This research project explores the range of possible relationships between poetic language and potential physical performances, with specific focus upon the translation of Greek tragedy. Dramatic dance was a crucial component of the ancient Greek theatre event. However, this Athenian tradition of simultaneously verbal and physical theatrical expression has been lost to the modern theatre. So, each poet who approaches the task of translating Greek tragedy has the opportunity to cast their own imaginative re-creation of the ancient text/body relationship in a wide variety of modes~ . The thesis is built around five case studies, considering the different dramatic poetries which characterise the translations from the Greek of Robert Browning, Gilbert Murray, Ezra Pound, Ted Hughes and Tony Harrison, and the different ways in which these might impact upon the appearance and motion of the performing body onstage. It is my contention that the work of the poet translating for the theatre impacts upon the body of the performer just as surely as it does upon their speech. These issues are examined through a combination of literary analysis, theatre-history, and personal physical practice. The physical practice takes the. form of a series of performances of choral extracts from different translations, in which I (as practitioner) attempt to demonstrate and test some of the findings and speculations contained within my text-based research. My exploration, both intellectual and corporeal, of this subject, is a personal engagement with some of the ways in which various strategies of poetic translation are capable of imposing parameters upon, or suggesting areas of development for, the performer's theatrical physicality