A WORLD IN CHORUS

The Taming of Dionysus and the Extinction of Dance

A main strand of research in the Bodynet-Khorós EU project has been on the concept and practice of the chorus itself, particularly in its ancient Greek conception, while claiming the importance of choral dances as central to human societies since the Paleolithic, a centrality that has however got problematically lost. The core of this research, done by coordinator Jaime del Val, is published in the 85 pages-long chapter on “Choral Ontopolitics” in the book Ontohackers part 2, pages 339-424:

The thesis defended is, in a nutshell:

  1. Choral dance has been the true neglected spine of human societies. The importance of choral dance in human societies has been claimed by different authors (historian William McNeill, archaeologist Yosif Garfinkel, sexologist Havelock Ellis, dance historian Curt Sachs, and numerous ethnographers and anthropologists). Here we extend this claim on the one hand to the non-human: dance here is intended as rich and varying felt movement, hence choral dance is associated to flocking behaviors in nonhuman animals or even molecular swarms. On the other hand we propose to introduce the distinction between aligned and disaligned dances along a spectrum,  whereby analysis of dance by archaeologists like Garfinkel tend to focus only on aligned types.
  2. Disaligned choral dances are proposed to have prevailed until the Neolithic, as core structural element of disaligned, egalitarian and sustainable societies of nomad gatherers. Disaligned dances are linked to disaligned societies: comoving societies where internal variations of movement of each body underlie the plasticity of the social body and of its relation to the environment. Knowledge is embedded in movement itself, not abstracted in signs. The more plastic the movements, the more plastic the thoughts, perceptions, societies, and ecosystems, following a principle of Radical Movement Philosophy.
  3. Aligned choral dances emerge with metric synchrony in the Neolithic, as core structural element of increasingly aligned and hierarchical societies, along with a homogenization of rhythms of life, while knowledge gets abstracted from the bodies. Later other kinds of movement take the role of dance for structuring social cohesion: work, architecture, bureaucracy, and machines. With this comes a gradual “Extinction of Dance” and its central role in social cohesion, along with a mass extinction of life, as dance stops being danced by all and gets professionalized.  From the chorus all arts emerge along with political institutions, architectures, healing practices and other practices and institutions, getting split, externalized and fixed in the sedentary built environment.
  4. Disaligned dances become tamed as escape valve, of which a privileged example is the “Taming of Dionysus” in the ancient Greek theatre, where the Dionysian ecstatic frenzy of the cults becomes a choreographed spectacle for the catharsis of immobile masses. Ancient Greek society was perhaps the last complex agrarian society where choral dance still had a privileged role, where even for Plato the chorus was the main vehicle for education, while gradually privileging aligned dances as the model. Up till today disaligned dance persists as an escape valve in aligned societies, often appropriated by colonized people, such as African slaves, but disaligned dance has also persisted as form of resistance of the unruly body.
  5. The return of the disaligned chorus as central to all of life is needed for a politics of planetary regeneration. Here we build upon Stephan Donath’s claim of the politics of the chorus in “Protestchöre” as analized in relation to Occupy movements and similar, as emergent modes of open collectivity beyond resistance, and we take it to the point of claiming disaligned techniques of comoving and cosensing bodies for a rewilding and earth regeneration during the upcoming climate and civilizatory collapse. This is associated to a metaformance aesthetics that dissolves the split enacted by the spectacle and oculocentric culture, and privileges instead proprioception and multisensory integration, but linked to all of life.

Here we share some additional visual materials elaborated by the author – all diagrams by Jaym*/Jaime Del Val unless otherwise stated:

Ancient Greek dance diagram (click to enlarge):Diagram of the double genealogy, evolutions and motifs of ancient Greek dances since before the 6th millennium BCE till today, with focus on the 6th to 4th centuries BCE, exposing the diversity of dances, from the more disaligned and earthly below, eventually stemming from vortical movements of flows and nonhuman animals: Dionysian, komoi, symposia; to the more aligned on top, eventually stemming from the circular motion of the heavenly bodies and its geometric abstraction: circular, theatrical, war, funeral and other types. There are complex interactions and hybrids between both, whereby the Dionysian is central to many, including the theatrical. 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 9th to the 4th centuries b.c.e.: On top, circle dances from the 8th century, following with komos dances from the 6th century, then Thiasos depictions from the 6th to 4th centuries, and finally round, pyrrhic and other dances from the 4th century. This shows the predominance of komos representation in the 6th and of Thiasos representations in the 5th centuries, with other circular dances being more present before and after that. To the left are other diverse dances from 12th to 1st century b.c.e. All pictures by Jaym*/Jaime del Val, from the National Archaeological Museum, 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 9th c. b.c.e. Sanctuary of Olympia. National Archaeological Museum of Athens (NAMA). (b) 8th 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 4th c. b.c.e. Women dancing holding hands, perhaps Horai. Akropolis Museum in Athens. (s) Figurines of dancers. 4th Century. Altes Museum in Berlin. (t) (Above): Figurines of worshippers, goddesses, or dancers. Tyrins. 12th c. b.c.e. NAMA. (Below): Komos. Mid 6th 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. 2nd c. b.c.e. Akropolis Museum in Athens. (z) Dancers, possibly Horai. 1st 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 8th century b.c.e., then introducing vague human and animal forms, till the predominance of increasingly realistic human forms in the 5th and 4th 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. 16th c. b.c.e. Theran. Akrotiri (Santorini) (e) Gold cup. 15th c. b.c.e. Myceaenean. (f) Amphora. 15th 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 – click to enlarge:

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:

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, 11th 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 16th 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.