The Program
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These days will be filled with profound sensory experiences of local traditions, facilitated in collaboration with,
and out of deep respect for, their land and people.
Tuesday September 10
Benvenuto Coffee
Lesson & Processing Circle with Rosa
Break for Pranzo
Tour of Galatina
Break / Pausa
Massimiliano Morabito Tarantismo Presentation & Music
Dinner Hours
Wednesday September 11
Lesson & Processing Circle with Rosa
Break for Pranzo
Museo Civico Pietro Cavoti
Break / Pausa
Pizzica Workshop with Serena D'Amato
Dinner Hours
Thursday September 12
Lesson & “Pizzicata” Screening with Rosa
Break for Pranzo
Languages & Dialects with Paolo Miceli
Break / Pausa
Music on Tamburello Workshop with Emanuele Liquori
Dinner Hours
Friday September 13
Lesson & Processing Circle with Rosa
Break for Pranzo
Pizzica Workshop with Andrea Caracuta
Flex Time
Saturday September 14
Lesson & Processing Circle with Rosa
Break for Pranzo --> Flex Time
Sunday September 15th
Lesson & Processing Circle with Rosa
Break for Pranzo
Pizzica Pizzica Between Tradition and Modernity with Pietro La Grotta
Break / Pausa
“Sentire” Workshop with Veronica Calati at Spazio Gioconda
Dinner Hours
Serata “Con Un Filo di Voce” Concert with Massimiliano de Marco & Veronica alla Dance
Monday September 16th
Lesson & Processing Circle with Rosa
Break for Pranzo
Ritmi del Focolare Workshop with Giuseppe Delle Donne & Gabriele Dipierro
Break / Pausa
Community Circle with Federica Coladomenico & Flavia Sabato
Closing Dinner Together
Il Tarantismo — The Healing Ritual
conference with Massimiliano Morabito
conference with Massimiliano Morabito
Massimiliano Morabito graduated from the Dams of Bologna with a thesis on the unpublished research of Lomax and Carpitella in Locorotondo (BA).
Since 2000, he has been conducting independent research in the ethnoanthropological field in Southern Italy, particularly in Puglia. where he was born.
His extensive private archive preserves hundreds of hours of audiovisual/sound and thousands of photographic documents. He has digitalised and donated part of these documents to the Sound Archive Puglia, which established the "Fondo Morabito". Morabito also studied the diatonic accordion (organetto), learning the traditional musical styles of Southern Italy directly from local players and singers, and perfecting instrumental techniques with internationally renowned accordionists. Many sound documents he researched, catalogued, and published have expanded the musical repertoire of numerous Italian artists, enriched the archive referenced by many conducting Masters of the Night of the Taranta, and continue to be source material for the renowned group of Apulian folk music Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, with which he has performed worldwide since 2008.
Since 2010, his investigations have also documented the Apulian Folk Revival with interviews with the most important performers and scholars concerned with this topic.
In 2018, he conceived and curated, in collaboration with the Association for Cultural Equity, an event dedicated to the research of Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella in Locorotondo (BA). After a personal and thorough research to recover missing field materials and notes, Morabito and Lomax's daughter Anna Lomax Wood, returned the still unpublished sound and photographic documents to the community of origin. Part of this event was documented by the Association for Cultural Equity founded by Alan Lomax in 1985.
Since 2021, Morabito has been Vice-President of the Centre for the Studies of Apulian Traditions, based in Rignano Garganico (FG).
Since the same year, he has been professor of Anthropology of Music and Field Research Methodology at the Tito Schipa Conservatory in Lecce within the First Level Academic Course in Traditional Music with an Ethnomusicological focus.
At La Danza he will share his research in his conference workshop:
IL TARANTISMO — THE HEALING RITUAL
Music therapy, dance therapy, color therapy, and aromatherapy, considered today as very modern remedies for our ailments, actually have very ancient roots.
In Puglia, they can be found at the basis of the unique phenomenon of tarantism where music, colors, and scents, within a welcoming and participatory community, helped the distressed to free themselves from their inner malaise.
While it is true that today the phenomenon of tarantism and the symbolic spider have disappeared, it is also true that such malaises are still present in modern society, albeit in different forms. This is why I am deeply convinced that the healing power of music and dance, but above all of the community that supports us and makes us feel not alone, is still relevant, because "ci balli sulu nu te puei curare" (if you dance alone, you can’t heal yourself).
In this brief journey into Apulian Tarantism, we will analyse some of the main interpretations and research of the phenomenon: from Kircher to Serao, from De Martino to Rouget and Lapassade. Rare and unpublished videos will be screened, some of which are the result of Morabito’s field research.
I will share how some of the testimonies written in past centuries are still present in the "living archives", the people he has directly interviewed and documented, and how popolare oral tradition can still reveal ancient knowledge.
