲίκνυται, καὶ άλλοτε’ Ατρεύς ὁ αυτός, καὶ μετά μικρόν Θυέστης, ειτα Αῖγισθος ἡ Άερόπη· καὶ πάντα ταϋτα εις άνθρωπός έστιν.
17 Lucian, Salt., 57: οὐκ ἀγνοήσει δὲ καὶ τὰς μυθικὰς μεταμορϕώσεις ἁπάσας, ὃσοι εἰς δένδρα ἢ θηρία ἢ ὄρνεα ἠλλάγησαν καὶ ὅσαι ἐκ γυναικῶν ἄνδρες ἐγένοντο, τòν Καινέα λέγω καὶ τòν Τειρεσίαν καὶ τοὺς τοιούτους.
18 See primarily Lucian, Salt., 59: Πρò πάντων δὲ τὰ περὶ τοὺς ἔρωτας αὐτῶν καὶ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Διòς καὶ εῖς ὅσα ἐαυτòν μετεσκεύασεν. Cf., e. g., Arnobius, Adv. Gent., 4.35, 7.33; St Augustine, Civ. Dei, 7.26, 18.10; Tertullian, Ad nat., 1.10; Lactantius, Div. Inst., 5.10; Sidonius Apollinaris, C., 23.281-97; Prudentius, Perist., 10.221ff.
19 All good pantomime topics: Daphne: Lucian, Salt., 48; AP, 11.255; Libanius, Or., 64.67; Cadmus: Lucian, Salt., 41; Deucalion: Salt., 39. For everything to do with the pantomime’s repertoire, see now Garelli M.-H., Danser le mythe, op. cit., especially p. 271-291.
20 Sidonius Apollinaris, C. 23.289-95: seu Martem simulat [... ] modo aut repulso | formam imponit apri caputque saetis | et tergum asperat hispidisque malis | leve incurvat ebur, vel ille fingit | hirtam dorsa feram repanda tela | attritu adsiduo cacuminantem. The translation used in the text is that of Anderson W.B., Sidonius: Poems and Letters, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 302.
21 He mentions, in fact, Caramallus and Phabaton (C. 23.268).
22 Lucian, Salt., 67: καλὴ γὰρ ἡ ποιητικὴ παραίνεσις ἐκείνη, τó “ὦ παῖ, ποντίου θηρòς πετραίου νόον ἔχων πάσαις πολίεσσιν ὁμίλει,” καὶ τῷ ὀρχηστῇ ἀναγκαία∙ καὶ δεῖ προσ-ϕύντα τοῖς πράγμασιν συνοικειοῦν ἐαυτòν ἐκάστῳ τῶν δρωμένων. On this passage, see now Webb R., Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press, 2008, p. 161.
23 On such cross-pollinations and inter-breedings between high and low culture, see Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 127-51 and Panayotakis C., “Virgil on the Popular Stage”, in Hall E. and Wyles R. (eds), New Directions in Ancient Pantomime, Oxford, Oxford University Press 2008, p. 185-197.
24 With respect to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we have the early insights of Galinski K., Ovid’s Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1975, p. 68-69, 132, 139 and especially Richlin A., “Reading Ovid’s Rapes”, in ead. (ed), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press 1992, p. 158-79, a superbly innovative reading of Ovidian rape stories in the Metamorphoses against the back-ground of live pantomime dancing, concluding in the suggestion that “perhaps this transformative poem derives its poetry from motion, the motion of the dance” (ibid., p. 175). More recently, see Garelli M.-H., Danser le mythe, op. cit., p. 313: “La lecture des récits des Métamorphoses, très dramatisés, attentifs à la gestuelle, suffisamment développés pour avoir constitué un support de la danse, nous laisse penser que les Métamorphoses (sans avoir été nécessairement composées dans cette intention), ont pu être dansées dans le texte.” Jennifer Ingleheart has also suggested that parts of the poem were very appropriate sources for pantomime libretti and might therefore have been linked to pantomime stage-performances in Augustan Rome. See Ingleheart J., “Et mea sunt populo saltata poemata saepe (Tristia, 2.519): Ovid and the Pantomime”, in Hall E. and Wyles R. (eds), New Directions in Ancient Pantomime (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008), p. 198-217. On Seneca, see Zimmermann B., “Seneca and Pantomime”, in Hall E. and Wyles R., ibid., 218-26; Zanobi A., “The influence of pantomime on Seneca’s Tragedies”, in Hall E. and Wyles R., ibid., 227-57 and Zanobi A., Seneca’s Tragedies and the Aesthetics of Pantomime (PhD Thesis, University of Durham, England, 2008); on Callistratus, see Lada-Richards I., “Mobile statuary: refractions of pantomime dancing from Callistratus to Emma Hamilton and Andrew Ducrow”, IJCT 10 (2003) 3-37.
