In the mentioned sequence from La Bayadère, the kinesic profile of the High Brahmin is configured from a summation of authority marks. His postures express distinction, greatness and a major role in the socio-religious hierarchy. His movements are slow and solemn. The slowness itself freezes in a discontinued gesture. He walks with large, measured, unhurried steps. His movements are rather those of his arms – stretched laterally or raised vertically, above his head, in configurations which anticipate or manifest pious contemplation and adoration. Accompanying the manifestations of the other “metonymic actors” – as Greimas (1970) designated different parts of the body –, Brahmin’s face is motionless and his look is raised in an expression of recollectedness. Postural marks individualize him and support the semantic opposition between his uniqueness and excellence, on the one hand, and the humble status of anonymous worshippers, on the other hand. The individuality of worshippers melts into a mass overwhelmed by the greatness of the place and the rank of the officiant. The gestual marks of ascendant/descendant verticality manifest, in this case, certain social roles and their specific hierarchy. The axis of the High Brahmin’s body is always perpendicular on the ground. At rest or while moving, the sacrificer is always standing, maintaining his vertical direction which emblematically orients his postures. An element of contrast in the choreographic drawing is constituted by the squatting believers, prostrated before the sacred fire, almost crammed into each other, losing their individuality into a mass sunken into prayer and adoration. If the postural-kinesic mark of the Brahmin is verticality, the choreographer chooses, in opposition to it, horizontality as a mark of collective movement. The opposition ascendant/descendant from the level of expression is semantically equated by the social status opposition between the common believer and the High Brahmin. The worshipper’s gestual discourse is, in fact, an alternating succession of prostration movements and, respectively, the raising of the arms, torso and head. The latter are stretched towards the high priest, who is thus designated. The believer’s “ostensive” gestures (Eco 1976) correspond to his real or pretended assumption of his humble condition; he is essentially a gestual locutor. Social distance is suggested by vertical space distance. The latter is delimited by two extremes: the superior one (the High Brahmin, standing in a majestic-conventional posture) and the inferior one, the common worshipper. The latter performs an encomiastic discourse, from a kneeling or squatting position, at the priest’s feet. In fact, the gestual and postural dialogue between the Brahmin and the group of worshippers is constantly performed from unequal positions. It rests, undeniably, a dialogue between up and down. The back of the humble worshippers is, most of the time, bent downwards, their heads are raised only to be bent quickly at the Brahmin’s sight. The relation between the figures of expression and those of content highlights a possible social exploitation of spatiality (more precisely, of verticality).
The semiosis is, therefore, once more conditioned by the establishing of a correlation socially agreed, between certain semantic categories and the corresponding categories of kinesic expression, as Greimas (1970) and Schmitt (1990), among many others, observed, and a long tradition of communication practices confirms: mobility/immobility (with the version “slowness” or “discontinued gesture”), verticality/horizontality, ascendant/descendant.