The Program

Schedule

We'll start every morning with a lesson and gathering with Rosa Voto, the lead of the residency, often joined by special guests and friends who will share their experiences and perspectives.

We'll wrap up the morning with a processing circle, allowing plenty of time to talk through what we're learning and experiencing.

After taking a break to eat lunch independently and rest, a good three hours per tradition, we'll regroup in the afternoon for a structured workshop with a local teacher, typically on dance or cultural themes. 

Finally, we'll end the evening with a workshop typically anchored in music or drumming.

They will be long, beautiful days! On Friday, you'll get the afternoon and evening off: free to rest, reflect, explore the town, or travel to a nearby attraction such as Lecce or the sea.

Minor changes to the schedule may occur.

Teaching Artists

Musica popolare spans towns, generations, and professions. To engage respectfully and sincerely with these roots, we open our hearts and minds to a range of stories, sounds, perspectives, and interpretations. 

Our days will come to life under the guidance of a group of local artists, teachers, and community members. We aim to collaborate across generations, professions, and approaches to share a truly holistic picture of the nuances of the traditions, and relationships to it.

In most cases, teaching artists will teach in their language, Italian, in collaboration with the translation of Rosa Voto to create a unique opportunity to learn locally across language barriers.

We are so grateful for their trust and collaboration, and can’t wait to gather together in Galatina. 🎶

~ 

Throughout the spring, we'll be announcing the full lineup! 

Dance Faculty

Serena Pellegrino

Workshop: Lascito vivo
(Living legacy)

Through movement, each person expresses an innate desire to know, explore, and experience. Movement means connection and is the essential prerequisite for contact and dynamic communication in relationships with others and the world around us. 

The workshop invites you to explore the pizzica pizzica as a tool for connecting with the present moment, without forgetting the deep historical roots of Southern Italian dance and music. Through connection with music, the goal is to learn to live in the here and now, letting yourself be guided by the ancestral vibrations of the pizzica. As in tarantismo, dance becomes a tool for connecting with the deepest feelings of the soul, a way to release inner energies and access a dimension of healing and awareness. In this space of connection between body and spirit, tradition merges with modernity, allowing you to rediscover ancient gestures and melodies, transforming them into a practice of presence and inner listening.

About Serena Pellegrino

Serena Pellegrino, dancer and teacher of popolare and academic dance, graduated from the Liceo Coreutico E. Giannelliin in Parabita. Over the years, she continued her study of Tarantismo and the popolare dances of Southern Italy, alongside her academic studies, participating in various national and local projects. In 2017, she joined La Notte della Taranta Dance Company, working with several international choreographers such as Luciano Cannito, Massimiliano Volpini, Davide Bombana, Sharon Eyal, Thomas Signorelli, Irma di Paola, Francesca Di Maio, and Laccio. She also participated in the Orchestra Popolare of La Notte della Taranta's winter tours in Italy and abroad.

Flavia Sabato

Workshop: il Salento attraverso i miei occhi

Salento Through My Eyes

This project was born from a personality deeply rooted in the Salentino musical tradition, who lives this culture as an expressive and outlet need. Music saves, uplifts, heals. 

Taking part in the workshop will be a journey into a past time, where the movements and symbolisms of the elderly return to a present that no longer knows them. 

The drum remains the link between dance and song, an instrument of recall to an ancestral form of oneself.  Song as a history book handed down for decades.

A journey through movements, therefore dance and songs... all seasoned with stories, experiences, encounters that this passion has allowed me to live.

I would like to leave participants with a clear image of how many facets this music has. Deflating the term “taranta,” and bringing back to a specific use of the terminology, between pizzica and tarantismo.

About Flavia Sabato

Flavia Sabato, born in 1985, was introduced to the pizzica at a very young age thanks to a cassette tape containing dialect songs given to her by her grandfather. 

Around 14, during the boom of the pizzica revival, she entered the world of the ronde, where not only did she develop her own style of dancing, but thanks to some elders of the time, she became so passionate about it that she began a full-fledged research into the archaic steps of the pizzica and various dances of Southern Italy. 