25 Ovid, Met. 5.428-37: in illas | extenuatur aquas: molliri membra videres,| ossa pati flexus, ungues posuisse rigorem,| primaque de tota tenuissima quaeque liquescunt,| caerulei crines digitique et crura pedesque: [... ] post haec umeri tergusque latusque | pectoraque in tenues abeunt evanida rivos; | denique pro vivo vitiatas sanguine venas | lympha subit, restatque nihil, quod prendere posses. Translation as in Melville A.D., Ovid: Metamorphoses, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 112.
26 I first mooted this suggestion tentatively in my Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 54, in the form of a question: “Is pantomime the ‘missing link’ in our appreciation of Ovid’s literary treasures, in those parts of his Metamorphoses where the narrative describes in slow motion a character’s somatic transformations?” Ingleheart, op. cit., p. 212, discusses the “extent to which” passages from the Metamorphoses “may have been affected by the new, body-centred aesthetic of pantomime”; yet, despite seeing the “very concept of metamorphosis” which permeates the poem as “ideally suited” to the pantomime genre with its dancer of “protean mutability” (ibid., p. 210), she does not showcase pantomime’s and Ovid’s obsessive focus on the body in the process of transition.
27 The marble or the bronze are frequently said to “act” a role, “impersonate” a character (hypokrinesthai, hypodyesthai), as actors on the stage do: see, e. g., Descr., 7.2, 12.3, 2.4, 11.2. In Descr., 8.3 we hear that Dionysus’statue was sculpted after the youthful god of Euripides’Bacchae (most likely in its pantomime re-incarnations).
28 Callistratus, Decr., 5.4-5: εἶδὲς δ’ἂν ὡς εἶς ὤν ὁ λίθος τὴν χρόαν καὶ ὀμμάτων κατασκευὴν ἣρμοζε καὶ ἠθῶν ἱστορίαν ἔσῳζεν καὶ αἰσθήσεις ἐνεδείκνυτο καὶ πάθη ἐμήνυεν καὶ πρòς τριχώματος ἐξουσίαν ἠκολούθει εἰς τὴν τριχòς καμπὴν λυόμενος. Τò δὲ οὐδέ λόγῳ ῥητòν λίθος εἰς ὑγρότητα κεχαλασμένος καὶ ἐναντίον σῶμα τῇ οὐσίᾳ παρεχόμενος ∙ στερεω-τέρας γὰρ τετυχηκὼς ϕύσεως τρυϕερότητος ἀπέστελλεν αἲσθησιν εἰς ἀραιόν τινα σώματος ὄγκον διαχεόμενος. Translation above as in Fairbanks A., Philostratus’Imagines; Callistratus’Descriptions, London and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1931, p. 393-394 (italics in the translated text are mine).
29 Lucian, Salt., 77: Εὐκίνητος δὲ τò μετὰ τοῦτο πάντως ἔστω καὶ τò σῶμα λελυμένος τε ἅμα καὶ συμπεπηγώς, ὡς λυγίζεσθαί τε ὃπῃ καιρòς καὶ συνεστάναι καρτερῶς, εἰ τούτου δέοι.
30 Callistratus, Descr., 11.3:...καὶ ὁτὲ μὲν ἐθέλει τò πλάσμα καμϕθῆναι πρòς τὴν καμπὴν ἀνιέμενος, ὁτὲ δὲ ἐπιτεῖναι τὰ μέλη πρòς τò σύντονον μεθιστάμενος. Translation as in Fairbanks, op. cit., p. 415. It is particularly interesting that Galen uses the same term, suntonos, for the pantomime’s body: see Galen, De sanitate tuenda, 2.11 in Kühn, vol. 6, p. 155, line 8.
