The Art of Ballet

by Mark Edward Perugini

The contrast is an obvious one, but the thing to consider is that we in England have allowed an art which held an important place in Greek national life, and which should be of the greatest educational value to ourselves, to become mainly a spectacle of the theatre, where more often than not it is seen at its best, not necessarily because it is the result of the best system, but because it is the fruit of the greatest practice.

It is obviously impossible to deal very fully with the Hellenic dance in the space of a chapter in a volume which is not intended to trace the evolution of the Dance but of Ballet. An entire book were needed to treat the subject adequately—and we have not such a book in English, as yet. But Emmanuel’s masterly technical review of Hellenic dancing in his volume La Danse Grecque, is invaluable, and is testimony to the sound and catholic scholarship which in France scorns no subject as “trivial” merely because those ignorant of its history dismiss it as such; and which finds sympathetic students in a country where all the arts are treated with a respect that is at least as great as that offered to commercialism.

The Greeks are said to have derived their earlier dances from Egypt. This may be questionable, because it is equally likely that there was a traditional, indigenous dance in Greece. But it was through the Greeks, certainly, that dancing first assumed that variety and perfection of form and style which all the arts seemed destined to attain under their quickening, purifying, and inspiring influence; and it was the Greeks, too, who first began to develop the art of mimicry.

First, as already suggested, there would probably have been some occasion for joy, tending to express itself by dancing; and a victory over an enemy, or gratitude for a full harvest (the more exalted when the harvest was of the grape!) would have been such occasions. Later must have come the idea of representing the victory celebrated, or the imagined characteristics of the being or beings who were supposed to be the cause of the earth’s fruition, and who, if propitiated by this tumultuous acknowledgment of gratitude, perhaps might renew their favours.

Thus, in time, out of the ritual of the Dance would have grown the ritual of representation—Mimicry, miming, or “acting,” as we call it; and little by little, from the wild exuberance of recurring poetic festivals, such as those in honour of Dionysus, would have grown the ordered sense of Drama, the representation of thanksgiving, of feelings, events and things by Mimicry, the actor’s art; either allied with, or separate from, dancing.

The Greeks, improving on the Egyptians, invented and developed the idea of the Theatre. But though the Greeks in their Drama utilised the arts of dancing and mimicry, it would seem that they were quite subordinated to the literary and dramatic art of the all-inspiring Poet, and that words, with a meaning behind them, words representing, as far as words can, thoughts, passions, emotions, actions, things, were the essential medium of Greek Drama, not the art of the Dancer or the Mime.

It should be noted that the Greek orcheisthai (ὀρχεῖσθαι), to dance, implied more than mere steps with the feet. It included much that goes to make a really good ballet-dancer of to-day—interpretative dancing and mimetic gesture. The Greeks in fact had some of the material, if they did not have as we know it—the Ballet.

The earliest dramatic poets, Thespis, Phrynichus, were called “dancers” because in addition to providing the drama as poets, their function was to train their choruses in the dances which, accompanied by singing, were introduced in the play.

One of the most celebrated of the actors in the plays of Æschylus, Telestes, was said not merely to indicate feelings but to “describe” events with his hands; and this, which was really miming, was considered as part of dancing, which Aristotle defined as “the representation of actions, characters and passions by means of postures and rhythmic movements.”

Plutarch analyses dancing as “Motions, Postures and Indications,” a “posture” being the attitude of the dancer at the moment of arrested movement, and an “indication,” the gesture which indicated an external object referred to in a poet’s lines, such as the sky; or such as an orator would use when raising his hand heavenward invoking the gods.