Masks were worn to identify character; but their primary function appears to have been the concealment of a sound-magnifying device to carry the voice through the great spaces of out-door theatres. Women’s parts in the ballets were played by men at least frequently; whether the reverse was a conspicuous exception is also uncertain. Both usages were destined to survive in pantomime through centuries. Objection to the mask always was overruled by authority; the Greek play was such an irreproachable organism that deviation from its accepted formulas was deemed an impious and dangerous heresy. In the eighteenth century a premier danseur’s absence put a French ballet director temporarily at the mercy of the second dancer, a young radical, who refused to “go on” wearing a mask.[A] Not until then was the mask tradition disturbed.
[A] See also page 101.
Though exact data of the steps of popular dances are lacking, literary allusions record dance names and general character in great number. A complete catalogue of them would offer little inspiration to the lay student or the professional; no more than a hint of their broad scope is necessary. Dances suggesting the life of animals were plentiful. Some were underlaid with a symbolic significance, as that of the crane, the bird’s confused wanderings representing the efforts of Theseus to find his way out of the labyrinth, the legend in its turn probably having some relation to life and the tricks it plays on its possessors. The fox was a favourite subject, and the lion was not overlooked. Though the author of Chanticler may have been the first to avail himself of the grotesqueries of poultry, the Greeks danced owls and vultures. Similar to the Oriental Danse du Ventre was the Kolia, probably brought across from Egypt. Another suggestion of North Africa was known in Greek language as the Dance of Spilled Meal—what more reasonable than to infer that it was the same in scheme as the Flour Dance of present-day Algeria? The flour or meal that identifies this performance is spread on the floor, and a more or less involved design traced in it. What follows is interesting chiefly as a test of a species of virtuosity: the dancer’s object is, in her successive turns across and about the design, to plant her feet always within the same spaces, the loose meal exposing any failure. Rapidity of tempo and involution of step may raise the difficulties to a point beyond the reach of any but the most skilful. The children’s game of Hop-scotch is a degenerated kinsman of the dance in and over a design.
There were dances of satyrs and goats, nymphs, monkeys, gods and goddesses, flowers, grapes and the wine-press. Combat was rendered into poetry in the Spear Dance, the Fight with the Shadow ([Greek: skiamachia]), the fights with shields, with swords. There were “rounds,” performed by an indefinite number of people joining hands in a ring; traces of these are said to survive as peasant dances of the Greece of to-day. There were solos, pas de deux and pas de quatre. Pythagoras made a period of dancing a part of the daily routine of his pupils, Hymeneia were danced to help celebrate a well-conducted wedding. Prayers, sacrifices and funerals, as stated before, were incomplete without their several and special dances.
Movement no less than speech is a vehicle for satire, wit, sensuality and indecency. Theophrastus, with the intent of showing the degree of shamelessness to which erring humanity may fall, tells of a man who performed a dance called the Cordax without the excuse of being drunk at the time of the deed. Covering a wide range of light motives was the Sikinnis, the word being applied both to a certain dance and to a form of satirical mimo-drama. In the latter sense it burlesqued the politics, philosophy and drama of the day. As all peoples divide themselves into masses and classes on lines of taste as well as of money, so also eventually the Athenians. In the hands of the Athens rabble—catered to perhaps by ancestors of certain twentieth-century managers—the Sikinnis, as a satire, fell into the slough of vulgarity.
As a dance it may be thought of as a favourite of that Alcibiades type of youth in whom education has not depressed Arcadian frivolity. How such a one vexed the solemnity of a court is the subject of an anecdote compiled by Herodotus. Clisthenes, king of Sicyon, in order to marry his daughter to the greatest advantage, decided to settle the selection of her husband by competition. The invitation met with due interest on the
