Alyson Melzer, Indiana University
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.