L’uso della danza nella costruzione cristiana dell’alterità religiosa nella Tarda Antichità

The article analyses a number of late antique Christian sources that use choreutic gesture to highlight the cultural alterity of pagan cults, Judaism and heretical movements. The Christian intellectual critique of dancing is not interpreted as an aversion to the practice per se, but as part of an anthropological process that encouraged men to become perfect imitators of the angelic choreia in the Platonic framework. This Christian choreia did not only characterize a presumed Ideal City, but also had to be performed during life on earth. It excluded infames, pagans, Jews and heretics, namely all those that did not comply with the new gestural and behavioural schemata defined by Christian intellectuals.