"Show me how a people dance, and I will tell you whether its civilization is healthy or sick." (Confucius)
Pizzica (Dance)
workshop with Serena D'Amato
workshop with Serena D'Amato
Serena D'Amato is a distinguished dancer known for her significant contributions to the traditional Pizzica Salentina. From 1999 to 2017, she served as an official dancer and mainstay of the historical Pizzica group "Tamburellisti di Torrepaduli." She performed with this group in Italy and abroad, participating in hundreds of public and private events and promoting traditional Salento's dance internationally.
Over the years, Serena developed her own style of dance, characterized by free expression and spontaneity. She reinterpreted the traditional dance, making it suitable for individual performance rather than just as a couple, with the primary goal of creating an engaging show for the stage and audience. Her unique approach has since been emulated by many dancers.
Serena has also performed alongside prominent figures in Salento folk music, such as Uccio Aloisi and Robba te Smuju, Pino Zimba; Officina Zoè, the Zimbaria. Her performances have taken her to various locations in Italy and abroad.
With Serena D'Amato's intensive workshop, we will embark together on a journey that starts from the popolare traditions of Salento and reaches new forms of expression, focusing on the ethnochoreographic aspect of Pizzica Pizzica and its evolution.
Languages and Dialects
community circle with Paolo Miceli
community circle with Paolo Miceli
I am Paolo Miceli, a Humanities student at Unisalento, a griko language enthusiast and activist. I received my Bachelor's degree with a thesis on folk songs in Salento dialect and griko, a research I am also continuing in my Master's degree. I study and learn Griko as a member of the Grika Milume association, with which we organize a week-long Griko language and culture course every year (iddomadagrika).
In my community sharing, after a general overview of the dialects of Puglia, we will focus on the Salento linguistic situation: the Salento dialect, Griko and their coexistence. We will delve into the topic of folk songs in the area with some examples of the best known songs among the Griko community.
Photo by DiscoverFolkMusic
Music on Tamburello
workshop with Emanuele Liquori
workshop with Emanuele Liquori
Emanuele Liquori was born in Nardò, in the province of Lecce. From an early age he was passionately rooted in his land and studied its local musical traditions with great respect. Through a natural oral transmission of popolare traditions from father to son, he learned from his grandfather at a young age, the main instrument of Salento's popolare music tradition: the tamburello.
Thanks to some exponents such as Pino Zimba and Giancarlo Paglialunga, this passion is added to a continuous research study towards everything that revolves around this instrument. He founded the TarantArneo project, a group born from the friendship of some musicians from the province of Taranto and the Terre dell’Arneo; proposing popolare songs originating from their land but not only. He joined Giancarlo Paglialunga's project “Arneo Tambourine Project,” born from the decision to bring together the most important tamburello players and traditional singers of Salento.
Pizzica (Dance)
workshop with Andrea Caracuta
workshop with Andrea Caracuta
Andrea Caracuta began exploring traditional popolare dance at 14 and embarked on his professional journey in 2002 with the re-formed group "I Figli di Rocco," where he danced for several years. He appeared as a dancer in the "Welcome to Puglia" music video with Pino Campagna. Andrea debuted on the Melpignano stage in 2011 at the Notte della Taranta festival under Ludovico Einaudi's direction and continued performing there in the subsequent editions from 2012 to 2016. In 2012, he danced at the Verona Arena for the Tezenis Award alongside Alessandra Amoroso and Emma Marrone. Over the years, he has collaborated with various revival groups such as "Il Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino," "Officina Zoè," and "Antonio Amato Ensemble." Andrea continues to pursue his passion for dance by teaching courses and seminars on the popolare dances of Salento across different regions of Italy. He is also a member of the dance troupe for the Orchestra Popolare della Notte della Taranta, performing both in Italy and abroad.
In his workshop, Andrea will concentrate on the steps, kinetic modules, stylistic nuances, female and male dynamics, and the use of the handkerchief. This movement lab aims to foster personal growth and self-expression through the mindful practice of dance.
Lunch and Music Together
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Pizzica Pizzica
Between Tradition and Modernity
with Pizzica.me & Pietro La Grotta
with Pizzica.me & Pietro La Grotta
The workshop begins in the form of a conversation with the participants.
The starting point is the living aspect of traditional dance and music; being forms of expression that communities of people possess, they change over time reflecting the transformations of society.
There are therefore an ancient pizzica pizzica and a neopizzica.
Emphasis will be placed on dynamic aspects such as the speed and complexity of music and dance.
We will then listen to recordings of “ronde” from 50 years ago and more modern pieces of popular music to compare them with each other. On the musical basis of ancient recordings, participants will be asked to perform some steps from the repertoire discovered by researchers who observed and studied the grammar of ancient pizzica pizzica.
In the workshop, the participants will be asked to dance in the ronda.
