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CHAPTER VII. |
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THE DANCES OF ANCIENT GREECE.
The dances of Greece were of considerable variety, and seem to have been both refined and coarse in their character. The earliest were probable merely military manoeuvres, which were performed to songs, or to accompaniment of flute orkithara: or festival dances at the Bacchanalian or Dionysian revels. The chief dances may be classed as the Pyrrhic, the Cordax, and the Emmeleia.
The chorus itself, in very early times, was, in some parts of Greece only used to heighten the effect of a solo song, by its pantomimic dancing.
In Crete, youths and maidens joined hands and danced in a circle; in the centre of such a circle eat the musician, who sang to the accompaniment of a kithara, while the chorus expressed by their actions, not by singing, the various emotions which he chanted.
The Pyrrhic, or war dance, was the pride of all Greece, and all young men studied it.
In Sparta there was a law that all parents should fend their sons, above the age of five years,to the public place, to have them instructed in the armed |
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