Un Mundo en Coro

La domesticación de Dionysos y la extinción de la danza

Una línea principal de investigación del proyecto europeo Bodynet-Khorós se ha centrado en el concepto y la práctica del coro, en particular en su concepción griega antigua, reivindicando la importancia de las danzas corales como elementos centrales de las sociedades humanas desde el Paleolítico, una centralidad que, sin embargo, se ha perdido problemáticamente. El núcleo de esta investigación, realizada por el coordinador Jaime del Val, se publica en el capítulo de 85 páginas sobre “Ontopolítica Coral” en el libro Ontohackers parte 2, páginas 339-424:

Del Val, Jaime. 2025. Ontohackers: Filosofía del movimiento radical en la era de las extinciones y los algoritmos, Parte II: Tecnologías de R/evolución. Vía Láctea, Tierra: punctum books. Disponible online: https://punctumbooks.com/titles/ontohackers-radical-movement-philosophy-in-the-age-of-extinctions-and-algorithms-part-ii-r-evolution-technologies/

- Ver también extended materiales ampliados del libro
- Ver también resumen en español en Metacuerpos, pags 441-453.

La tesis defendida es, en resumen:

La danza coral ha sido la verdadera columna vertebral olvidada de las sociedades humanas. Diversos autores (el historiador William McNeill, el arqueólogo Yosif Garfinkel, el sexólogo Havelock Ellis, el historiador de la danza Curt Sachs y numerosos etnógrafos y antropólogos) han reivindicado su importancia en las sociedades humanas. Extendemos esta afirmación, por un lado, a lo no humano: la danza se entiende aquí como un movimiento sentido, rico y variado; por lo tanto, la danza coral se asocia con comportamientos de manada en animales no humanos, en incluso con enjambres moleculares. Por otro lado, proponemos introducir la distinción entre danzas alineadas y desalineadas a lo largo de un espectro, donde el análisis de la danza realizado por arqueólogos como Garfinkel tiende a centrarse únicamente en los tipos alineados.
Se propone que las danzas corales desalineadas prevalecieron hasta el Neolítico, como elemento estructural central de las sociedades desalineadas, igualitarias y sostenibles de nómadas recolectores. Las danzas desalineadas se vinculan a sociedades desalineadas: sociedades comóvientes donde las variaciones internas del movimiento de cada cuerpo subyacen a la plasticidad del cuerpo social y a su relación con el entorno. El conocimiento está arraigado en el propio movimiento, no abstraído en signos. Cuanto más plásticos sean los movimientos, más plásticos serán los pensamientos, las percepciones, las sociedades y los ecosistemas, siguiendo un principio de la Filosofía del Movimiento Radical.
Las danzas corales alineadas surgen con la sincronía métrica en el Neolítico, como elemento estructural central de sociedades cada vez más alineadas y jerárquicas, junto con una homogeneización de los ritmos de vida, mientras que el conocimiento se abstrae de los cuerpos. Posteriormente, otros tipos de movimiento asumen el papel de la danza para estructurar la cohesión social: el trabajo, la arquitectura, la burocracia y las máquinas. Con esto se produce una gradual «extinción de la danza» y su papel central en la cohesión social, junto con una extinción masiva de la vida, donde la danza se profesionaliza como espectáculo y deja de ser bailada por todes salvo de forma marginal. Del coro surgen todas las artes, junto con las instituciones políticas, la arquitectura, las prácticas curativas y otras prácticas e instituciones, que se escinden, externalizan y fijan en el entorno construido sedentario.
Las danzas desalineadas se domestican como válvula de escape, de las cuales un ejemplo privilegiado es la “Doma de Dionysos” en el teatro griego antiguo, donde el frenesí extático dionisíaco de los cultos se convierte en un espectáculo coreografiado para la catarsis de las masas inmóviles. La sociedad griega antigua fue quizás la última sociedad agraria compleja donde la danza coral aún tenía un papel privilegiado, donde incluso para Platón el coro era el principal vehículo educativo, mientras que gradualmente se privilegiaban las danzas alineadas como modelo. Hasta hoy, la danza desalineada persiste como válvula de escape en las sociedades alineadas, a menudo apropiada por pueblos colonizados, como l*s esclav*s africanos, pero también ha persistido como forma de resistencia del cuerpo ingobernable.
El retorno del coro desalineado como elemento central de toda la vida es necesario para una política de regeneración planetaria. Aquí nos basamos en la afirmación de Stephan Donath sobre la política del coro en “Protestchöre”, analizada en relación con los movimientos Occupy y similares, como modos emergentes de colectividad abierta más allá de la resistencia, y la llevamos al punto de reivindicar técnicas desalineadas de comovimiento y cosentir de los cuerpos para una renaturalización y regeneración de la Tierra durante el inminente colapso climático y civilizatorio. Esto se asocia a una estética de la metaformance que disuelve la separación efectuada por el espectáculo, y privilegia en su lugar la propiocepción y la integración multisensorial pero ligadas al total de la vida.

