Tragedy is a bloody business, its characters stabbed, poisoned and torn to pieces, their mangled remains carried out into the sunlight to be mourned. But that’s not the sort of ‘body’ we’re talking about here. Instead, we’re thinking about the walking, talking, breathing, sweating bodies of actors on stage; one of Athenian tragedy’s most important innovations. 

Before the emergence of tragedy (sometime in the sixth century BCE) performers might sing hymns to the gods, or dance in their honour, but putting on a mask and actually pretending to be a god, or a hero, or a young girl was something new. Brand new theatrical technology! 

In ancient Rome, gifted dancers and mimics would re-enact the tales of tragedy, with one performer silently playing all the roles - the world’s first ‘pantomime’. Meanwhile, Seneca was writing Latin versions of Greek tragedies, but despite much scholarly debate we don’t really know whether his texts were meant to be staged, or whether they were private, poetic entertainments for a wealthy elite. As early as the first century CE, the textual and the physical elements of tragedy were already drifting apart. 

This separation between words and bodies continued throughout later European history, with tragic poetry becoming an intellectual challenge for schoolboys and scholars, while the physical life of tragedy provided the material for more provocative entertainments. In the eighteenth century, society ladies scandalised respectable opinion by participating in elaborate charades where they dressed as figures from ancient tragedies - their risqué draperies leaving little to the imagination. A century later, such spectacles had begun to influence the popular London stage, where shapely models struck poses inspired by nude classical statues, and quick-talking actresses starred in burlesques of ancient plays, their skimpy costumes designed to show as much leg as possible. Think Kylie Minogue as Aphrodite! 

Only in the early twentieth century did the physical performance of ancient tragedy begin to be taken seriously again. At first, it was dancers who led the way. Tired of being stereotyped as pretty nitwits on their toes, groundbreaking modern dancers like Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham invented new steps and styles. Throwing away their ballet shoes and dancing barefoot, preferring loose tunics or dramatic robes to stiff tutus, they modelled their movements on ancient vase-paintings, made ancient tragic heroines the central figures in their ballets, and pioneered a revolution in dance.