La tarantata

Within the Greek-speaking villages of the Salento plain in Southern Italy lies a captivating tradition that intertwines myth with reality and still echoes to this day. It has to do with the cure of women affected by the bite of a poisonous spider. It is the phenomenon of tarantism.

The performance La tarantata by Encardia is inspired by the faces of women in the remote areas of Southern Italy and, by extension, by women on a global scale who bear the “conflicts” imposed on them by their immediate surroundings or society. The women as lovers, mothers, wives, refugees, or victims of war, objects of desire, or abandonment, the “tarantata” women…! And as the conflict transforms into a mental poison, these women “cast the evil away” and are led to redemption through an ecstatic dance, to the beat of healer-musicians. The performance comes complete by inviting the audience to participate in a redemptive dance with clear references to the tarantism phenomenon.