31 Callistratus, Descr., 6.3: Ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν ἀϕασίᾳ πληγέντες πρòς τὴν θέαν εἱστήκειμεν τòν χαλκòν ὁρῶντες ἔργα ϕύσεως μηχανώμενον καὶ τῆς οἰκείας ἐκβαίνοντα τάξεως∙ χαλκòς μὲν γὰρ ὢν ἠρυθραίνετο, σκληρòς δὲ ὢν τὴν ϕύσιν διεχεῖτο μαλακῶς εἴκων τῇ τέχνῃ πρòς ὅ βούλοιτο, σπανίζων δὲ αἰσθήσεως ζωτικῆς ἔνοικον ἔχειν ἐπιστοῦτο τὴν αἴσθησιν [...].
32 Lada-Richards I., “Mobile Statuary”, op. cit.
33 For fuller discussions, see Lada-Richards I., “Mobile Statuary”, op. cit. ; “Μύθων Εἰκών: Pantomime Dancing and the Figurative Arts in Imperial and Late Antiquity”, Arion, 12.2 (Fall 2004), p. 111-40; Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 47-48; “Tragedy into Dance: Reflections on the ‘Gestural’ Space of Pantomime Dancing”, Rethymnon Classical Studies 4 (2009) (in press); Garelli M.-H., Danser le mythe, op. cit., especially p. 357-362.
34 Libanius, Or., 64.118: πότερον δὲ ἄν τις ἀγασθείη μειζόνως τὴν τῆς περιϕορᾶς ἐν πλήθει συνέχειαν ἢ τὴν ἐξαίϕνης ἐπὶ τούτῳ πάγιον στάσιν ἢ τòν ἐν τῇ στάσει τηρούμενον τύπον; ὡς μὲν γὰρ ὑπόπτεροι περιάγονται, τελευτῶσι δὲ εἰς ἀκίνητον στάσιν ὥσπερ κεκολλη-μένοι, μετὰ δὲ τῆς στάσεως ἡ εἰκὼν ἀπαντᾷ. Cf. Plutarch, Mor., 747c, speaking of bodily configurations frozen in space and time, as if incorporated in a picture. For the ascription to the genre of a pictorial dramaturgy, see, e. g., Aristaenetus, Ep., 1.26; AP, 7.563; Lucian, Salt., 35; Nonnus, Dion., 5.104-6, 19.201, 210, 216-17, and see further Montiglio S., “Paroles dansées en silence: l’action signifiante de la pantomime et le moi du danseur”, Phoenix 53 (1999), p. 273-4.
35 See Lada-Richards I., “Mobile Statuary”, op. cit., p. 19 and “Μύθων Εἰκών”, op. cit., 21-3. Ruth Webb has most recently commented on the same range of texts, and paid particular attention to the juxtaposition vertitur, adstat (“he spins around, he is still”) in the last line of Latin Anthology, I. 1 [Shackleton Bailey] 100: “…the dance had its own aesthetic, a rhythm made up of contrasts of speed and energy, alternating rapid movement with momentary static poses”. See Webb R., “Inside the Mask”, op. cit., p. 50.
36 See further Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., 31-2 and “Tragedy into Dance”, op. cit., (in press).
37 Lucian, Salt., 71: καὶ στροϕὰς αὐτῆς καὶ περιαγωγὰς καὶ πηδήματα και ὑπτιασμοὺς.
38 See Galen, De sanitate tuenda, 2.11 in Kühn, vol. 6, p. 155, lines 4-8: οἷον αὐτίκα τῶν ὀρχησ τῶν αἱ σύντονοι κινήσεις, ἐν αἷς ἅλλονταί τε μέγιστα καὶ περιδινοῦνται στρεϕόμενοι τάχιστα καὶ ὀκλάσαντες ἐξανίστανται καὶ προσσύρουσι καὶ διασύρουσι καὶ διασχίζουσιν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον τὰ σκέλη καὶ ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν ἐν αἷς ὀξύτατα κινοῦνται.
