HIDDEN VILLAGE Presents: Tarantelle: Social Dances from Southern Italy

Balli Popolari: Social Dances from Southern Italy

Join us for an exploration of balli popolari social dances from Southern Italy! Rather than being choreographed, these dances follow movement social codes: certain steps, shapes, and patterns that vary between communities and that can be used to create a spontaneous somatic conversation. Together, we will parse apart the broad genre of "tarantella," exploring rhythms of specific dances from areas of Puglia, Campania, and Calabria -- to connect with each other in their beats and communicate through their codes.

We will have a particular focus on the Pizzica. Perhaps most renowned outside of Italy for its ritual connection to the evocative tarantismo (“Pizzica Tarantata”), pizzica also has a social dance lineage (“Pizzica Pizzica”) which thrives as a living tradition in Puglia today. In addition to exploring the beat and movements, we’ll focus on the traditional circle called a ronda, where tamburello frame drum players and singers surround a joyful dancing couple. In the summer, pizzica music and ronde fill the streets of almost every small town in Puglia.
Throughout, cultural integrity will be a priority: being conscious about from where and whom the dances arrived to us in our time together, and anchoring our explorations in the diverse realities of living traditions today.

About the teacher
Kate’s connection to these dances comes from a path of seeking traditions that are alive in communities in Southern Italy -- especially those from Puglia, the homeland of her grandmother's family. This path has since led her all over Southern Italy. Diving into a region where she at first knew nothing and no one, it was the following the path of dance that led her into community and connection.
She is focused on understanding the call towards these lineages that is experienced by many people whose ancestors left the lands of the Apennine peninsula. She works to build bridges between these living roots and diaspora communities, centering living local lineage and resisting commercialization or performance narratives — instead seeking older ways of creating together, in complex community. Since 2022, she has led the organization of an international residency on oral music and dance tradition in Puglia, in collaboration with the town of Galatina and the artistic direction of Rosa Voto from the Melbourne School of Tarantella. The residency creates a critical opportunity for folks from outside of Italy to approach a cultural immersion and learn from local artists and community members who live this music and dance.

Follow Kate on Instagram for more! @katecaus & @lastrada_danzata

HIDDEN VILLAGE is for those who feel they don't have a community to lean on. To create and deepen relationships with your neighbors and strangers alike. It's for those that want to share what they have to offer for the greater good. To fall in love with the land we stand on. And to explore the mystery of being alive and how it brings us all togther.

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