The tarantella float
There has been a tarantella float at the Carnival of the Cultures for the last four years. Every year the float has a different theme, which is always based on ideas from the South Italian tradition. An enthusiastic Tarantella group dances around the float, all dressed up to match the float's theme. The dancers do not necessarily see themselves as performers, but they do try to carry along the crowd. The further the procession travels, the more people gather around the float, which ends up becoming a mobile Tarantella Party.

 

Why a Mobile Purgatory?
The image of Purgatory is ever present in the popular devotions of Southern Italy, describing a place of torture and suffering where the hope for salvation has, however, not been completely extinguished. It is precisely that hope that makes all the pain more bearable.

Through this image you are more likely to think of earthly suffering than the hereafter, of the daily problems, big and small, present for hundreds of years within Southern Italian society, which have become so embedded that today they seem like insoluble natural catastrophes: e.g. violence, corruption, the Mafia, exploitation, illicit work, unemployment, just to mention some of them.

This search for salvation is strongly connected to a folk image with roots deep in the Catholic faith but at the same time it contains archaic forms of expression that are typical of pre-Christian nature religions.

Evil is not only morally reprehensible but has a presence in nature, where it is often very powerful, and only be defeated through cunning, either that or you simply have come to terms with it in some way, hoping that Evil will work to your advantage.

So Purgatory can be seen as some kind of state of suspense between Good and Evil in which you are existentially compelled to live, an image that returns in different guises in all religious celebrations and is also typical of Carnival.

The Tarantella is the folk dance most suited to representing the afore-mentioned state. As everyone knows, the strict morals of the South leave little room for the expression of physicality, especially for women. Tarantella offers in many respects the only opportunity for expressing oneself physically. It is a way of shaking everyday suffering.

Beyond the specific phenomenon of tarantism (where someone was actually bitten by a tarantula) the dance of Tarantella and its music express a particular form of religiosity from all over Southern Italy, a charismatic and emotional form of devotion that shows similarities with Gospel singing in African-American Pentecostal churches. The tarantella was looked down upon by the official church for being primitive and was banished from public places of prayer. Nevertheless it has managed to find a place at most pilgrim sites, even if only when no clergymen are present, and rarely inside any of the churches.

 

The float

drafts

Those who have been to Naples will recognise the alters depicting Purgatory from the lanes of the medieval centre of the city. Roasting in the hellish flames the poor souls are trying desperately to escape eternal damnation, and reach up to heaven with their arms. The upper part of the altar is usually dominated by a cross, or the figure of a saint whose purpose it is to rescue the "lost souls"

You can also make a purgatory altar for yourself and buy the necessary figures and fittings. Just like on a Christmas crib, you will also find here the same recurring types like a priest or Pulcinella (the Naples mask of the Commedia dell'Arte that always stands for the Naples soul), as well as figures from Italian daily life, politics, the economy, and public life generally.

The float at the Carnival of Cultures makes use of this image, enriching it with elements that remind one strongly of the atmospheres of Carnival and the Tarantella. The basic idea is that salvation from earthly suffering does not come from the intercession of the saints but also from the curative and releasing power of the dance of Tarantella. On the planks along the side we fix a typical Southern Italian townscape, in which background menacing flames reach all around the float. The rotating figures are trying to escape from the flames of Purgatory.

The circling movement is supposed to remind you of the Tarantella, which is a circle dance. The figures represent oppositions which are momentarily suspended: the scoundrel Pulcinella and the Carabiniere, the devil and the priest, the man and the woman, the gipsy and the nun and so on.

 

The protagonists
Immediately behind the float there are tambourine players who rhythmically support the DJ on the vehicle. They are followed by colourfully dressed dancers, who try to motivate the crowd to dance with them, indicating the collective dance moves the people are invited to join in with.

The float will try to close the gap between the audience and the performers as far as they can. That is supposed to happen from the effects of the dancers but we also hope for a strong impact on the audience from the music and the float too.

 

 

Carnival of the cultures 2005