Women's Choruses

Three Categories.

Women's choruses can be divided into three categories: girls before the age of puberty; unmarried girls, called variously parthenoi or korai or nymphai; and married women. The most evidence survives on the parthenoi, a Greek word that many scholars have translated as "virgins," yet literary evidence points to this word meaning "women who have not yet given birth." The size of the parthenoi chorus might vary, but most were composed of ten members. A parthenoi chorus was often portrayed on Greek vases; one vase, found in the marketplace of ancient Athens and dating to the beginning of the seventh century b.c.e., shows ten young women, all dressed in white, holding hands, their heads turned upwards as if they were singing and dancing. Another vase, a mixing-bowl for wine—the Greeks drank their wine mixed with water—which was made in Athens in the mid-fifth century b.c.e., shows ten young women holding hands and an eleventh woman playing a pipe. Similar choruses of young men existed between 800 and 350 b.c.e., but Greek artists preferred to portray choruses of women in most forms of art.

Partheneia.

Partheneia were the songs and dances maidens performed in their choruses. One of the first poets of choral lyrics, Alcman, was famous for the partheneion that he wrote for Spartan girls in the second half of the seventh century b.c.e. A papyrus copy of this partheneion was found in the nineteenth century c.e., and many scholars have used this as a starting point for knowledge of the parthenoi. The lyrics of the partheneion indicate that it was danced to and sung by a chorus of ten girls who were related to each other, and included a Agido ("leader of the music") and a Hagesichora ("leader of the dance"). According to literary records, it was most often performed at sunrise in competition with another chorus. There is no clue as to what the dance was like, nor how intricate the dance steps may have been, except that the meter that he used in his poetry was generally simple.

The Caryatis.

The Caryatis was another type of dance, the origins of which are found in Caryae in Spartan territory. The goddess Artemis had a statue and a sanctuary there at which the young girls of the area (known as "caryatids") performed a traditional dance every year in honor of the goddess. Much of the knowledge of this dance comes from a description written by Pausanias, a Greek traveler of the second century c.e. whose guidebook for Greece is the classical archaeologist's Bible, but additional information comes from various art forms, including a statue group of three caryatids that was excavated from Delphi in the nineteenth century c.e. The dance was a spirited jig, with many whirls and pirouettes. In the statue discovered at Delphi, one caryatid is shown with a tambourine, another with castanets. Their usual dress was a light knee-length chiton ("tunic") and on their heads they wore a kalathos—a vase-shaped basket wreathed with leaves from palms or rose bushes. The dance was so famous that the dancers were immortalized not only in art but also in architecture. The term "caryatid" is a description of a column that has been sculpted to resemble a Caryatis dancer—the most famous examples are to be found in the "Porch of the Maidens" attached to the temple known as the Erechtheion on the Athenian acropolis. Many column capitals (tops of columns) took on the description of "kalathos" because they so resembled the headdress of the Caryatis dancers.

sources

Claude Calame, Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Role and Social Function. Trans. Derek Collins and Janice Orion (Lanham, England: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997): 149–156.

J. Pouilloux and G. Roux, "Les danseuses de Delphes et la base dite de Pankrates," in Énigmes à Delphes (Paris: E. Boccard, 1963): 123–149.