Ancient Civilizations
I. Egypt
A. The Nile, the longest river in the world ran through the desert
and is central to ancient Egyptian agriculture, history, economy,
religion, mythology and science.
B. Pre-dynastic Egyptians were believed to be wanderers from Asia
who settled by the Nile
1. Creation of city-states
a. Upper Kingdom and Lower Egypt
b. The King became the Pharaoh
C. Egyptian Society from nobility to slave
1. Land around the rivers and sources of water were considered
to be sacred land.
2. Priests owned the land cultivated by serfs or slaves.
3. Farmers, shepherds and swineherds were free classes.
a. All lands were taxed according to how much
they produced.
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1. Priests were free of taxation. The Pharaoh
taxed the temple in order to receive revenue.
4. Egyptians developed an irrigation system, paper, pens, ink,
a writing system and a calendar and created libraries to store
their writings.
D. Dancers. King, priests, virgins and professional dancers were among
the major dancers in ancient Egypt.
1. The Pharaoh was the mediator between God and the people
and performed secret and ritual dances.
2. Priest, or a leading dancer performed magical dances. Priests
were the evolution of the shaman in early societies.
a. Complexities of rituals required codification of the correct
procedures.
1. Groups of Priests trained in dance and drama trained
the next generation.
3. Female Temple Dancers
a. Women had four professions from which to select
1. Priesthood
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2. Midwifery
3. Mourning
4. Dancing
a. Groups of female virgins were trained
to perform in ceremonies led by the
priests. The virgins were taught by
women and performed naked with only
flower decorations.
4. Upper class people performed dance in the temple as part of
religious worship but not for entertainment.
a. Professional dancers and musicians provided entertainment
for the upper class.
5. Lower class Egypt participated in pantomime and comic dances
linked to harvest and other calendric events including the rise and
fall of the Nile.
a. Harvest festivals included popular dancing with people
carrying canes and sticks and striking them together.
6. Trained dancers first appeared at religious festivals, then at
banquets and festivals.
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a. Male and female performers were trained as musicians,
singers, dancers and acrobats by dance masters.
7. Dwarf dancers. Pygmies from Lybia were brought to Egypt
during the fourth dynasty to dance for the Pharaohs and it
was considered to be good luck for all in attendance.
a. The Pygmies performed grotesque dances
mimicking clumsy movement which were
later a part of funeral ritual dances.
8. Egyptian religion and dance. Dance was the main means of
expression in religious services and mysteries and doctrines
were communicated through symbolic dance-dramas.
a. The most significant dance was about the Nile and
was a fertility dance.
b. It is assumed there were animal dances but there is no
evidence of this.
1. There is pictorial evidence of a dance about wind.
9. Funeral Dances.
a. Ritual dances were performed by men and women
clapping their hands together rhythmically.
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b. Postures and gestures that expressed grief.
1. In later dynasties, professional dancers
were hired instead of friends and family
of the deceased.
c. Secular dances. Men and women performed the favorite
dances of the deceased nobleman.
10. Dance as Entertainment
a. As Egyptian society became more complex, dance
developed to include dance as entertainment beyond
dance for religious rites.
1. Servants, slaves, Pygmies and trained dancers
performed.
a. The influence of the slaves brought from
other countries changed the dance style
from linear to more flowing and closed.
b. Solo and group dances were performed.
1. The King performed the Sun dance.
2. Priest appointed by the King also performed
solos or led religious dances.
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3. The King or an appointed soloist danced at the
harvest festival.
c. Group dances
1. Competition dances.
2. War dances performed in a circle.
d. Pair dancing
1. Two dancers of the same gender performed
pair dances as entertainment.
a. Evidence of this as early as the sixth
dynasty.
b. Fifth dynasty dances had symmetrical
and dynamic movements and expressed
emotions of longing and depression.
e. Circle dances
1. As in prehistoric times, circle dances symbolized
astronomical themes or fertility.
2. Pairs or ranks of dancers formed two or three
circles.
f. Line, procession or serpentine dances.
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1. Lines and similar formations were used for religious,
funeral and entertainment purposes with the musical
accompaniment of harps and pipes and hand clapping.
g. Dance movements ranged from processional walking to
acrobatics and gymnastics. There were also hand gestural
dances of the stars and mimetic dances.
h. Accompaniment
1. Music was believed to be a spiritual element by the
priests and was not as developed as the other arts.
a. Egyptian music used seven tones
1. Instruments were the harp, the lyre,
guitar, pipes and tambourine.