Sentire
workshop with Veronica Calati
workshop with Veronica Calati
and live music from Massimiliano de Marco
and live music from Massimiliano de Marco
Veronica Calati is a dancer with classical training from Miggiano (Lecce), Puglia.
Since a very young age, Veronica was captivated by the folk dance of her homeland which has become, throughout the years, her primary artistic expression. Through her art, she expresses positivity and energy.
Veronica has achieved great milestones in Italy and abroad and has received several prestigious awards worldwide.
She has collaborated with many artists and musical groups, performing in various festivals and theatrical productions, including the Italian Language Festival in Sarajevo, Banjaluka, and Mostar, the Sud Sud Festival in Milan, the Basulafest and Taranta Sicily Fest in Sicily, the Locarno Fest in Switzerland, the Italian Culture Festival in Sofia (Bulgaria), the OrienteOccidente Festival in Rovereto, the Li Ucci Festival in Cutrofiano (LE).
She has collaborated with the Tarantarte company - a new folk dance group with which she participated in the "Calitri Sponz Festival" directed by Vinicio Capossela and the "Sziget Festival" in Budapest.
In 2011, she was part of "La Notte della Taranta" in Melpignano, directed by Ludovico Einaudi.
In 2016 she inaugurated her Cultural Association TERRA BATTUTA in Conversano (BA), where she regularly organized meetings on the folk dances of southern Italy.
In 2018 and 2019, she represented Puglia in Shenzhen, China, she participated in the Wszystkie Mazurki Swiata festival in Warsaw, Poland, with the group "Salentrio", and took part in the international Gran Bal Trad festival in Vialfrè, Piedmont.
Since 2018, she has participated in the Luoghi e Visioni Lineamediterranea International Exhibition in Monopoli, with a show of music and dance and interventions in poetry by Franco Arminio, and in the past year, she held a workshop in Paris at Sudanzare, the Maison de la Tarantella.
Veronica collaborates with numerous musicians from Puglia and beyond, complementing her activity through shows, performances, and folk dance workshops throughout Italy. She has a rich experience in the Salento folk realm and a personal approach to research and choreographic experimentation.
At La Danza she will share her workshop:
SENTIRE
with live music from the musician and singer-songwriter Massimiliano De Marco
This project was born several years ago thanks to the collaboration of two of the most sensitive interpreters in the panorama of Salento's traditional popolare music and dance.
"Sentire" is a common journey, a laboratory with live music created by the gazes of both on their respective vision of the bond that unites sounds with movements, silences, pauses. The cyclical alternation of all the possible emotions that thanks to music the body can express and communicate to others in dance.
The relationship between the body and “musica popolare” (traditional Italian folk music) is entrusted to this expression: while we dance, a completely peculiar connection is established between some instruments and the possibilities that the body has to move in relation to space and in relation to others.
During the workshop, the issues that revolve around the "Sento-Danzo" concept will be addressed.
We will explore the multiple possibilities given by music and the recognition of its variations.
We will follow the different instruments which will give the opportunity to vibrate at different rhythms and we will also move on the voice, an instrument of instruments which can arouse suggestions ready to explode in movement.
We will investigate beyond the power of the energy of each movement, including the pauses in the dance, which will be given the fundamental importance of suspension, seen as a moment of active waiting in which anything can happen and we prepare for action.
We will explore the various planes on which we can move while actively listening to music: earth, air and middle dimension, dimensions that open us to many possibilities of expression.
The aim of this workshop is to explore the various possibilities that arise from the encounter and synergy between music and dance. This will in turn deepen the dancer's relationship in pizzica pizzica, personal and direct, through Veronica's gaze, feeling, and keywords, to then collect the “sentire,” or sensing, of each participant in relation to the other and with the music.
This meeting aims to guide participants into more mastery of their body in movement, and to achieve that fleeting balance that encompasses life itself: that rhythmic alternation between speed and pause, strength and slowness, accents and silences, chaos and detail.
“Sentire,” for Veronica, is “ballare la vita” — to dance life itself — in all its nuances.
Feeling joy and pain, lights and shadows, euphoria and melancholy in music. Her approach is respectful of the origins, but with an eye to the present, leading participants to let themselves go to the rhythm to dance as themselves. Intention, expression and communication are the cardinal points of her teachings.
Life is never separated from dance, so we dance together as life flows.
Con Un Filo di Voce
concert with Massimiliano de Marco
concert with Massimiliano de Marco
Singer and musician, Massimiliano De Marco, member of the band Kalascima and numerous traditional music groups, presents "Con un Filo di Voce," with Veronica Calati accompanying in dance.
The solo project makes vocality and storytelling its privileged expressive basis.
The singer accompanies himself with classical guitar, tamburello, and live electronics.
