Dance in Italy - Italian Dances, Italian Folk Dances, Ballu Tundu, Tarantella, Saltarello, Monferrina, Pizzica, Furlana, Moresca (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Italian Dances, Italian Folk Dances, Ballu Tundu, Tarantella, Saltarello, Monferrina, Pizzica, Furlana, Moresca, So Ben Mi Chi Ha Bon Tempo. Excerpt: Italian Folk Dance has been an integral part of Italian culture for centuries. Dance has been a continuous thread in Italian life from Dante through the Renaissance, the advent of the Tarantella, and the modern revivals of folk music and dance. The carol or carole (carola in Italian), a circle or chain dance which incorporates singing, was the dominant Medieval dance form in Europe from at least the 12th through the 14th centuries. This form of dance was found in Italy as well and although Dante has a few fleeting references to dance, it is Dante's contemporary Giovanni del Virgilio (floruit 1319-1327) who gives us the earliest mention of Italian folk dance. He describes a group of women leaving a church in Bologna at the festa of San Giovanni; they form a circle with the leader singing the first stanza at the end of which the dancers stop and, dropping hands, sing the refrain. The circle then reforms and the leader goes on to the next stanza. But it is Giovanni Boccaccio (13131375) who illustrates the social function of dance in the Decameron (about 1350-1353). In Boccaccio's masterpiece, a group of men and women have traveled to a countryside villa to escape the Black Death and they tell a series of stories to while away the time. But there are also social activities before and after the stories which include song and dance. After breakfast at the beginning of the first day: "E levate le tavole, con ci fosse cosa che tutte le donne carolar sapessero e similmente i giovani e parte di loro ottimamente e sonare e cantare, comand la reina che gli strumenti venissero; e per comandamento di lei... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=22552643