She was noticed by Gigi Toma, leader of the group Alla Bua, who took her on tour throughout Italy as a pizzica dancer, and subsequently by Pino Zimba with Zimbaria, Officina Zoè, Vento del Sud, and AriaFrisca. At the age of 22, she met the Gaballo Sisters, who discovered her vocal talents and taught her the "canti a parauce/canti alla Stisa" technique. While never abandoning dance, she began a further search for unknown songs and discovered in her paternal grandmother an inexhaustible source of dialect songs and verses. 

She now tours Italy, bringing her pizzica workshop to various cities and even abroad.

In 2022, the project "il Salento attraverso i miei occhi" (Salento Through My Eyes) was born, which is nothing less than a summary, through song and dance, of twenty years of research, acquaintances, and friendships; a journey of music and anecdotes of this culture that has become a vital part of Flavia's life.

Andrea de Siena

Workshop: Danza di Radici 

Focus on Pizzica Pizzica

DANZA DI RADICE is Andrea De Siena's new educational program, developed around the theme of the dances of the communities of Central and Southern Italy that belong to the horizon of the tarantella. The focus of this gathering will be the pizzica pizzica.

During the workshop, we will study the processual nature of dance heritage, investigating how ritual, gestural, and social languages ​​manifest and are found today in the different contexts in which dances exist.

The goal is to achieve a shared awareness of this heritage through an open perspective on the plurality of expressions in which it manifests itself, that is, to open ourselves to the experience of dance in ritual festivals, in popolare festivals, and in later developments such as revival and artistic experimentation.

Open to all (there are no levels), the workshop is particularly recommended for dancers, enthusiasts, and those who, through practice or teaching, are already active in the traditional dance circuit.

About Andrea de Siena

Hailing from San Vito dei Normanni (Puglia, Italy), he establishes his pedagogical and creative research within the realm of pizzica pizzica and tarantella in general.

Since 2014, he has taught in various locations across the Mediterranean and graduated in Philosophy in 2021. He is a co-founder of the Scuola di Pizzica di San Vito (2016) and the RomaTrad collective (2022), and in 2025 he launched the Danza di Radice program.

He has worked for the World Music Academy since 2015, as the creator and artistic director of the COREUTICA residency and co-artistic director of Folktronica (2026). In 2024, together with Dar Jacir, he was among the artists of SOUTH WEST BANK - Landworks, Collective Action and Sound, a collateral event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

Among his creations: Tradere / Sonata Melanconica (concept and choreography, 2022), winner of the Ethnos Gener/Azioni choreographic prize; Controra (concept and choreography, 2024), a dialogue of music and dance with Vincenzo Gagliani; Sciucari (concept, 2025), a collective process as part of the Oriente Occidente Residencies in Rovereto.

In 2026, he is an artist in residence at Fabra i Coats in Barcelona.

Music Faculty

Ninfa Giannuzzi

Workshop: INCORONATA 

The ControPotere of Song

The project was born as a space for research and practice dedicated to the polyphonies of Salento's Griko song, approached with a playful yet responsible approach. A workshop that recognizes a "courtyard identity": intimate and collective, rooted yet open, reaching out to the Mediterranean.

In Salento, ritual and song are places of encounter. They carry within them traces of contamination, exchange, and coexistence between different cultures. This identity is neither closed nor monolithic: it is an identity of transition, which finds meaning precisely in the relationship and dialogue between differences.

A reflection on the power of the voice and song as a social practice.

Questioning song means questioning its origins, its memory, and the way a community recognizes and narrates itself. In traditional societies, song does not coincide with political or economic power, but acts on an equally profound level.

In this sense, singing is a "counterpower": a force capable of transcending conflicts, preserving memories, and giving form to what ordinary language cannot express. It is a collective act that elaborates the present and, through the interplay of voices, continually renews shared identity.

About Ninfa Giannuzzi

Ninfa sings with a full voice, a voice that affects and consoles, that wounds and heals.

Her timbre vibrates with the power of Griko language: not simple belonging, but embodied memory, a language that becomes sound even before words. Languages, traversed by her breath, are not boundaries but living matter; the repertoire becomes a shifting territory, a space of intersection where genres dissolve and recompose. In this tension, the uniqueness of her vocal gesture takes shape.

The Salento "feeling," for her, is not folklore but a primordial experience: a way of being in the world. The act of singing thus becomes a bold act of knowledge, a reversed contamination that moves from interiority toward a shared horizon—from the self to the world.

