03 - Empire of the Pantomime: Kinesthetics of Power in Lucian’s On Dance

How could a dance concert spawn a riot? This study investigates the power which Greco-

Roman thinkers believed musical performance could have over the minds and bodies of

spectators by means of the pantomime dancer, and contextualizes this power in relation to

Roman Imperial power. Rising to popularity in the 1st century BCE in Rome and quickly

spreading throughout the Empire, pantomime dance featured a masked performer representing

mythological narratives with only gesture and movement. Recent scholarship has begun to

untangle the controversy and fascination surrounding the pantomime, who acted as a source of

moral outrage and political agitation, as well as rhetorical and aesthetic inspiration (Garelli,

Lada-Richards, Webb, Hall and Wyles, Schlapbach). For many, the pantomime embodied the

capacity of art to transform identities, represent stories, and stir up audiences. Yet more can be

said about how this power was asserted.

I center my answer to this question around the anecdote with which Lucian ends his 2nd

century CE dialogue On Dance. During a rendition of Ajax' derangement, a pantomime overcommits to his imitation of the hero's unhinged fury and in so doing, causes a riot to breakout as the entire theater "goes wild with Ajax" (τό θέατρον ἅπαν συνεμεμήνει τῷ Αἴαντι, 83). The viewers internalize the dancer's rabid movement and are moved rabidly themselves. My study explores this endemic power through modern theories of kinesthesia, which scholars of contemporary and ancient dance theorize as layers of physiological and psychological stimulation occurring when moving or observing movement (Foster, Olsen, Slaney). The Ajax pantomime is offered as an illustration of kinesthetic contagion taken to its extreme, with an excess of mimetic power infecting the uneducated spectators who (according to Lucian's

speaker) do not have enough control over their faculties of aesthetic response because of their

social position. Kinesthesia helps us to better understand how watching dance could engender

mirroring reactions in an audience; simultaneously, pantomime dance offers a specific

performance tradition that productively intersects with political messaging and social anxieties

around power, class, and spectator culture under Roman Empire, thereby helping us to better

understand why watching dance could provoke civic disruption.

Historical evidence for pantomime riots can be found from 14 CE on into the 4th century,

with reports of dancers hostilely confronting public officials, seemingly in part because of

imperial policy and class tension, and crowds erupting in response (Slater, Jory). Kinesthetic

influence has not yet been applied as a lens through which to further understand these riots, nor have they been compared to the Ajax riot in order to elucidate the political implications of

Lucian's account. Lucian himself does not let us forget his political context, however, as he

concludes the story with the pantomime's near attack of two ex-consuls in the audience who

were so taken by his imitation as to fear for their lives (83). By highlighting the socio-political

frame of this passage, my study will reveal how Lucian exploits the pantomime's kinesthetic

threat to comment on and poke at imperial power.

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Presenters

Alyson Melzer, Indiana University

  SCS-73