Chapter Three focuses on Euripides’ Ion, wherein we find important depictions of both male and female solo dancing. I begin this chapter with a discussion of male dancing in late Archaic and Classical Greek thought, exploring how male choral leadership, especially as embodied by the god Apollo and the hero Theseus, offers a positive model for the male dancer as an authoritative but collaborative figure within his community. I then observe how Ion’s opening monody vacillates between images of male choral leadership and less lofty images of solo work song/dance, calling attention to the ambivalence of the titular character’s social status. I further demonstrate that a similar ambivalence surrounds Ion’s mother Creusa, who performs a monody of her own that draws upon the imagery of female chorality and choral leadership. Yet while Ion’s monody prefigures his transformation from Delphic servant to Athenian royalty, Creusa’s song reframes the assault that resulted in Ion’s birth as a more normative form of maidenly transition. In both cases, I suggest, Euripides uses dance to situate Ion and Creusa within their final roles while also highlighting the contradictions and conflicts that swirl around them.

Chapter Two is the first of four chapters on Athenian drama, and it takes as its focal point Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. In this chapter, I observe that the representation of the maiden Io as a wild and erratic dancer engages with images of female choreia and the precarious position of the outstanding maiden soloist that originate in Archaic poetry but develop a special force within Athenian tragedy. Building on arguments developed in Chapter One, I explore how the image of the maiden chorus creates space for the female soloist to relate positively to her choral group, and then demonstrate that Io disrupts that paradigm by appearing utterly unmoored from any sense of chorality. I argue that Io embodies the play’s vision of mortal life and offers an image of resistance to the authority of Zeus distinct from the static suffering of Prometheus himself – a resistance that is grounded in the twin forces of mobility and maternity.