Aquí compartimos material visual adicional elaborado por l* autor*; todos los diagramas son de Jaym*/Jaime Del Val, salvo que se indique lo contrario.

Ancient Greek dance diagram (click para ampliar):Diagram of evolutions and motifs of ancient Greek dances since before the 6^th millennium BCE till today, with focus on the 6^th to 4^th centuries BCE, exposing the diversity of dances, from the more disaligned and earthly below, eventually stemming from vortical movements of flows and nonhumans,: Dionysian, komoi, symposia; to the more aligned on top, eventually stemming from the motion of the heavenly bodies and its geometric abstraction: circular, theatrical, war, funeral and other types. The diagram exposes precursors (Like Minoan, Egyptian, and even earlier ones), contemporaries (like the Etruscan, who unlike Romans placed dance possibly as high as did the Greeks) and aftermaths (Roman and resurgences after the Renaissance till modern art and contemporary dance).

Diagram of Greek dance evolution.

Centre and right: Depictions of choral or other forms of circular dances in Greek vases and sculptures from the 9^th to the 4^th centuries b.c.e.: On top, circle dances from the 8^th century, following with komos dances from the 6^th century, then Thiasos depictions from the 6^th to 4^th centuries, and finally round, pyrrhic and other dances from the 4^th century. This shows the predominance of komos representation in the 6^th and of Thiasos representations in the 5^th centuries, with other circular dances being more present before and after that. To the left are other diverse dances from 12^th to 1^st century b.c.e. – All pictures by Jaym*/Jaime del Val, from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Akropolis Museum, Kerameikos Museum, and Agora Museum in Athens, and from the Altes Museum in Berlin. – Detail: (a) Circular dance of female figures. Eleian workshop. Possibly 9^th c. b.c.e. Sanctuary of Olympia. National Archaeological Museum of Athens (NAMA). (b) 8^th century dances – (Right): Skyphos, Ritual circle dance with men and women to the sound of the Phorminx, 735 b.c.e. NAMA. – (Left): neck of hydria depicting ten dancing women, 700 bce. Agora Museum Athens. (c) Phiale. 600-575 b.c.e. Corint. Patras Painter. Komasts. Around omphalos: women’s circle dance. NAMA. (d) Mastos. 600-575 b.c.e. From Kerameikos. Komos. NAMA. (e) Plate. 600-575 b.c.e. Unknown provenance. Komos. NAMA. (f) Karchesion. 575-550 b.c.e. Dancing Komasts. NAMA. (g) Kantharos. 575-550 b.c.e. Dancing Komasts. NAMA. (h) Kalathos. 540 b.c.e. Athens. Komasts. NAMA. (i) Lekythos. 540 b.c.e. Wraith painter. Satyrs and maenads. NAMA. (j) Skyphos. 510-500 b.c.e. Satyr and maenads. NAMA. (k) Statuette. 540-530. b.c.e. Corinthian workshop. Ithyphallic dancing silen. NAMA. (l) Alabastron. 500 b.c.e. Athens. Dionysus, satyr, and maenads. NAMA. (m) Lekythos. 490 b.c.e. Athens painter. Satyrs dancing the pyrrhic. NAMA. (n) Drinking cup painted by Makron by potter Hieron showing the cult of Dionysus with 11 maenads around an altar with the mask of the god, 480 b.c.e. Altes Museum in Berlin. (o) Dinos. 420-410 b.c.e. Athens, Painter of the Athens Dinos. Dionysus and his thiasos. NAMA. (p) Base of pedestal. 329-323 b.c.e. Circular dance and pyrrhic dance. Akropolis Museum in Athens. (q) Dionysian Thiasos – (Above): Lekanis lid. 335 b.c.e. Dyonisus and his Thiasos, with 9 maenads, a satyr and 5 small winged eros. Akropolis Museum in Athens. – (Below): Kalyx krater. Large Thiasos of maenads and satyrs in ecstatic dance. 370 b.c.e. NAMA. (r) Base of pedestal. Early 4^th c. b.c.e. Women dancing holding hands, perhaps Horai. Akropolis Museum in Athens. (s) Figurines of dancers. 4^th Century. Altes Museum in Berlin. (t) (Above): Figurines of worshippers, goddesses, or dancers. Tyrins. 12^th c. b.c.e. NAMA. (Below): Komos. Mid 6^th c. b.c.e. Altes Museum in Berlin. (u) (Above): Etruscan round dance. 525 b.c.e. Altes Museum in Berlin. (Below): Etruscan cinerary urn showing a funerary dance. 520 b.c.e. Altes Museum in Berlin. (v) Three Graces. 500 b.c.e. Akropolis Museum in Athens. (w) Gymnasts or Gymnopaedic dance. 510 b.c.e. NAMA. (x) (Above): Dance lesson. 440 b.c.e. Altes Museum in Berlin. (Middle): Amymone with satyrs. 440 b.c.e. Kerameikos Museum in Athens. (Below): Satyrs with torches. 430 b.c.e. Kerameikos Museum in Athens. (y) Nymphs and Pan. 2^nd c. b.c.e. Akropolis Museum in Athens. (z) Dancers, possibly Horai. 1^st c. b.c.e. Akropolis Museum in Athens.

