Sorrento : the tarantella

The etymology of the term tarantella is had to put inside various words: taranta, tarantula, tarantato, tarantolato, tarantella, Taranto. All have as root linguistic common Taranto. Another possible etymology of Tarantella postpones the term tarentinula or tarantinidion, the dresses discinte, almost obscene that used the dancers in the baccanalis.

The tarantismo postpones tied up orgiastici of the Greek antiquity to the cult to the cults dionisiaco. Dyonisos was the most important god of the region tarantina, in fact during the dionisies the whole city was found in a state of drunkenness. In the Middle Ages the cults were repressed from the Church and the demonstrations orgiastiche they were verified only in some moments of the year and in particular popular demonstrations.

The Neapolitan tarantella is born in the XVIII century, when an involution and crisis of the tarantismo it is had. This last in the Neapolitan area loses every symbolic value and it becomes dance.

The tools: The Neapolitan tarantella introduces tools to breath, to rope and percussion as in the tradition tarantina but it introduces autochtonous popular tools (the puti-pu, the scetavajasse, lenacchere) and foreigners (the triccabballacco) privileging the rhythmic component.

The gestualità: the positions are articulated by precise phases: standing, fall to the ground and movements in earth complicated by other figures and footsteps (jump. Wheel, turned, approach, final embrace)

The song: The Neapolitan tarantella is accompanied by songs that they have an erotic-sexual nucleus. A lot of they were the songs sung on the music of the tarantella, we quote alone Cicerenelle, Zi Catone, The Guarracino. The most famous is The Guarracino, history of a fish “guarracino” that, deciding to marry himself/herself/themselves one “sardella”, it provokes a violent battle among all the inhabitants of the sea. The song is not only a sea fable but it also contains allusions to the revolt of Masaniello and it hides erotic-esoteric meanings.

The iconografia of the tarantella: The components of base of the dionisismo are explicit in the continuous call to the drunkenness and the eroticism. If we observe the iconografia related to the tarantella omnipresent element it is the wine that you/he/she is drunk or it realizes the presence in the barrels, in bottles and straw-covered bottle that the artists have painted. Often the works are of foreign painters that, between the Seven hundred one and the eight hundred, they reached the succession of intellectuals or rich characters that were in trip for the Grand Tour in Peninsula. Among the most famous travellers it is worth to quote the writer Goethe, the noble treasurer Bergeret de Grancourt, Iohn Ruskin and his/her brothers De Goncourt. In halves the XIX century the testimony of the trips is left to works of pencil and colors but to photos not as anymore they made Gustave Flaubert and Maxim Du Camp.

In the XVIII and in the XIX century a production developed him in series to work of typographers and Neapolitan painters. The works are of scarce artistic value, at times anonymous and without the indication of the date but they are useful to understand as the tarantella you/he/she was assuming a commercial role. The representation iconografica is various: at times the tarantella is observed from near with a first floor on the dancers, other times the scene is more moved because the visual field widens to also take back the context in which he is developing the dance. The strong interest for this dance is also verifiable in the realization of manufactured articles in cloth (Museum of St. Martin-Tarantella embroidered on silk), in products used by dames of the high society as the fans or even in sculptures (Fisherman that dances the tarantella of F. J Duret, Louvre in Paris)

Who danced the Tarantella? The tarantella was generally danced by popular young people, but also bourgeoises and noble. Generally the dancers were young and they exhibited him anywhere, in the city, in the country, on a terrace, in salt public or private. You danced in every occasion, but in some it was obligatory in how much it had a depth collective meaning: the vintage, the party of Piedigrotta, the party of the Madonna of the arc.
The tarantella was danced only initially by girls that they were accompanied with a tambourine, subsequently they will be present also masculine figures. The dance was performed by an only couple or from more couples, were single at times at times collective. The ballet dancer were accompanied with castanetses and tambourines and you/they were accompanied by other musicians with the share of the public.

The literature and the Tarantella. Many are the writers that, having had the opportunity of assisting to the dance, they speak in their works of it. Goethe describes her/it in one of the Letters from Naples written in his/her 1787 trip.; Henry Swinburne detains him on the particular ones of the footsteps of the dance in his/her 1787 trip Chronicle. The Tarantella is described as a dance from living room in Corinne, novel written by Mme De Stael in 1807. Henrik Ibsen, that had sojourned to Sorrento, in the 1879 Doll House it describes the sensual and erotic aspect of it. Different images, the one sensual the other one more vernacular, has left each other David Herbert Lawrence in a poetry and a letter written in Capri to the beginning of the Nine hundred. You owes to Anton Giulio Braganza the legend according to which the tarantella has origins sorrentine and a lascivious character: the Sirens had danced the tarantella to conquer Ulisse and for punishment the Graces they did yes that their legs were turned into tail of fish.

Since the last decades of the eight hundred there are testimonies related to the habit of the hotel keeper to prepare some rooms in the most varied manner where the Tarantella was performed by local groups, paid for esibirisi. The writer's testimony French A. Dauzat and that of the traveller Magdeleine Pidoux shows that the dance having also assumed an aspect tourist preserve the grace of the movements and the melody it gets an inimitable drunkenness.

The tarantella described in 1927 in her one hundred cities of Italy:
…. The custom sorrentino was, for the woman: dressed crimson celestial and orange; wide skirt and to folds with edges, binges and gold laces; embroidered white apron; pierced stockings. Roses earrings and pendants; threads of pearls to the neck.
For the men: black or green pants to the knee, red vest to double bottoniera; green, yellow or red jacket, white stockings, band of color silk with belts, beret of feeble red wool to the right.
The dance starts among two young people that are loved; to their regard, to theirs first footsteps, animated by the joy, from the love, they don't delay to follow the inconstancy, the bad mood, and I disdain him/it.
But the danzante is what has more reason and its companion reentered in herself, the blame confesses him and tries to hold back humiliating him to it up to fold up a knee to the ground. The man turns around then her victorious and forgives her/it lovingly lifting her/it.
But well soon the contrary scene happens.
This time is the man that has shown unfaithfulness and lightness; the woman shows him his/her contempt when he folds up in turn the knee in front of the beautiful one she doesn't delay to forgive him/it.
Then happy and joyful both, show with their animate dance and flood of vivacity and transport, that their love is crowned.