Book contents
- Choral Constructions in Greek Culture
- Choral Constructions in Greek Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Choreia at the Forge: Tripod Cauldrons, Golden Maidens and the Choral Dancers on Achilles’ Shield in Iliad 18
- 2 From the Demonic to the Divine: Gorgons, Cauldrons and Choral Dance
- 3 Flying with the Birds: Avian Choreia and Bird Choruses in Art and Text
- 4 The Carnival of the Animals: Dancing in Herds
- 5 Water Music: Nymphs, Ships and Choral Aquatics
- 6 A Chorus of Columns: Pindar’s Agalmata and the Architectural Chorus
- 7 Choral Fabrications: Weaving, Cloth-Making and Choral Song and Dance
- 8 Choreo-graphy: Choreia and Alphabetic Writing
- 9 Girls in Lines: Catalogues and Choruses
- 10 Choral Envisioning: Archaic and Early Classical Choral Lyric and Post-Classical Accounts of Enargeia
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Subject Index
3 - Flying with the Birds: Avian Choreia and Bird Choruses in Art and Text
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 May 2021
- Choral Constructions in Greek Culture
- Choral Constructions in Greek Culture
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Choreia at the Forge: Tripod Cauldrons, Golden Maidens and the Choral Dancers on Achilles’ Shield in Iliad 18
- 2 From the Demonic to the Divine: Gorgons, Cauldrons and Choral Dance
- 3 Flying with the Birds: Avian Choreia and Bird Choruses in Art and Text
- 4 The Carnival of the Animals: Dancing in Herds
- 5 Water Music: Nymphs, Ships and Choral Aquatics
- 6 A Chorus of Columns: Pindar’s Agalmata and the Architectural Chorus
- 7 Choral Fabrications: Weaving, Cloth-Making and Choral Song and Dance
- 8 Choreo-graphy: Choreia and Alphabetic Writing
- 9 Girls in Lines: Catalogues and Choruses
- 10 Choral Envisioning: Archaic and Early Classical Choral Lyric and Post-Classical Accounts of Enargeia
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Subject Index
Summary
On a Late Geometric krater from Argos (Fig. 3.0), two panels with lines of female dancers appear above a band of birds, likewise arranged in a linear and collective formation. Even as the birds’ design follows the conventions regularly used for portraying avians in Geometric art, their bent limbs simultaneously mirror the legs peeking out from the skirts of each dancer above, suggesting relations of equivalence between the flock and choral group, whose members also move from left to right around the body of the bowl. Among the abstract shapes used to depict the birds are the wavy lines that recur in the zigzag decorative motifs in the adjacent bands and panels. As stylized representations of bodies of water, these elements both position the choruses in the verdant landscape that, as noted in Chapter 2, typically supplies the backdrop for maiden dancers in the archaic visual and textual accounts and cohere with the artist’s portrayal of the birds: as their iconography makes clear, these are water birds, the ornithological species with whom our sources (as examples cited in this chapter illustrate) most regularly associate choral performers.
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- Choral Constructions in Greek CultureThe Idea of the Chorus in the Poetry, Art and Social Practices of the Archaic and Early Classical Period, pp. 115 - 181Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021