Time is rarefied, it escapes rigid metronomic scansions and expands in the canti alla stisa. The atmosphere becomes more joyful with the Salento stornelli. Fears are defeated with melancholy lullabies and heartaches are cured with poignant serenades of love.
The drum becomes insistent, dictates the rhythm to the heart and to the dance, leading the audience to face themselves in the dream, to lose themselves in their singularity and find themselves in the collective history.
Ritmi del Focolare
workshop with
Giuseppe Delle Donne & Gabriele Dipierro
workshop with
Giuseppe Delle Donne & Gabriele Dipierro
Giuseppe Delle Donne, player and dancer from Salento, plays different types of southern Italian frame drums (Tamburello, Tammorra, Tammorra sord,...), castanets, spoons, bottle key, to which he adds his voice to tell the history of the places in which the drum is played.
Alongside his uncle Uccio Aloisi, a prominent personality in the musical tradition of Salento, he learned the dances and the music that accompanies them, and incorporated the knowledge of local and peasant musical culture.
At La Danza he will share his workshop:
RITMI DEL FOCOLARE
(Rhythms of the Hearth)
From spoons to bottles, cupa cupa to triccheballac’ and castanets up to the evolution of the farnari (or sieves), the frame drums...the 'poor' instruments of Southern Italy...
A journey to re/discover ancient sounds through percussions.
This project is born looking at the past, living the present, looking towards the future.
By and with Giuseppe Delle Donne on percussion and Gabriele Dipierro on accordion
Salento Through My Eyes
community circle with
Federica Coladomenico & Flavia Sabato
community circle with
Federica Coladomenico & Flavia Sabato
Federica Coladomenico inherited her passion for singing from her mother, Carmela, and began participating in events at a young age. The Pizzica became central to her life in 2000 through albums like Terra by Officina Zoè and Stella Lucente by Alla Bua. She taught herself to play the tamburello, which has been her faithful companion ever since. Her growing passion led her to deeply study the subject, immersing herself in books and videos.
After moving to Verona in 2006 for work, she founded the group Malachianta in 2011 to ease the longing for her homeland. During this time, she also developed her own interpretations of traditional Salento songs.
In 2020, she returned to Salento and expanded her practical knowledge by attending choral singing workshops with Anna Cinzia Villani, focusing on polyphonic songs. In 2022, she collaborated with Flavia Sabato on the project "Il Salento attraverso i miei occhi" (Salento Through My Eyes), which reflects how this culture becomes a necessity for those who embrace it.
In 2023, she met Franca and Rosaria Gaballo, who became her mentors in canto a paràuce, a traditional Salento singing style. Federica’s deepest expression emerges in the ronde (traditional dance circles), where the true spectacle unfolds not on stage, but within the circle below it.
Flavia Sabato was introduced to Pizzica at a young age through a cassette tape of dialect songs gifted to her by her grandfather. By 14, during the Pizzica revival, she joined the ronde (traditional dance circles) and developed her own style, driven by a deep passion for the ancient steps of Pizzica and other Southern Italian dances like Tammurriata and Tarantella Riggitana.
Noticed by Gigi Toma of Alla Bua, she toured Italy as a Pizzica dancer and later collaborated with Pino Zimba, Officina Zoè, Vento del Sud, and AriaFrisca. At 22, she met the Gaballo Sisters, who nurtured her vocal talents and taught her canti a paràuce/canti alla stisa, with Rosaria Gaballo becoming her artistic mentor.
While continuing to dance, Flavia researched traditional songs in Lecce and other southern regions, discovering a wealth of material from her paternal grandmother. This led to the creation of the self-produced documentary L'anima e i suoi respiri ("The Soul and Its Breaths").
In 2015, she published Zero Spaccato, a collection of vernacular poems, and started traveling across Italy and abroad to share her Pizzica workshops. In 2022, she launched "Il Salento attraverso i miei occhi," a project summarizing two decades of research, music, and cultural exploration that has become central to her life.
At La Danza they will share their workshop:
Il Salento attraverso i miei occhi
Salento Through My Eyes
"Salento Through My Eyes," by Federica and Flavia, is a journey into a distant time, with music as the conduit, singing as storytelling, dance as healing, and the ronda as a form of restoration. This project was born from the meeting of two passionate women deeply rooted in Salento's musical tradition, who experience this culture as a necessary outlet for expression. Music saves, uplifts, and heals.
The workshop will be a journey where ancient movements and symbols are reintroduced into a present that has lost touch with them.The drum remains the link between dance and song, serving as a call to an ancestral form of the self. Singing acts as a history book passed down through generations. The workshop will explore love songs, stornelli, and the most classic pizziche, all enriched by stories, experiences, and recounts of precious encounters made through passionate research.
With the hope to leave participants with a clearer impression of the many facets of this music, demystifying the term taranta and restoring a specific use of the terminology, distinguishing between pizzica and tarantism.
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