39 See PG 49.195: τοὺς δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς ὀρχήστρας πάλιν ἐπισυρομένους, καὶ καθάπερ πτεροῖς τοῖς κώλοις κεχρημένους τους σώματος, τίς οὐκ ἂν ὁρῶν έκπλαγείη; cf. Libanius, Or., 64.118: ὡς μὲν γὰρ ὑπόπτεροι περιάγονται, and ibid., 117 on their pirouetting velocity and nimbleness of feet: τῷ πόδὲ δὲ κἄν διερευνήσαιτό τις μὴ Περσέως αὐτοῖς ἐνῇ πλεονέκτημα. Swiftness is also the foremost characteristic of pantomime dancing as refracted in Nonnus’Dionysiaca: see, e. g., 19.139, 200-226.
40 On Jean-Georges Noverre’s terre à terre dancing, see Magri G.., Trattato teorico-prattico di ballo, Napoli, V. Orsino, 1779, vol. 1, p. 82: “Presso i Francesi è più in costumanza, che presso noi Italiani, perchè quelli non si curano del troppo uso delle Capriole, servendosi più tosto del ballar terreno.”
41 See, for example, Baron Grimm’s impressions of Noverre’s ballets pantomimes: “On y marche bien plus qu’on danse. On y voit bien moins de pas et de danse symétriques que de gestes et de groupes”; “Dans les ballets de Noverre la danse et la marche cadencée sont très distinctes; on ne danse que dans les grands mouvements de passion, dans les moments décisifs; dans les scenes, on marche en mesure à la verité mais sans danser. Ce passage de la marche mesurée à la danse et de la danse à la marche mesurée est aussi nécessaire dans ce spectacle que, dans celui de l’opéra, le passage du récitatif à l’air et de l’air au récitatif; mais danser pour danser ne peut avoir lieu que lorsque la pièce en danse est finie”: Von Grimm F. M. (et alii), Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, Paris, Garnier 1879, vol. 6., p. 300 and vol. 11, p. 237 respectively.
42 On the marvellous traditions of the Italian grotteschi, see Harris-Warrick R. and Brown B. A., (eds), The Grotesque Dancers on the Eighteenth Century stage: Gennaro Magri and his World, Madison, Wisconsin, The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
43 On Noverre and the later European reception of ancient pantomime, see the “Postscipt” on pantomime’s afterlife in Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 163-73 and my forthcoming “Dead but not Extinct: On Re-inventing Pantomime Dancing in Eighteenth-century England and France”, in Macintosh F. (ed), The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010.
44 Cyprian, Don., 8: evirantur mares, honor omnis et vigor sexus enervati corporis dedecore mollitur plusque illic placet, quisque virum in feminam magis fregerit.
45 See Huyssen A., After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Post-Modernism, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1986, p. 53, on the “gendering as feminine of that which is devalued”.
46 Lucian, Salt., 1:’Επεὶ τοίνυν, ὦ Κρότων, δεινήν τινα ταύτην κατηγορίαν ἐκ πολλοῦ, οἶμαι, κατηγόρηκας ὀρχήσεών τε καὶ αὐτῆς ὀρχηστικῆς, καὶ προσέτι ἡμῶν γε τῶν χαιρόντων τῇ τοιαύτῃ θέᾳ ὡς ἐπὶ ϕαύλῳ καὶ γυναικείῳ πράγματι μεγάλην σπουδὴν ποιουμένων [...]; cf. Salt., 2-3. See further Lada-Richards I., “‘A Worthless Feminine Thing’? Lucian and the ‘Optic Intoxication’ of Pantomime Dancing”, Helios 30 (2003), p. 21-75.
47 See especially Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 113-126 and Lada-Richards I., “Was Pantomime ‘Good to Think with’ in the Ancient World?”, in Hall E. and Wyles R., New Directions, op. cit., p. 285-313.
