Narratives in Motion: the Art of Dancing Stories in Antiquity and Beyond

Abstract

The purpose of the symposium “Narratives in Motion. The Art of Dancing Stories in Antiquity and Beyond” was to make original contributions to the thriving field of study on ancient Greek and Roman dance by tackling this issue from an angle which is both specific in that it narrows down the focus on dance narrativity across different performance genres, and inclusive in that it encompasses transcultural, transhistorical and practice-based approaches. With eleven talks by classical and dance scholars and two performances by dance artists, the symposium was able to shed light on a range of practices, genres and cultural aspects relating to narrative dance in the ancient and, to a lesser degree, modern world. The event took place on 22-23 June 2018 at the Department of Classics of the University of Vienna, and was sponsored by the FWF-Austrian Science Fund (Project V442-G25 “Aischylos’ diegetisches Drama”).