For Immediate Release
Contact: Audrey Ross
212/586-3500

I GIULLARI DI PIAZZA AND ALESSANDRA BELLONI PRESENT

'TARANTELLA - SPIDER DANCE'
Company of 14 musicians, singers, tarantella dancers, stilt dancer, aerial dancer in authentic Southern Italian ritual music and ancient healing trance dances.
starring Alessandra Belloni and John La Barbera
choreography by Sabatino Verlezza, Alessandra Belloni, Nicola Jervasi

Thursday June 29, 8 PM, (The traditional Feast of the Tarantati)
Synod Hall, Amsterdam & 110th Street (Synod Hall is part of St. John the Divine, and is a separate building just south of the Cathedral)

I Giullari di Piazza, the Southern Italian folk music and dance company, will present its new production "Tarantella - Spider Dance" celebrating the wild trance dance rituals of Southern Italy. The new production infuses ancient melodies and instrumentation of the authentic tarantella with modern electronic music. This form of ecstatic dance originated in ancient Greece as a rite of devotion to the god Dionysus, and moved to Southern Italy in the Middle Ages where it was used to cure the mythical bite of the tarantula. By spinning and stomping their feet to the fast 12/8 beat, the tarantati symbolically expelled the poison from the spider's bite.

Instrumentation includes voice, tambourines, Renaissance guitar, acoustic guitar, violin, flute, mandolin, castanets, drum set.
Stilt dancer is Mark Mindek, and Carole Knopf is the aerial dancer.