A Conversation with Dr. Felipe Rojas Silva on Mosaics, Dance, and Topography
Mosaic depicting Orpheus taming wild animals. 2nd c. CE; Edessa
Our cohort welcomed Dr. Felipe Rojas Silva for a presentation on his research regarding intersections between mosaics, dance, and topography. First, Dr. Rojas framed the topic by introducing trompe-l'œil maneuvers in mosaics, which blur the boundaries between what is a “thing” and what is an “image”— what is real and what is not. He asked us to discuss how this “slippage” between the real “thing” and the represented “image” would impact an ancient audience’s interactions with mosaics. By using the “unswept floor” motif as an example, (i.e., mosaics depicting discarded food scraps after a dinner party), he explained the distance in how social classes experienced and interacted with these mosaics: elites played dinner games on the triclinium floor with leftovers, and servants (some enslaved) swept real food scraps off the ground that also depicted deceptive ones. This reveals two fundamentally different, and politically valenced, interactions with art.
Dr. Rojas then introduced mosaics that depict theatrical themes, and we focused on interactions concerning ancient dance “on and with” those mosaics. In addition to having dancers perform at their dinner parties, elites had these entertainers— characterized by different dance accouterments in images— represented on their mosaic floors. The “slippage” between “image” and “person/thing” recurs. Real dancers performed lively, rhythmic movements on the very floors in which likenesses of inert dancers were depicted with stone tesserae.
Dr. Rojas concluded with a discussion on how Antiochenes and their neighbors performed myths that involved local topography, and he related this to mosaic imagery. We examined a panel depicting Orpheus, which was found in modern-day Turkey (it would have been near the Roman province of Edessa in antiquity.) The mythological poet is at his lyre, surrounded by various animals. The scene features labels in Syriac, and it is situated against a topographic background. Pantomimes often performed as Orpheus, and the poet’s story was perceived as a partly local one. If we consider both interaction (through dance) and topography, this unveils the mosaic’s great emotive power that ancient audiences might have experienced. Furthermore, we can imagine that inert myths like this one became vibrantly alive through dance, echoing Dr. Rojas’s concept of “slippage”. The role of Orpheus on the mosaic was personified by a real ancient dancer, who was not performing simply as a “dancer”. Instead, through the act of dancing, the mythological figure embedded in tesserae became alive within the dancer, and in topographic spaces around Antioch.
Dr. Rojas enlightened us on how ancient dance depicted “on” mosaics offer a new lens to consider audiences’ engagement “with” them through dance. Our team often discusses alternative ways mosaic panels are exhibited (i.e., fixed onto a floor) that lend modern viewers a sense of how people in antiquity saw them. Dance is another way we can imagine ancient audiences actively and emotionally interacting with the art.
Dr. Rojas is an associate professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World, and Egyptology and Assyriology at Brown University. His forthcoming monograph on Mediterranean and Near Eastern dance and historical consciousness expands on this fascinating topic.
-JR
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