Dance / Theatre

Abstract

Historically, dance and theatre are related disciplines. Theatre historians seem to concur that in classical Greek theatre, for example, the rhythmic movements of the chorus would have had elements of dance. Indeed, the word “orchestra,” now used as a designation of seating in the theatre, originally means “dancing place.” It is easy enough to chart the historic inter-relation of dance and theatre – court masques, the ballet de com, pantomime and, in our century, the rise of the musical which often features extensive dance sequences. This issue of CTR is not concerned with dance in theatre but with dance which is related to theatre; in short, the practitioners featured in the articles (Robert Desrosiers, Margie Gillis, Bill James, Edouard Lock and Tedd Robinson) are trained as dancers, not as actors.