Greek Mythology
In a classical Greek song, Apollo, the god of medicine, music and poetry, one of the twelve greater gods and son of the chief god Zeus, was called The Dancer. In a Greek line Zeus himself is represented as dancing. Terpsichore is one of the nine Muses, representing dancing and dramatic chorus. In Sparta, a province of ancient Greece, the law compelled parents to exercise their children in dancing from the age of five years. They were led by grown men, and sang hymns and songs as they danced. In very early times a Greek chorus, consisting of the whole population of the city, would meet in the market-place to offer up thanksgivings to the god of the country. Their jubilees were always attended with hymn-singing and dancing.
Read more about this topic: Dance In Mythology And Religion
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“Certainly for us of the modern world, with its conflicting claims, its entangled interests, distracted by so many sorrows, so many preoccupations, so bewildering an experience, the problem of unity with ourselves in blitheness and repose, is far harder than it was for the Greek within the simple terms of antique life. Yet, not less than ever, the intellect demands completeness, centrality.”
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