«Symposion» and «Philanthropia» in Plutarch - Bad Request ...

Dancing with Plutarch: dance and dance theory in Plutarch’s Table TalkThey are φορά, σχῆμα and δεῖξις, tentatively to be translated as “phrase”(“movement”, or even “coordination”), “figure” (or “pose”) and “indication”(747B-C) 19 :Ἔφη δὲ τρί’ εἶναι, τὴν φορὰν καὶ τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὴν δεῖξιν. ‘ἡ γὰρ ὄρχησιςἔκ τε κινήσεων καὶ σχέσεων συνέστηκεν, ὡς τὸ μέλος τῶν φθόγγων καὶτῶν διαστημάτων· ἐνταῦθα δ’ αἱ μοναὶ πέρατα τῶν κινήσεών εἰσιν. φορὰςμὲν οὖν τὰς κινήσεις ὀνομάζουσι, σχήματα δὲ σχέσεις καὶ διαθέσεις,εἰς ἃς φερόμεναι τελευτῶσιν αἱ κινήσεις, ὅταν Ἀπόλλωνος ἢ Πανὸς ἤ τινοςΒάκχης σχῆμα διαθέντες ἐπὶ τοῦ σώματος γραφικῶς τοῖς εἴδεσιν ἐπιμένωσι.τὸ δὲ τρίτον, ἡ δεῖξις, οὐ μιμητικόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ δηλωτικὸν ἀληθῶς τῶνὑποκειμένων·[which] he said were three in number: the phrase, the pose, and pointing.“Dancing”, he explained, “consists of movements and positions, as melody ofits notes and intervals. In the case of dancing the rests are the terminatingpoints of the movements. Now they call the movements ‘phrases’, while ‘poses’is the same of the representational positions to which the movements leadand in which they end, as when dancers compose their bodies in the attitudeof Apollo or Pan or a Bacchant, and then retain that aspect like figures ina picture. The third element, pointing, is something that does not copy thesubject-matter, but actually shows it to us.Just like the poet uses onomatopoeia and metaphors to representreality, the dancer may use movement and pose to mime any situation or evennarrative. As for δεῖξις, which is said to be a non-mimetic concept of dance(οὐ μιμητικόν ἐστιν), some additional considerations are called for. Indeed,Plato did not distinguish between movement and pose, always taking danceas the art of representing speech visually (Lg. 816), as did Aristotle (Poet.1447a 24). As L. B. Lawer (1954, pp. 155-157) pointed out, when studyingthe uses of δεῖξις and other words of the same root, they always have somemimetic sense. This leads us to agree with S.-T. Teodorsson (1983, 3, p. 379),when he says that “Plutarch’s source may have been a treatise written by amusician or a rhetorician of Peripatetic outlook, who tried to describe dancingas an expressive for parallel to speech and analysable into basically the sameelements as speech, as well as those of music”.Still, one may ask how we are to read δεῖξις in this very special context.It seems that Ammonius views dancing as a way either to imitate things, bymeans of a static pose or movements, or simply to point at them, by indicatingthem to the spectator, the latter corresponding to the aforementioned nonmimeticconcept of dance. Let us give an example: a dancer can imitate thepose or the movements of an animal – let us say, a swan – or simply point at astatue of the very same creature close to him.Bearing this in mind, one can now understand that the discussion isfocused entirely on Pyrrhic dance, only in its non-warrior version, rather19A thorough study of these concepts is made by L. B. Lawer, 1954.411