Performance, Memory, and Affect: Animal Choruses in Attic Vase Painting

This chapter explores the relationship between theatrical music, visual record, and audience memory as mediated by a group of Attic vases, mostly dated from the mid- to late sixth century BCE, that show choruses of animals, animal-riders, and/or men wearing animal costumes. I argue for a new interpretation of these sympotic vessels, whereby they are understood as objects that engage and participate in a viewer’s memory of choral performance. I emphasize the referential flexibility of such images of theatrical music-making, which can evoke one specific performance but also, simultaneously, multiple performances across various genres. The vases thus activate a viewer’s cultural repertoire of choreia, which could include his own bodily experience of singing and dancing in a chorus; in doing so, they draw him in as both spectator and performer within their own choral productions.