Diagram of shifts from spiral designs, through geometry to human figures.

The shift from spiral designs in ancient Aegean (Theran) and Mycenaean cultures, above, to the geometric design from 8^th century b.c.e., then introducing vague human and animal forms, till the predominance of increasingly realistic human forms in the 5^th and 4^th centuries b.c.e. along the turn to anthropocentrism. – All pictures by Jaym*/Jaime del Val, from the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. – Detail: (a, b, c). Frying pans with spiral designs. 3200-2300 b.c.e. Cycladic. (d) Stainer. 16^th c. b.c.e. Theran. Akrotiri (Santorini) (e) Gold cup. 15^th c. b.c.e. Myceaenean. (f) Amphora. 15^th c. b.c.e. Myceaenean. (g) Amphora. 760 b.c.e. Kerameikos. Dipylon painter. Late geometric period. (h) Pitcher. 750 b.c.e. Attica, Dipylon painter. Geometric period. (i) Krater 750-735 b.c.e. Attica. Hirshfeld painter. Geometric period. (j) Boeotian pithos-amphora. 680-760 b.c.e. Thebes. Mistress of the animals and Goddess of Nature. (k) Attic funerary amphora. 620-610 b.c.e. Athens. Nessos painter. Gorgons and the myth of Perseus. (l) Lekythos. 540 b.c.e. Wraith painter. Satyrs and maenads. (m) Pelike. 440-430 b.c.e. From Tanagra. Dionysus between a satyr and a maenad.

World in Chorus Diagram – haz click para ampliar:

World in chorus diagram exposing 15,000 years of dances. Below are generally the more disaligned dances, and above the more aligned ones. One can see the emergence of circular dances in the Neolithic, the resurgence of disaligned dances with the Dionysian, which goes again to the background in the Middle Ages without ever disappearing, returning in modern and recent social dance and now challenged by hypersurveillance culture. At the bottom parallel modes of work and technics.

Extinction of Dance diagram:

Ancient aligned and disaligned dances:
Diagram of ancient aligned and disaligned dances: on the upper left the most ancient known depictions of dances following Garfinkel (2018), lower on the left early Neolithic depictions from Levant and Syria, still in a disaligned or proto-aligned mode, followed by Levantine rock art from Spain following Santos da Rosa et al. (2021) from transitional periods from gatherer-hunter or shepherd to agrarian, and at the bottom left rock art from the trance dance of the San gatherer-hunters, who still today perform their trance dances, while their rock art is sometimes dated to over 2,000 years ago (Lewis-Williams 2006, 345) and their traditions may span far longer into the past for tens of millennia. Up on the right aligned dances and geometric depictions from the Neolithic onwards, following Garfinkel (2003), from Iran and Mesopotamia, sharply contrasting with those on the left. There seem to be, as one would expect, intermediate forms between the more aligned and the less aligned, both in terms of the dance and of its depiction, both aspects going eventually together.

Diagram of circular dances and circular pottery depictions.

