From lwright@cac.washington.edu Tue Oct 30 07:55:03 2001 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f9UFt1N22496 for ; Tue, 30 Oct 2001 07:55:01 -0800 Received: FROM mxu2.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Tue Oct 30 07:54:59 2001 -0800 Received: from mxout2.cac.washington.edu (mxout2.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.4]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f9UFsxu09031 for ; Tue, 30 Oct 2001 07:54:59 -0800 Received: from shiva1.cac.washington.edu (shiva1.cac.washington.edu [140.142.100.201]) by mxout2.cac.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f9UFsxs07096 for ; Tue, 30 Oct 2001 07:54:59 -0800 Received: from localhost (lwright@localhost) by shiva1.cac.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f9UFsx427475 for ; Tue, 30 Oct 2001 07:54:59 -0800 Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 07:54:59 -0800 (PST) From: Linda Wright To: Subject: choral performance at St. John's College (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 10:12:05 -0500 From: Amirthanayagam David Subject: choral performance at St. John's College Please post to the classics list: I would like to announce a performance of choruses from Sophocles' *Antigone*, in Ancient Greek, by students in McDowell Hall on the campus of St. John's College, Annapolis, Md, at 4:30 pm on both November 2 & 3, 2001 (Friday and Saturday). One point of departure here is a new theory of the Greek accent, set out in my dissertation "The Dance of the Muses" at the University of Chicago, which demonstrates a connection between the inherited diacritical indications of tonal prosody and the stress theory developed by W. Sidney Allen. The upshot is a metrical text that can be read off convincingly as a fully harmonized and syncopated score. The other point is the contribution of my partner, choreographer Miriam Rother. All the postures and gestures that she uses, and from which we infer the steps and energy, have been taken from ancient vase depictions and statuary. Hence the whole approach is rooted in concrete textual indicators. We shall be performing the Ode to Man (332-75) and the passage (781-882) which includes the chorus on Eros and Antigone's farewell aria--a moment of fully "choral dialogue" between the protagonist and the chorus. We circle and counter-circle for strophe and antistrophe, sometimes resolving into rows, and we avoid the Euripidean (and Gregorian) *melisma* (more than one step or gesture per syllable); but we stake no further claim in arguments about the shape of the original theatre space, about the relation of that shape to the form of the dance, about scenes and props, about costumes, about masks, or even about musical accompaniment, although we hope to work on the latter in future. We also enthusiastically embrace a mixed chorus and a female in the role of Antigone. All of our 'reconstruction' consists in expressing the metrical, rhythmic, and harmonic information that is explicitly present in the score that we have received in Sophocles' name; and in Ms. Rother's reading a variety of depictions from vases and statuary more and more confidently as though they themselves contain or even were intended as a choreographic notation. The postures are definite and precise, self-consciously rendered in mid-motion; we can infer where they have come from and where they are going, and with what energy. It must sound like hubris but the many revelations we have had in the course of the work strongly suggest that pronouncements about the death or the vanishing of ancient *choreia* may have been premature. There will also be a demonstration of a dactylic round dance (the *choreia Mouswn*) in accompaniment of Homeric recitation, along with Phaecian acrobatics--a bit of a showstopper. Anyone in the area with an interest in the reconstruction of ancient performance is warmly invited to attend. A warning, however: it is the Parents' Weekend at the College and space may be limited. Cheers, Amirthanayagam David St. John's College, Annapolis (410) 349 4744 a-david@sjca.edu .