“Of the Italians, much is said, perhaps more than of other Mediterranean peoples: about their Mediterranean nature or exuberant temperament, about the fact that they easily shift from joy to discouragement, from jest to anger.”
Predrag Matvejevic, Breviario Mediterraneo
Inspired by the various forms of taranta, Taràn is primarily a journey of learning, or an initiation into any type of rebirth. The south of Italy serves as the imaginary backdrop for this encounter: the ritual as a symbolic medicine for a suggestive participation.
From the very first scene, the slow circular movement that emphasizes the song more than anything else invites a purer and more devout opening of the senses. The projections of dances on archaic vases accompanied by quick movements of spiders frame the performers in solo variations, also employing contemporary movement languages, and seem to narrate the pizzicata of the taranta as something that emerges, rises, and expands, slowly infecting the entire body. The interesting iconographic research behind this, conducted by scholar Antonio Infantino, along with the more spontaneous visual effects and montages, are complemented by an additional poetic layer—a sudden reciting voice that is far from didactic; just as the sound interventions, drawn from a vast popular repertoire, also include noisy and mimetic moments that are highly effective in describing a tarantolism of the body full of horror and magic.
In the second part of the performance, the steps of the Pizzica salentina, the Tammurriate from Campania, the Tarantella from Calabria and Gargano, along with the swirling turns of the Egyptian Zar and Sufi dances, align with a gesture that is organized very simply, almost spontaneously, in its rhythmic flow. The symbolic bite of the Taranta is at once poison and antidote to the unrestrained dance it provokes: the obsessive repetition and frenzy of the steps lead the less disenchanted spectator to a pure, immediate idea of ancient rituality, which, however, will hardly manage to free itself from all its newer masks.
Maristella Martella begins with studies in classical and contemporary dance; her authentic tension towards the educational dimension and her passion for the dances of Mediterranean countries lead her to study not only dance theater techniques but also theatrical research as well as choreographic composition for folkloric and traditional expression dances, with residencies in Morocco, Tunisia, Greece, Albania, Ethiopia, and the Maghreb. In 2001, she founded, with Eugenio Bennato in Bologna, the first Tarantella school, Taranta Power, and in 2009, in Salento, she created Tarantarte, a center for the production and training of Mediterranean dances. She and her group are credited with the first official participation in the reinterpretation of dance within the Festival Notte della Taranta 2009; she was the solo dancer for the Festival Notte della Taranta 2010, directed by Ludovico Einaudi, with whom she collaborated for the 2011 tour with the Notte della Taranta orchestra at the Barbican Center in London and the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome.
