The Dance of the Muses

This site is in support of A. P. David’s The Dance of the Muses: Choral Theory and Ancient Greek Poetics, available now through all good bookshops, or direct from Oxford University Press. Follow links to find audio demonstrations of the new theory of the ancient Greek accent, using passages from Homer and Virgil discussed in the book; a video demonstration of the way the turns in a modern Greek syrtós, a dactylic folk dance, match up with the characteristic articulations of the Homeric line, using the opening of the Catalogue of Ships; and videos from the projects Χορεία Μουσῶν, workshop collaborations between David and choreographer Miriam Rother, directing the living performance of ancient lyric choruses and monody in Greek. There is also a multimedia web version of ‘Epic Movement’, a lecture given at the University of Chicago in 2008; and a response to M. L. West’s review, in 'Reviews’. In 2019 we now debut a podcast reciting Iliad I in Greek with a version done into English!