48 In the Greek sources, this is mostly expressed with compounds of the verb klavw, i. e. “break” or “break off”. See, e. g., Lucian, Salt., 5: ἀνθρώπῳ ἐς οὐδέν δέον κατακλωμένῳ; Tatian, Or. ad Graecos, 22.7: παντοίως διακλώμενον; Gregory of Nazianzus, C., 2.2.8, 92 (PG, 37.1583): μελῶν λυγισμοῖς συγκατακλῶντες ϕύσιν ; Libanius, Or., 64.60; Procopius of Gaza, Panegyricus in Imp. Anastasium (PG, 87 [3] 2815, 16): διεκλῶντο τοῖς μέλεσιν. Latin narratives refer to the pantomime’s body most commonly with forms of frangere, “to break into pieces,” “shatter”; e. g., Cyprian, Don. 8 (quoted above) and Ep., 2.2.1, on the pantomime instructor teaching “in what way the male will be broken up (frangatur) into a woman”; Novatian, Spect., 6.6: homo fractus omnibus membris; Hieronymus, Ep., 43.2 and 79.9: the addressee is warned to shun a histrio fractus in feminam. We also find the notion of the pantomime as “twisting” (distorquens), “torturing” his body in unnatural contortions: see, e. g., Novatian, Spect., 3.2: membra distorquens. Extremely telling for the pantomime’s perceived movement vocabulary is also the verb sinuare, i. e. “bend”, “wind”, “move in sinuous curves”: see, e. g., sinuare gestus, in Ambrosius, Ep., 1.58.5 (PL, 16.1179). See further Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 69-70 and “Was Pantomime ‘good to think with’”, op. cit., p. 289-290; cf. now Webb R., Demons and Dancers, op. cit., p. 141-142.
49 On the connotations of effeminacy accompanying the word ‘broken’ /‘break’ (fractus, infractus, frangere; Greek keklasmenos) in ancient rhetorical criticism, see Gleason M., Making Men: Sophists and Self-Presentation in Ancient Rome, Princeton, Princeton University Press 1995, p. 112.
50 On Le Sacre du Printemps, see primarily Hodson M., Nijinsky’s Crime against Grace: Reconstruction Score of the Original Choreography for Le Sacre du Printemps, Dance and Music Series no. 8, Stuyvesant, New York, Pendragon Press, 1996; Levinson A., “Nijinsky’s Ballets: Le Sacre du Printemps and Jeux”, in Summer S. C. (ed.), Ballet Old and New, New York, Dance Horizons, 1982; Scholl T., From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival and the Modernization of Ballet, New York and London, Routledge, 1993.
51 Rivière J., “Le Sacre du Printemps”, in La Nouvelle Revue française 10 (1913), p. 719.
52 Rivière J., ibid., p. 722 and p. 724.
53 There are interesting equivalences, however, between Rivière’s impression of the demands Nijinsky places on his dancers’bodies and, say, Libanius’account of the pantomime’s early training by the paidotribês, when the body and its limbs are forced (the verb is καταναγκάζειν) into unnatural trajectories and ultimately, as it were, pulled apart: see Libanius, Or., 64.104, esp. lines 14ff: πάλαι γὰρ δὴ πεπαίδευται τούτων ἕκαστον ὑγρòν εἶναι μικροῦ διοικίζοντος ἀπ’ἀλλήλων τοῦ παιδοτρίβου τὰ μέλη καὶ τὰς συμβολὰς τηροῦντός τε αὐτοῖς ὁμοῦ καὶ διιστάντος.
54 See the female roles from Graeco-Roman mythology listed by Garelli M.-H., Danser le mythe, op. cit., p. 271-280.
55 See, e. g., Lucian, Salt. 38 (on the “birthpangs of Leto” as a pantomimic fabula) and Arnobius, Adv. Gent., 4.35 (on the labour of Alcmene as a pantomimic fabula). Among pantomimic titles suggesting “an obstetric interest”, Edith Hall also counts Danae, Epaphos and Pasiphae, while also noting that “pregnancy, labour pains and birth may have offered interesting opportunities to the transvestite skills of the athletic star dancers”: Hall E., The Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama and Society, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. Cf. also Hall’s suggestion that a reference to the maternal womb in the so-called “Barcelona Alcestis”, a Latin hexameter poem which may have been composed as a pantomime libretto, “would allow a dancer a moment where he could perform the mother’s recollection of childbirth with allusive movements and gestures”: Hall E. “Is the ‘ Barcelona Alcestis’a Latin Pantomime Libretto?”, in Hall E. and Wyles R., op. cit., p. 272.
