CHORÓS
Dances, Voices and Rhythms of Southern Italy
Dance, percussion, voice are inextricably linked in Southern Italy and Sicily: it is the so-called ‘Tarantella area’, a musical ‘region’ that is located exactly in the center of the Mediterranean and its cultural and symbolic routes.
CHORÓS is a training course between music, dance, theater and pedagogy, which intertwines together songs, dances and rhythms on the drum with the theatrical practices of the chorus of Greek tragedy, whose roots are precisely in Magna Graecia and Sicily.
WHAT IS CHORÓS?
The tarantella, or ‘dance of the little tarantula’, is the heir of the circles of Nymphs, Muses and Bacchae. In an uninterrupted line documented since the 8th century BCE, the same women who played the framedrums were herbalists and healers, midwives and medicine women with a strong spirituality – first pagan and then Christian – that intertwined the effectiveness of herbs with the psychological-emotional effectiveness of orations and songs and the physical-perceptive effectiveness of music and dance.
The oldest archaeological evidence of dance and music is linked to the cult of goddesses such as Demeter and Persephone, Artemis and the Nymphs, Dionysus and Cybele, and their priestesses and devotees. And, until the last century, the frame drum was a purely feminine ritual instrument. Nymphs and Satyrs, deities, priests and shamans, actors and actresses, storytellers of fairy tales and myths: anyone today who wants to study performing arts, physical theater, singing, percussion, dance, art therapy, must look to these roots; a world in which what today is separated into different disciplines was born intertwined together.
In the GREEK CHORUS the human body, creating rhythmic patterns and choreographies in movement, becomes a symbolic form that defines identity, gender and power roles, relationships, hierarchies, social and political spaces of human communities. Music and dance are cultural phenomena that can help the understanding of historical facts in a broad sense; but they are also very powerful tools for the education and growth of the individual-in-community and for the formation of the self. It is easy to understand why, in a society devoted to homologation and the creation of productive masses without identity, music and dance are marginalized within public educational spaces.
So, Arci Tavola Tonda and Chorós are political projects for education in citizenship and the res-publica.
Are you interested in the study course? Take a look at this year's educational program...
TRAINING 2024/25
The CHORÓS training is divided into different levels of participation, separate from each other but interdependent and mutually nourishing. You can decide to follow the entire course, or just one of the weekly, monthly or annual workshops; to participate in the final performance of the Chorós course, a minimum presence of 120 hours in the training cycle is required.
The workshop includes weekly lessons in DANCE and rhythmic movement related to the choreographic traditions of Southern Italy, addressing the study of the basic dynamics of the Tarantellas of traditional cultures of the South: these are mainly couple dances, but there are also tarantellas in four, in a circle or in parade (such as the Montemaranese). In each of their variations, the dance and the rhythm on the drum (and in some cases also the songs) are inextricably intertwined, creating a continuous dialogue between dancers and musicians: we will study the Ballittu from Peloritani (Sicily), the Tarantella from Calabria, the Tarantella Montemaranese, Pizzica from Apulia and the Tarantellas from Gargano, the Tammurriate from Campania and other dances, together with introductory elements to the pedagogy of the group and movement.
The dance lessons are open to everyone.
TEACHER: Barbara Crescimanno, with the collaboration of Giuseppe Paradiso and Roberta Megna.
LESSONS: every Tuesday from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. The free trial lesson will be held the last week of September, and the courses will start in October.
COSTS: 70 euros per month or 150 euros for three months. The same discount is guaranteed to those who decide to take two or more different types of courses together (such as singing and drumming; and for those who are curious, on Mondays there are BALFOLK lessons). Reduced cost of 25% for under 25s (discounts cannot be combined).
RESEARCH TOOLS
UPCOMING EVENTS
Friday 15 November 2024 18:30
Chorós | workshop
Arci Tavola Tonda
Saturday 23 November 2024 10:30
Chorós | workshop
Arci Tavola Tonda
Friday 13 December 2024 18:30
Chorós | workshop
Arci Tavola Tonda
Saturday 21 December 2024 16:00
Chorós | workshop
Arci Tavola Tonda