Myth, ritual and dance from the Apulian land

There is a land where dance and music make miracles. This land is Salento in the Apulia region, in the extreme South-East of Italy, where the sound of tambourine and women’s voices have been heard over the centuries. Love songs, work songs, healing songs that narrated ancestral, ancient myths of impossible love and accompanied people working hard in tobacco fields, where the danger of spider bite was hidden. Salento is the land of Tarantism: a healing ritual that was said to be a cure for a spider bite. The ritual combined dance, music, trance, possession and Cristian devotion. Musicians/healers were called upon to heal women bitten by a spider. During the household ritual the musicians were searching for a proper rhythm that would enable the suffering women to go into a trance and facilitate the expulsion of the venom and the healing. The rhythm and the whirling dance, which were originally an antidote to a spider bite, have become a cure for the anxiety of the modern world.

Music heals the soul.

Kore ensemble unites the artistic experience of women who have contributed to the study of dance and music by working on transposition, transfiguration and re-elaborated version of rituals, music and dance from Salento. Stories of land and work, myths and archetypes, departures and arrivals will show us the image of Apulia, fascinating and traditional but in the same time contradictory and contemporary, open to a dialogue with other cultures. Kore ensemble is inspired by the myth of Persephone (narrated in the “Kore la danse de Perséphone” movie, shot in the region of Capo di Leuca with Officina Zoè live music), by Tarantism, Mediterranean trance and the marine images of sirens and sailors (as on the last album of Officina Zoè – Mamma Sirena).

Musicians and dancers on stage: dancers from the Tarantarte Dance Company directed by Maristella Martella, Cinzia Marzo – voice and soul of Officina Zoè and the protagonist of the Apulian cultural revisitation movement, accompanied by the sound of tambourine played by Silvia Gallone and violin played by Eufemia Mascolo.