56 See Lucian, Salt., 2: μιμούμενον ἐρωτικὰ γύναια, τῶν πάλαι τὰς μαχλοτάτας, Φαίδρας καὶ Παρθενόπας καὶ ‘Ροδόπας τινάς.
57 Love stories remained the mainstay of pantomimic repertoires until the end of pagan antiquity. Ovid tells us that “fabled lovers are constantly portrayed in dancing” (illic adsidue ficti saltantur amantes) (Rem. Am. 755), but so do Christian authors from the fourth, fifth and sixth century AD. See, e. g., Cyprian, Don. 8; Augustine, Ep., 91.5, Jacob of Serugh, Homily, 5, F21va and 22vb; cf. Arnobius, Adv. Gent., 4.35, 7.33; Sidonius Apollinaris, C. 23.281-97. See further Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 71-2.
58 On which see Libanius, Or., 64.103-4; cf. St John Chrysostom, PG, 49.195. Further wonderful insights in Webb R., “Inside the Mask”, op. cit.
59 Choricius of Gaza, Or., 21.1 (Foerster-Richsteig): εὖ μάλα μιμούμενον καὶ πειρώμενον πεῖσαι τò θέατρον οὐχ ὅτι ἄρα μιμεῖται, ἀλλ’ὅτι πέϕυκε τοῦτο ὃ δὴ μιμεῖται; cf. Libanius, Or., 64.62: δεῖ γὰρ αὐτούς, εἰ μέλλουσιν εὐδοκιμεῖν, μιμεῖσθαι, τò δὲ μιμεῖσθαι καλῶς τοῦτο ἔστι δήπου τῆς ἀλήθείας ὅτι ἐγγυτάτω γενέσθαι; AP, 16.289, 1; Apuleius, Met., 10.32.
60 See, e. g. Lucian, Salt. 81: Ὅλως δὲ τòν ὀρχηστὴν δεῖ πανταχόθεν ἀπηκριβῶσθαι, with Garelli M.-H. Danser le mythe, op. cit., p. 362-5.
61 On pantomime as governed by an overall aesthetic of performative verisimilitude, see Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 54-5; on the illusionistic deceptiveness created by the expert dancer’s female forms, see, e. g. Columella, De re rust. I, praef. 15: attonitique miramur gestus effeminatorum, quod a natura sexum viris denegatum muliebri motu mentiantur decipiantque oculos spectantium (“we are lost in admiration of the gestures of effeminate males, the reason being that with their womanish motion they feign the sex denied to men by nature and thus deceive the eyes of the viewers”); Lactantius, Div. Inst. 6.20.29.
62 On pantomime and the broad, heterogeneous domain of female dancing, see Lada-Richards I.., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 30, with ancient sources.
63 Λυγίζειν (to bend or twist like a withe) and λύγισμα or λυγισμός (sinuous bend, twist) are “technical” terms in descriptions of the pantomime’s locomotion. See, e. g., Lucian, Salt. 77; Tatian, Or. ad Graecos, 22.7; Philostratus, VA, 4.21; Pollux, Onom., 4.97-8 (λυγίζειν, λυγισμός, λυγιστικόν in a section pertinent to pantomime dancing); Gregory of Nazianzus, Or., 21.12 (PG, 35.1093): παντοίοις καὶ ἀνδρογύνοις λυγίσμασι.
64 The pantomime’s body, trained by professionals who aim to make it “utterly soft” (καταμα-λάττειν; see John Chrysostom, PG, 49.195) is “softened up to a feminine gait and carriage” (in muliebrem incessum habitumque mollita) (Lactantius, Div. Inst., 6.20.29), with the pantomime himself presented as the epitome of foppishness, as in St John Chrysostom, PG, 59.119-20: ἅμα γὰρ ἐϕθέγξατο ἡ γλῶττα τοῦ ὀρχουμένου τò ὄνομα, καὶ εὐθέως ἀνετύπωσεν ἡ ψυχὴ τὴν ὄψιν, τὴν κόμην, τὴν ἐσθῆτα τὴν ἁπαλήν, αὐτòν ἐκεῖνον τούτων μαλακώτερον ὄντα. Cf. Juvenal, Sat., 6.63; Firmicius Maternus, Mathesis, 6.31.39; Novatian, Spect., 6.6 (vir ultra muliebrem mollitiam dissolutus); Hieronymus, Dial. Adv. Pel., 3.12.24; Ambrosius, Ep., 1.58.5 (PL, 16.1179); John Chrysostom, PG, 57.427, 58.489; Maximus of Turin, PL, 57.257. John Chrysostom even uses the adjective malakos (soft) as a shorthand for pantomimes (e. g. PG, 51.211, 62.386).