Dionysus and his thiasos. 420-410 b.c.e. Athens, Painter of the Athens Dinos. National Museum of Athens, picture taken an edited by Jaime del Val.

Chorus Diagram.

The chorus/orgy is presented as primordial expression of flocks in cultures. The Dionysian chorus got captured in the Greek theatre and in domes evolving from the study of astronomy and the idea of circular orderly motion as a superior kind (while the dancing figures of early ritual become statues in temples, and later in paintings, and the singing choir becomes static in the Medieval and). With the advent of perspective in the Renaissance the chorus undergoes a revolution as disciplinary metabody of theatres (and museums), cameras and panopticons, parliaments, assemblies, and clubs, now evolving as a planetary-scale chorus of the Internet in a control society of ubiquitous sensors, immersive VR domes, gaming, and ergonomic control, choruses of algorithms, satellites and drones. All along the chorus has survived in less aligned expressions of collective dances, orgies and more recently also protest choirs and assembly movements, waiting to return full force. In the lower side from left to right paintings by Giulio Romano, Rubens, Goya, Bouguereau, Matisse, and a photo of Jukun women in Nigeria dancing the Ajun-Kpa.

World in chorus diagram with some of the core evolutions highlighted, not implying strict linear sequences, rather connections between kinds. At the bottom parallel modes of work and technics.

Diagrams of evolutions of movement modes from Paleolithic (left) to today (right): on top evolution of ecstatic dance movements, in the middle the parallel evolution of aligned and disaligned dances, below this the evolution of vortical movements, and of worn music instruments, and at the bottom parallel modes of work and technics.

Body/Movement and the arts diagram exposing the evolution of underlying types of movement in visual arts, from their origin in animal bodies and masks, unfolding in a double tendency to geometric reduction (mainly on top) and to sustainment of vortical motions (mainly below) , and at the bottom parallel modes of work and technics.

The orgiastic and ecstatic, and its link to dance.

Ithyphallic dancing figures, from left to ritght: (1) Rock carving from Tanum, Bohuslän, Sweden, brinze age 1,700-500 b.c.e. (2) Dancing Silen, 6th century b.c.e. Athens Museum. Photo by Jaime del Val – (3) Giant of Cern Abbas, England, figure of 55 meter drawn on the floor, possible antiguity of 2,000 years (4) One of the numerous sculptures of ithyphallic, dancing Shiva, depicted as Nataraja, the cosmic dancer or lord of the dance, 11^th century c.e.,. dancing on the bull Nandi, Dacca Museum. (5) Bakongo sculpture, approx. 100 years old, of ithyphallic, masturbating, ecstatic, dancing-singing figure, from Congo (photo by author). The ubiquity of ithyphallic dancing figures, from the satyrs of ancient Greece or the Shiva sculptures from India, to Africa, the Americas and beyond, exposes this alliance of ecstatic ritual dances and erotic energies, a collective force of mutation which aligned societies of fixity have tried by all means to eradicate.

The recurrence of the Dionysian and orgiastic motif.

The recurrence of the Dionysian and orgiastic motif: from prehistoric Venuses, phalluses, and vulvas, and cave paintings of ritual orgies, through the ancient Greek representations of the ecstatic Thiasos with its maenads and ithyphallic satyrs, and in ancient Indian and other cultures, through the resurgence of the motif since the Renaissance and till today (in paintings by Tiziano, van Keemsker, Rubens, Poussin, Ricci, Bouguereau, Matisse, Picasso) and contemporary or recent orgy representations in film, pornography and art (Tom of Finland, gay porn, orgy scene of The Perfume, and orgy paintings by five different artists: Cecily Brown, Blas Gallego, Robert Ross, Walter Brown, Isra Paez) to current gay sex clubs and cruising, towards a potential resurgence of the Dionysian? The unique blend of elements (sacred, orgiastic, artistic, social, and other) of the Greek chorus-komos-orgy gets increasingly disaggregated so that in modern orgy representations the sexual elements is separated completely from all the others.

Masks as dynamic body extensios liked to dance and ritual.Masks, from the Neolithic to COVID-19. (Lower): parades and processions and other itinerant and nomadic actions., from animals, through the Dionysian thiasos and phallic processions, ancient chirivaris and medieval death dances, itinerant African dances and European choreomania, carnivals and Easter processions, to lgtbiqa+ pride, nude parades, love parades, political demonstrations, or streets interventions of Butō or performance art and more recently Parkour: The festive, ecstatic, erotic, masked, religious, and political have blended in diverse ways.