2. Songs were also sung.
a. The oldest preserved record is in 4/4 time
with a dancer trainer shouting, “ha, ha ha,
ha.”
3. Tempos ranged from slow to lively.
i. Costumes and adornment remained unchanged until
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Greece and Rome conquered Egypt in the first century
B.C.
1. Simple for slaves and extravagant for Kings
and royalty.
a. Dancers seldom wore ordinary clothing
for dances.
1. Kilts and aprons were worn by both
men and women to allow freedom of
movement.
b. Women’s hair was braided and under a cap
with the braids hanging down to the side. Men
were clean shaven and later wore wigs and
false beards for dances and ceremonies.
c. Henna and kohl were used on hands and eye
and both men and women painted their bodies
as adornment.
II. Ancient Crete- 3000-1400 B.C. The island of Crete and Egypt had their high
points at about the same time. The Cretan people are thought to have migrated
from Asia minor.
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A. The Cretans took slaves from the city-state of Athens.
1. Highly-sophisticated culture that was rich in the arts.
2. The people were tall and athletic and lived in harmony
with the sea.
3. Archeological digs from 1900 A.D. uncovered the remains
of the civilization.
a. Collapse of Athens might have been from an earthquake
or a volcanic eruption.
B. Early Crete
1. Clans or “genos” engaged in agriculture and commerce.
2. Dance was part of everyday life and society.
a. Men performed armed dances and funeral dances.
b. Women danced in religious and ritualistic ceremonies.
c. Both men and women performed bull dances.
1. Central to Cretan mythology was the legend of
the Minotaur which a creature that is half man
and half bull who ate humans.
3. Dance themes in Crete included military training, healing,
religious rituals and entertainment.
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a. Military dances were for training.
b. Medicine men performed harvest and fertility
dances with high leaps and shouting to frighten
evil spirits away.
c. There is historical evidence of women performing
skirt dances and dances of snake handling and bull
acrobatics.
1. Bull dancing served both as a religious rite
and entertainment. Bull dancers or athletes
performed acrobatic movements over the back
of a bull. Male and female performers grabbed
the bull’s horns and somersaulted over its back.
Training for bull dancing took about three years and
was life-threatening.
III. Ancient Greece
A. Crete was a stepping stone between Egypt and Greece and each
civilization borrowed from the other around the Mediterranean Sea.
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B. Greece is surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean and the
Aegean Seas. The northern border of Greece connect to both Europe
and Asia.
C. Early Greeks were nomadic farmers.
1. Communities were ruled by elders, then city-states but
not united.
2. Athens and Sparta were the largest and they only united
to fight against stronger groups who threatened them.
3. Although not united, the city-states shared religion, language,
customs, literature and the Olympic games.
4. The periods in Greek history follow the standard of historical
references of periods for civilizations.
a. The Dark Ages
b. Archaic period
c. Classical period
d. Hellenistic period
1. Rome conquered Greece
5. During the Classical period, Athens, Greece experienced a vast
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wave of immigration and the arts flourished. This is called the
Golden Age of Greece.
a. There was an artificial, ideal form of beauty.
6. Greeks believe man to be a combination of mind and body.
a. A person was considered educated if he could dance.
b. A person’s moral character was defined by the dances
performed.
1. Dances were not what would be considered
to be dances today.
a. Ordered form, integrated with music and
poetry as part of rituals, religion and social
life.
c. Dionysian cults. Dionysus or Bacchus, was the god of
fertility and wine.
1. Men of the cult were known as satyrs and women
as maenads.
2. Dancers entered an altered state called
“enthousiasmos” and the wild, crazed dances were
called “oreibasia.”
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D. Professional dancers were hired for funerals and feasts.
1. Usually slaves, freeman or foreigners
a. nude acrobatics
b. animal dances
c. burlesque
d. Fourth century- professional female dancers wore helmets,
shields and carried spears while performing graceful warlike
dances.
E. Dance was performed for every occasion in Greece.
1. Music scores written for dances with varying tempo and mood.
2. Names of dances
a. scattering the barley
b. knocking at the door
c. the itch
3. Orcheisthai means to dance but is broader than the translation
to English. Greek dance was inseparable from music and poetry.
a. Terpsichore means “join in the dance.”
4. Plato classified movement into two categories.
a. noble was movement of beautiful bodies
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b. ignoble meant distorted movement
c. Diexis was pure dance in which the male dancer portrayed
the essence of the human character or an animal or natural
element such as fire or wind.
