#also I don't hate the movie btw (though a lot of other greek people did 😂)

[fluffykitteninabox]

That's not just a musical trope my friend. That's the start of theatre.

In ancient Greek theatre the chorus (χορός) which means dance, were a group of actors who worked as a collective.

The chorus originally came from the ritual circle dances. According to the story, the first dancer exited the circle and started to converse with the other dancers. And the back and forth dialogue is the start of storytelling and theatre.

They wear matching costumes and masks. They are rarely individual characters, and if they are that's in comedy only, not in tragedies.

They're supposed to represent the common opinion of the people/the audience. In comedy their role is more active, while in tragedy they're more like an audience surrogate that mostly passively observes the struggle between two main characters.

At first the chorus started at 12 members, but Sophocles brought that up to 15. The comedy chorus in Aristophanes' plays has 24 members.

They also kind of break the fourth wall in a way, because they often address the audience when they sing.

It's really not a coincidence that the first photo there is the muses from Disney's adaptation of the Heracles myth. As much as I hate it as an adaptation, it really represents exactly what the chorus is supposed to be in a play.

I'm not giving too much credit to Disney though. Judging by the rest of their choices for the movie, they probably only chose the muses for this purely because they're more easily recognisable as figures.

And they're not even nine! I understand that they probably couldn't put a 24 member chorus in a Disney movie (I mean we greeks don't even stick to the numbers in modern adaptations either) but I don't think having all nine muses there instead of just five would have been that much more difficult.

Good musical trope: omniscient narrators with matching outfits and great harmonies