Architectures as dynamic and kinaesthetic body extensions, linked to the choral dance.

Diagram of non-human architecture types (biofilm, molluscs, corals, forests, leaves, stigmergy, ants, termite mounds, weaver ants, spiderwebs, bird nests, beaver nests, burrows, holes, and caves) and their correspondence in aboriginal/paleolithic and Neolithic to modern architectures: on floor (on a plain and on mountain sides and tops), suspended, and floating. An additional category can be wearable architecture.Womb-like bubbles emerging within webs are the broader cosmological archetype, from galaxy filaments to molecules and cells.

A choral universe of flocks and swarms: from quantum foam and subatomicstrings to galaxies and the multiverse (details in Ontohackers part 2, book 4).

Chaosmic evolution diagram where quantum fluctuations connect the largest and the smallest, as energy differentials in quantum foam in the smallest scale (Planck length, at the bottom) create cosmic inflations, in a cascade of bubble o membrane universes (“eternal inflation”, at the top). A bubble or multidimensional membrane universe unfolds from the multiversal quantum foam of eternal inflations into subatomic oscillations and galaxy filaments, vortical flows, and fusions. On Earth, biochemical webs un/fold inside bubbles, folding-spiralling proteins, and DNA, swarms of microorganisms evolving through symbiogenesis and bacterial sex evolve into increasingly complex organisms with nervous systems, forming flock-societies. Finally geometric reduction in hominid cultures give rise to a planetary algorithmic field of reduction. All along the tropes of the swarm, the oscillation, the bubble-foam, the filament-web, and the vortex-flow entangle into always new more complex movements (except for the more recent reductive algorithmic alignments).

Algoricene Diagram of alignments (details in Ontohackers part 2, book 5).

How the moving body externalised itsalf into geometric alignments now covering the biosphere and inducing a mass extinction.

Metaformance diagram of precursors, along modes of composition of extended metabodies, suspended metabodies, architectural metabodies, and masked, blurred, amorphous, and ritual metabodies:

(0) Golden octopus ornament of ancient Mycenaean culture, around 16^th century b.c.e. (1) Loïe Fuller, Serpentine dance, 1896 ca., (2) Hélio Oiticica, Parangolé, (3) Lygia Clark, installation (4) Michel Groisman, performance (5) Louis Philippe Demers, robotics (6) and (7) Dogon masks (8) Philippe Petit, walking across the Twin Towers in NY, 1974 (9) Stelarc, suspension in NY in 1984 (10) Janet Echelman, “1,78 Madrid” in 2018 (11) Keneth Snelson, Tensegrity scupture, (12) Soundnet (13) Zhu Ming, performance in Sydney, (14) Iannis Xenakis, Diatope, 1978, (15) Stelarc, Lying Stickman, 2021, (16) Cerith Wyn Evans, installation at the Tate Gallery in London, (17) Theo Jansen, Strandbeest, (18) Spiders and Tomás Saraceno: spider architecture (19) Tomás Saraceno: Space Time Foam, installation in Milan, 2013 (20)Joseph Beuys, “I like America and America likes me”, performance, 1974, (21) Pedro Garhel, performance, (22) Laurent Goldring, nude photography, (23) Hyperbody group, interactive architecture prototype, (24) Kas Oosterhuis, parametric architecture prototype, (25) giant bubbles, (26) Diller and Scofidio, Blur building, (27) Songye mask from Congo, (28) Zach Blas, from the facial weaponization suite, (29) Umberto Boccioni, Dinamismo di un footballer, painting, 1913, (30), Étienne Jules Marey, chronophotography of a bird, (31) Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A space Odyssey, Journey beyond the Infinite, 1968, (32) Char Davies, VR, Osmose, 1995, (33) Arne Quinz, scupture for Burning Man festival, (34) Shu Lea Cheang, UKI performance, 2011, (35) Jaime del Val, pangender cyborg (36) Jaime del Val, Metabody project, 2013.

Metaformance/Metatopia Diagram:

The different projects developed by Jaime del Val, since around 2002 with the Reverso association and since 2013 under the Metabody project can be seen as 4 techniques and layers that come together in the Metatopia environments. Microsexes and Amorphogenesis have been evolving in parallel since around 2002. The most fundamental of all, though more recent, is the Disalignments technique, therefore at the bottom. Flexinamics keeps evolving since around 2014, and the Metatopia environments since 2015.