Her research into traditional music, popolare vocals, and the world's sound cultures is not a simple stylistic study, but an exercise in listening and transformation. The deepening of vocal techniques becomes an investigation of the body and breathing; music reveals itself as vision, singing as a practice of awareness: a place where identity is not affirmed, but revealed.

Roberta Chiga

Tamburello Workshop/Guided Practice

"The Tamburello from Salento in the ‘old style’"

This guided practice workshop will focus on rhythmic language, variations, styles, and the use of Salento's tamburello for pizzica. He will guide us in exploration of rhythmic language, variations, and styles that will provide an understanding of the instrument’s full range of use, and comparison between modern techniques and older styles.

The topics covered stem from personal study and years of work, involving learning from and interpreting the playing styles of elderly musicians.

Developed and refined through research, Roberto’s modern method is designed to transform hand movements into simple, practical exercises, in order to achieve the stylistic variations used by traditional players and compare them with what popolare music and the tamburello are today.

About Robert Chiga

Roberto Chiga is an Italian percussionist specializing in the traditional Salento tamburello, blending ancient Apulian techniques with contemporary experimental styles. Influenced by master musicians and elders, he bridges folk traditions with electronic, hip-hop, and global sounds. Under the name Asheblasta, he explores solo projects that fuse Pizzica with electronic music.

Cu lu stiddhracchiu 2.0

Song Sharing Concert

We will tell of a time that once existed—a time that is part of our own lived experience. A time we glimpsed through the eyes of our grandparents and parents. 

Like history books set to music, these songs will allow us to imagine a daily life defined by the monotony of labor—days that began with the rising of the sun and ended with the appearance of the first star: lu stiddhracchiu. 

We will recount how the wrenching separation was endured—the parting between those who left and those who stayed behind; between those who departed and, at times, never returned. 

About Cu lu stiddhracchiu 

Federica Coladomenico began participating in various singing events at a very young age. Pizzica entered her life in 2000, and she taught herself to play the tamburello. She moved to Verona, where, in 2011, she founded the group Malachianta. Upon returning to Salento, she decided to regain a practical understanding of Salentine culture by participating in choral singing workshops led by Anna Cinzia Villani, as well as by Rosaria and Franca Gaballo.

Flavia Sabato was introduced to pizzica at a very young age thanks to a cassette tape gifted to her by her grandfather. Over time, she developed a deep passion for the traditional dances of Southern Italy, embarking on a journey of research across Campania, Calabria, and Puglia. At the age of 22, she met the Gaballo Sisters, who recognized her vocal talents and taught her the techniques of canti a parauce and canti alla stisa. Dance, however, remains her primary form of expression.

Chiara Greco began studying piano and music at the age of 12. Her passion for traditional music stems from her paternal grandfather, nonno Giuliante. In 2018, she began her vocal studies, earning both a first- and second-level degree. She has long been a member of a group called "I Trainieri" and collaborates with other groups within the pizzica music scene.

Zaira Giangreco began her musical journey at the age of nine as a self-taught musician, participating in traditional ronde gatherings. She subsequently refined a technique characterized by a delicate yet incisive touch, ranging across various musical genres. For several years, she has collaborated with various local artists.

Ethnomusicology Faculty

Massimiliano Mortabito

Presentation: Il Tarantismo - The Healing Ritual

Massimiliano Morabito is an ethnomusicologist of Southern Italian traditions, whose work has been source material for major projects in the pizzica revival including for the renowned group Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, with which he has performed worldwide since 2008. He will share with us important accounts of tarantismo.

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 he is 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 workshop, 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. He 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.

About 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 demo-ethno-anthropological field in southern Italy, especially in Puglia, and in the past year has collaborated with the Central Institute for Sound and Audiovisual Heritage (ICBSA). In his private archive, he preserves hundreds of hours of audiovisual and sound documents and thousands of photographic documents. He has digitized and donated part of these documents to the Sound Archive Puglia, which has established the "Fondo Morabito". At the same time, he studied the diatonic accordion (organetto), learning the traditional musical styles of southern Italy directly from local players and singers, perfecting instrumental technique with internationally renowned accordionists.

Cultural Considerations

Pizzicata Film Screening

Museo Civico Pietro Cavoti