5. Ancient Greeks believed a man’s grace in dance equaled his
prowess in battle.
a. Greeks celebrated life-span and calendric events. These
religious activities later transformed into a theatrical art.
6. Armed dances were part of a young man’s education in Greece.
In Sparta, women had military training and performed some of the
Men’s military dances to increase strength and endurance for child
bearing.
7. Military dance figures and steps
a. Formations included circles, diagonals, squares and groups
accompanied by a flute.
b. Pantomime of the skills used in battle.
8. Weapon and war dances
a. Pyrrhic was a form of weapon dance which boys in Sparta
began training at the age of five.
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b. Originally dedicated to Apollo, the dance began
with hymns of praise.
c. A choragus was a person who sponsored training
for competition pyrrhic dances.
9. Animal dances
a. Young men and women performed these dances wearing
masks and costumes.
b. Most important animal dances were bull and cow dances
which began as solemn rituals and evolved into entertainment
and were sometimes part of comedies.
c. Wedding celebrations.
1. In Athens, the bride and groom rode in a cart and the
guests danced behind them.
2. In Sparta, women had more equality than men and
more freedom than Athens women. In Sparta, the
bride and groom danced together.
d. Funeral dances.
1. The priest led the procession of friends and family
to the tomb of the deceased. Hired mourners gestured
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grief. Family was permitted to participate in the dance.
The ,more participation, the greater the show of
strength for the deceased.
e. Religious and cult dances.
1. Priests were both men and women.
a. Ancient worship included prayer, sacrifice,
prophecy, dreams, ecstasy and dance.
10. Dance in Greek Theater
a. Dance changed from festival to spectacle.
1. The chorus and the audience separated.
b. Dionysian feasts honoring the earth, fertility and vegetation
moved from the temple to outdoors in spaces which evolved
into theaters.
c. Drama was created by a priest of Dionysus named Thespis
who was a dancer and singer and added dialogue to the
dance while wearing a goat’s mask.
1. Tragedy came into being
a. Tragedy translates to “goat’s song.”
11. Theater started in a field and then was performed in a hut.
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a. Athens had a population of 30,000 and the theater
seated 15,000.
b. Dionysian festivals included four days for tragedy
and three days for comic plays.
c. In the transformation to the theater, a circular part of
of the path of oxen walking around a post became
the orchestra where the chorus performed.
12. Playwrights and poets originally set the dances for their own
plays and in the seventh century B.C. Arion of Lesbos taught
the chorus steps and gestures.
a. The choragus was a rich man who financed the play
and trained the chorus.
1. A volunteer acted as assistant to the playwright
a. The assistant hired a dance instructor.
b. Plays were eleven months in rehearsal.
c. Before the play was performed, the choragus and
made a sacrifice to Dionysus so the play would be
successful.
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d. Only men were allowed to performed and played both
parts of men and women.
1. Dancers were paid in food and costume.
e. By the second century, in tragedy, the chorus sang\
but did not dance.
13. Theatrical dances included
a. Serious noble dances with the
chorus marching and staying on stage during all of
play and then marching out in a procession.
b. In comedies, actors spoke directly to the audience
and the chorus consisted of fewer people with light
lively steps. By Roman times, some of the dances
had changed to lewd and suggestive dances with
hip rolls and suggestive gestures.
14. Performers’ Unions
a. The first union for professional poets, actors, trainers,
chorus members and musician was called the Artists
of Dionysus.
1. The union specified that their members could
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travel through foreign or hostile states unharmed
to give performances and were exempt from
compulsive military service and taxes.
2. The Artists traveled toured the classical plays
around the Mediterranean area spreading Greek
culture.
15. Accompaniment
a. At the beginning of a play competition, a trumpet was
played.
1. A herald announced as each tribe entered.
2. A flute player walked in with the chorus.
3. The dancers formed a circle around the alter and
sang.
16. Dancers’ costumes were less elaborate than actors’
a. Since all of the dancers were men, they wore masks
and enhanced breasts and rears.
b. The choragus rented the costumes for the performance.
17. Three forms of plays evolved
a. tragedy, comedy and satyr
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b. Tragedies were the most important of the plays.
1. No more than three actors were in each
play and they often played multiple roles.
2. Actors used symbolic gestures and struck
poses that went with the songs being sung.