65 On mollitia as a marker of effeminacy in Roman socio-cultural discourses, see especially Edwards C., The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 63-97 and passim.
66 Talking of the plasticity of the dancer’s body effected by training, Libanius very aptly uses the metaphor of molten wax to convey the pantomime’s malleability: ὥστε καὶ χεῖρας καὶ πόδας ὅποι τις ἂν ἂγῃ τοῦ λοιποῦ σώματος ἀκολουθεῖν, ὥσπερ, οἶμαι, κηροῦ ϕύσιν (Libanius, Or., 64.104).
67 Terms denoting “wateriness” (ὑγρός, ὑγρομελής, ἐξυγραινόμενος, ὑγρότης, ὑγρῶς) belong to the semantics of pantomime dancing; see Pollux, Onom., 4.96-8; cf. AP, 9.567.
68 See Lucian, Salt., 19: ὡς καὶ ὕδατος ὑγρότητα μιμεῖσθαι... and Salt. 73. τò γὰρ ἰσχύν τε ἅμα καὶ ὐγρότητα τῶν μελῶν ἐπιτηδεύειν...
69 See Lucian, Salt., 50: καὶ ποταμοῦ καὶ ‘Ηρακλέος πάλην; cf. Libanius, Or., 64.67: εἶδε Δηιάνειραν τò θέατρον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τòν Οἰνέα καὶ τòν’Αχελῷον καὶ τòν ‘Ηρακλέα καὶ Νέσσον.
70 Nonnus, Dion. 19.285-293 |: καὶ τότε γούνατα κάμνε, τινασσομένου δὲ καρήνου | ὕπτιος αὐτοκύλιστος ἐπωλίσθησεν ἀρούρῃ∙ | καὶ ποταμòς μορϕοῦτο. δέμας δέ οἱ ἔβλυεν ὕδωρ | χεύμασιν αὐτομάτοισιν ἀμειβομένου δὲ μετώπου | εἰς προχοὴν ἐπίκυρτόν ἐκυμαίνοντο κεραῖαι, | καὶ ῥόθιον κορυϕούτο κυκώμενον ὕψι καρήνου, | καὶ βυθòς ἰχθυόεις ψαμάθῳ κοιλαίνετο γαστήρ | Σειληνοῦ δὲ χυθέντος ἀμειβομένη πέλε χαίτη | εἰς θρύον αὐτοτέ-λεστον. English translation taken from Rouse W.H.D., Nonnos: Dionysiaca, vol. 2, London and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press 1962, p. 110.
71 See, for example, Cicero, Or. 18.59: “He will use movement in such a way as to avoid any excess: he will stand erect (erectus) and lofty in his posture… there will be no (effeminate) softness (nulla mollitia) in the neck, no quick movement of the fingers, no finger joint moving in time with the rhythm”. See further Lada-Richards I., Silent Eloquence, op. cit., p. 116-20.
72 See Libanius, Or., 64.66: εἰ δὲ δείκνυσι νῦν μὲν ταῦτα, νῦν δὲ ἐκεῖνα καὶ πυκνὴ μετάστασις έϕ’ἑκάτερον καὶ πρὶν δεῖξαι τὴν γυναῖκα καθαρῶς, ἀπεπήδησεν εἰς ἄνδρα...
73 Choricius of Gaza, Or., 21.1 (Foerster-Richsteig): νῦν μὲν ἀνδρείοις σχήμασι θέλγοντα τὴν σκηνήν, ἡνίκα τòν Θεσσαλòν ἢ τò τής’ Αμαζόνος μειράκιον ἢ τινα ἕτερον ἄνδρα ὀρχεῖται, νῦν δὲ ποθουμένην τε τὴν Βρισέως καὶ Φαίδραν ἐρῶσαν […]. Moreover, the pantomime repertoire seems to have also included those stories where the protagonist himself becomes, almost self-referentially, one is tempted to suggest, the subject of gender transformation: the dancer will know, Lucian (Salt., 57) stipulates, all the stories involving metamorphosis, including the stories of sex-change, such as those of Caenis/Caeneus and Teiresias.
