Brief considerations based on the etymological choir for the study of historical dance

Although different academic efforts have been made around the terms that nourish the semantic field of dance, the normative dictionaries of many languages, including Catalan, have  yet to incorporate the neologisms that have had to be created to accurately deal with the study of this discipline. This fact, however,  should not prevent us from using the words and expressions required to better  explain ourselves. We will start to focus on the spectrum of terms related to the etymon chorus (from the Latin chorus and from the ancient Greek χορός), which provides us with the lexical domain we need. Thus, the neologism choreography is used to refer to the dancers’gestures and movements, which are more or less organized, or  to the 'dance form itself'. Consequently, it is also used to designate 'the art of composing a choreography' or the 'choreographer's own techniques'.  Choreographing represents 'the action of devising a choreography for a dance or dance show'. The term choreography (describing dance) is also frequently used to refer to the explanatory texts or the abstract symbols -geometric and alphanumeric- that evoke these movements. Actually,orquesographie (orchestragraphy) was the first term used to define this concept, a neologism coined at the end of the 16th century by Thoinot Arbeau (1589), a pseudonym used by the French clergyman Jehan Tabourot (1519-1595). Feuillet (1700) changed the name in his treatise Chorégraphie, ou L'art de décrire la dance par caractères, figures et signes démonstratifs, although some authors continued the original neologism at the beginning of the 18th century, such as the translator of Feuillet's work into English (Weaver 1706). The choreogram thus becomes the 'transcription of these symbols on a physical support', like paper now.

When we use the neologism choreutica we refer to the 'art of dance in general', especially as it relates to the effective practice of said activity, whereas we use choreology to designate the 'discipline that studies dance from a historical and cultural perspective'. Ethnochoreology will therefore be the 'branch of choreology that studies popular dance' and the choreologist (ethnochoreologist), the 'specialist in choreology (ethnochoreology)'.

Specifying the adjectives of the names mentioned is just as important. As a result, we will talk about choreographic symbols, choreutical practice or choreological studies, and we will use the adjective coreic primarily to establish a 'relationship with dance'. Choreographic acceptance can take two forms: relationship acceptance and  belonging to choreography and dance acceptance.

Given the lack of information, we are aware of the enormous difficulty, almost impossible, of reconstructing and interpreting the many medieval and modern choreographies.Similarly, we can see its practical execution, both of the most general and specific movements, thanks to iconography, textual descriptions, choreographic documentation (from the fifteenth century), and choreutical survivals that have been handed down to us. It is for this reason that we must distinguish between micro choreographies and macro choreographies, depending on the level of detail we have available. We make the second ones correspond to the general evolutions of a dance, while the first ones represent the atomic elements of choreutic practice. A micro choreographic entourage, for example, would consist of performing a specific sequence of movements, gestures, or specific steps.  When we focus our attention on whether the general procession is circular, in rows, in a cross, or forming human towers, we would speak of a macro choreographic evolution.

Bibliography

Alonso Fernández, Zoa (2011). Dance in Roman times: a philological and linguistic approach. Doctoral thesis supervised by: José Miguel Baños Baños, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid.

Arbeau, Thoinot (1589). Orchésographie ou Traicté in the form of dialogue par lequel toutes personnes peuvent facilement apprendre & practicar l'honneste exercice des dances. Langres: Jehan des Preyz.

Carruesco, Jesus (2014). «Dance at the origin of the polis: texts and images». In: Licia Buttà, Jesús Carruesco, Francesc Massip & Eva Subías (eds.), Danses imaginades, danses relatades. Iconographic paradigms of ball from classical antiquity to late middle age (pp. 9-20). Tarragona: Catalan Institute of Classical Archeology (ICAC).

Feuillet, Raoul Auger (1700). Chorégraphie, ou L'art de décrire la dance par charactères, figures et signes démonstratifs. Paris: Chez l'auteur... et chez Michel Brunet.

Laban, Rudolf von (1966 [1939]). Choreutics. London: MacDonald & Evans.

Maletic, Vera. (1987). Body, Space, Expression: The Development of Rudolf Laban's Movement and Dance Concepts. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Preston-Dunlop, Valerie (1995). Dance Words. Abingdon/New York: Harwood Academic Publishers/Taylor & Francis.

French Sanchis, Raül (2019). The metaphorical dance in the Valencian festival. Doctoral thesis supervised by: Francesc Massip, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, 2 vols.

__________ (2021). Els altres en l'imaginari coreofestiu valencià. From the old age to the current pervivències. Barcelona: Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat.

Weaver, John (1706). Orchestragraphy. Or, the Art of Dancing by Characters and Demonstrative Figures ... Being An Exact and Just Translation from the French of Monsieur Feuillet. London: H. Meere.