What kind of dance is the tarantella?
There are two definitions of this dance, firstly as a court dance and secondly as a supersitious frenzy said to rid a victim of a tarantula bite from poison… The stately courtship tarantella is danced by a couple or couples, short in duration, graceful and elegant, and features characteristic music. The supposedly curative or symptomatic tarantella is danced solo by a supposed victim of a “tarantula” bite, agitated in character, may last from hours to days, and features characteristic music. The confusion appears to arrive from the fact that the spiders, condition, its sufferers (“tarantolati”), and the dances all derive their names from the city of Taranto.[1] The first dance originated in Naples and the second in la Puglia. The Neapolitan tarantella is a courtship dance performed by couples whose “rhythms, melodies, gestures and accompanying songs are quite distinct” featuring faster more cheerful music. Its origins may further lie in “a fifteenth-century fusion between the Spanish