74 Plotinus, Enneads, 4.4.33 : ὥστε τòν ἔμπειρον ὀρχήσεως εἰπεῖν ἄν, ὡς τῷ τοιούτῳ σχηματισμῷ αἴρεται μὲν ὑψοῦ τοδὶ μέλος τοῦ σώματος, συγκάμπτεται δὲ τοδί, τοδι δὲ ἀποκρύπτεται, ταπεινòν δὲ ἄλλο γίνεται; translation adapted from Armstrong A. H., Plotinus: Enneads IV. 1-9, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press 1984, vol. 4, p. 240.
75 Anonymous, in Latin Anthology, I. 1 [Shackleton Bailey] 100, 2: aptans lentum sexum ad utrumque latus.
76 See Libanius, Or., 64.68: κἂν τòν ἐν Τροίᾳ δέῃ δεῖξαι, κτείνοντα ὄψει τòν ἣρω καὶ τὴν μελίαν σείοντα καὶ ϕοβοῦντο καὶ ταράττοντα καὶ τòν Ἕκτορα σϕάττοντα καὶ τòν νεκρόν ἕλκοντα καὶ πηδῶντα τῶν πεντάθλων μακρότερα.
77 See Lucian, Salt., 77 (quoted earlier). I think the passage refers primarily to the spectacular interlacing of swift, fluid motion with statue-like stillness in ancient pantomime, but Ruth Webb, Demons and Dancers, op. cit., p. 78, is undoubtedly right in detecting here the pantomime’s double gender-language, employed in his impersonation of female and male parts.
78 Most interesting in this context is the epigram praising a pantomima, the female dancing star Helladia: ἄρσενι γὰρ ῥώμῃ θῆλυν ἔμιξε χάριν (AP, 16.287).
79 See Lucian, Salt., 73: ὅ δὲ ἐστι μάλιστα ἐπὶ τῶν ὀρχηστῶν ἐπαινέσαι, τοῦτο ἤδη ἐρῶ-τò γὰρ ἰσχύν τε ἄμα καὶ ὑγρότητα τῶν μελῶν ἐπιτηδὲύειν ὁμοίως παράδοξον εἶναί μοι δοκεῖ ὡς εἴ τις ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ καὶ ‘Ηρακλέους τò καρτερòν καὶ’ Αϕροδίτης τò ἁβρòν δεικνύοι.
80 See Hanna J.L., “Patterns of Dominance: Men, Women, and Homosexuality in Dance”, The Drama Review 31.1 (1987), p. 36, on Nijinsky’s “mesmerizing stage presence” which “appealed to both women and men”.
81 On the revolutionary re-gendering of the ballet genre initiated by Diaghilev, see primarily Garafola L., “Reconfiguring the Sexes”, in Garafola L., and Van Norman Baer N. (eds), The Ballets Russes and its World, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1999, p. 245-268. I have written very briefly on pantomime’s affinities with the Russian Ballets in Lada-Richards I., “‘A Worthless Feminine Thing’? Lucian and the ‘Optic Intoxication’ of Pantomime Dancing”, Helios 30.1 (2003) p. 21-75.
82 See Gregorius Nazianzenus, Poems, 2.2. 8, 92-4 (PG, 37.1583): μελῶν λυγισμοῖς συγκατακλῶντες ϕύσιν | ἄνδρες, γυναῖκες, ἄρρενες θηλυδρίαι | οὐκ ἄνδρες, οὐ γυναῖκες ἀψευδεῖ λόγῳ.
83 Gregorius Nazianzenus, Poems, 2.2. 8, 95-7 (PG, 37.1583): τò μὲν γὰρ οὐ μένουσι, τò δ’οὐκ ἔϕθασαν. | ὃ μὲν γὰρ εἰσιν, οὐ μένουσι τῷ τρόπῳ, | ὃ δ’αὖ κακῶς θέλουσιν, οὔκ εἰσιν ϕύσει. Cf. Novatianus: Spect., 6.6, on the pantomime’s placelessness: nescio quem nec virum nec feminam. On the pantomime’s gender-bending, see further Lada-Richards I. Silent Eloquence, op. cit., 66-78.
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