3. Comedies and satyrs were parodies of the
tragedies and the provided comic relief.
18. In the early part of the 20th century, there was a resurgent
interest in Greek antiquity and its dance and performers
like Isadora Duncan used this as their inspiration.
19. During the Hellenistic period of Greek, they brought their
culture to the Italian peninsula which provided much of the
foundation for the development of Roman dance.
IV. Rome and the Roman Empire
A. The Italian peninsula, west of Greece was a climate and location
which provided a strong agricultural society.
B. Romans amalgamated the strengths of many cultures to create a
ruling power that reigned for more than a thousand years until its
collapse at the end of the ancient time period.
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C. Rome was a Republic that conquered most of the area surrounding the
land mass and eventually took all of Greece under its power. Rome
continued to expand during years of internal revolution and dominated
Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor.
D. Rome experienced two hundred peaceful years under the reign of
Augustus and during this golden age, art and literature flourished.
E. Emperors ruled Rome for more than 500 years and Constantine legalized
Christianity.
1. The Empire divided into eastern and western halves and
the Catholic Church remained in Rome and the Greek
Orthodox in Constantinople.
2. The economic classes of Roman society included nobles,
knights and common people.
F. Society and the arts
1. The first professors were Greek.
a. Latin was the language for law and administration.
2. Aristocrats in Rome spoke Greek.
a. Wealthy Romans studied with tutors and the lower
classes had only a grade-school education.
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1. Visiting teachers taught music and dance.
3. Rome is known for its contribution of pantomime or dancedrama without words.
a. The Roman pantomimes wore elaborate costumes
and masks.
b. An actor summarized the story to be performed and
the chorus accompanied by a small orchestra sang
songs offstage before and between episodes.
G. Dancers and personalities
1. Dance in Rome served a variety of purposes
a. religious, social and entertainment
2. There were colleges of twenty-four dancing priests
who performed for religious ceremonies and some
secular occasions.
3. The upper classes did not dance preferring to be audience
a. Evidence does indicate that young aristocrats were
trained in dance as part of their education and social
graces.
4. Professional dancers, flute players and acrobats were slaves
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imported from Greece and other conquered nations.
5. Mimes and pantomimes
a. Mimes would imitate anything, did not speak, wore
masks and sometimes strolled down the street accompanied
by a flute player.
6. Theodora was a beautiful actress and dancer and a well-known
courtesan.
a. Her performances ranged from pantomime to striptease.
1. Many of the court were shocked by this but
Justinian who was heir to the throne fell in love
with her and convinced his uncle and adoptive
father to change the law so that he could marry
her.
a. Justinian and Theodora became emperor and
empress of the Eastern Roman Empire.
7. Dances of Rome
a. Dance had a smaller role in Roman life than it did in
Athens or Sparta.
1. War dances were preparation for war in mock battle.
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2. Religious and dance rites.
1. Greek colonies living in Rome
continued the Dionysian festivals.
2. Roman had annual festivals and
dance had many purposes in the religious
ceremonies of calendric events and to
frighten away evil spirits.
3. Games and contests
1. Second century A.D. the Greek games
included music and drama contests.
2. Winners of pantomimic dances won
4,000 drachmae (a silver coin of Ancient
Greece).
3. During the first century A.D. performers
had become corrupt performing erotic,
sensational and grotesque dances.
a. Women became dancers performing
roles that were previously performed
by men.
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b. Condemned criminal were dressed in
elaborate costumes treated with a
flammable substance and they were
forced to dance through amphitheaters
and their costumes would burst into
flames.
c. Many Roman emperors and the public
enjoyed these performances, but the
Christian church objected to these
performances and Marcus Aurelius
put a ceiling on dancers pay and
production costs in order to discourage
this practice.
8. Roman dance in the theater
a. Roman theater was influenced by the Greeks
1. The Theater of Pompey was the first permanent
theater.
2. By A.D. 550 more than a hundred theaters
had been built in Rome with limited seating
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of a few hundred people and the hall was
closed for the audience.
3. Mime was considered part of the actors
repertoire using this technique to imitate
another person.
4. Pantomime became a highly developed art.
5. The Circus Maximus, completed in 329 A.D.
was the largest and most famous amphitheater.
a. Dancers performed in circus shows and
dramatic interludes along with musicians.
9. Roman literature flourished during this time but the greatest
impact Rome may have had on the theater was to lower it in
the esteem of the church which stymied the growth of the dramatic
arts for years.
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