Through the Eras

DanceDancers and musicians. Painted limestone relief from the Tomb of Nenkhefetka in Saqqara, 5th Dynasty. © SCALA/ART RESOURCE, NY.her family did not apply for the following reason. Thecanon for artistic representation was in place because thedeceased and his or her family needed to be depicted ina very specific way in order to activate the magic that transportedthem to the next world. Dancers depicted in thetomb, however, were not being transported to the nextworld, and so could be represented more freely in drawingsthan the deceased. Thus, there is a great differencebetween representations of dancers in the act of performingand the canonical representation of the human form.The canonical Egyptian representation of a human in twodimensions requires the head in profile with the eye representedfrontally, as if the viewer saw the whole head fromthe side but the eye from the front. The artists depictedthe shoulders from the front, but the figure seems to twistat the waist so that the legs and feet are again in profile.Additionally, artists used hieratic scale, meaning that sizeindicated importance rather than the visual reality of therelative size of human beings. In the canon, finally, therewas little use of overlap and no simulation of visual depthas practiced in most of Western art. These rules, if observed,would have made representations of dance impossiblesince the rules exclude motion and emphasizetimelessness. Thus artists experimented with a number oftechniques to represent dancers in the act of performing.REPRESENTING DANCERS. Dancers could be representeddifferently from the tomb owner and his or herfamily because the dancers were not the figures whoseeternal life was guaranteed through this tomb. Thusartists represented dancers in a manner closer to true profilethan the figures allowable under the official canon.They also developed methods for showing dancers beside,in front of, and behind each other using overlap.Often, artists elongated arms to allow them to reach tothe other side of a group of partners.CHOOSING POSES. Artists also chose characteristicposes in order to represent a dance. Wall space limitedthe number of steps and figures that artists could includefrom one dance. For example, in the relatively small tombArts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.) 67