Tuesday, October 20, 1998
Tarantula’s bite leads to birth of culture, music
ONCAMPUS: Southern Italian traditions brought to America through
folklore, dance, film
By Megan Dickerson
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
A spider bites a women between the legs. And from there, a rich
cultural history is born.
Sandwiched between the churches and sororities of Hilgard
Avenue, the white walls of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (IIC)
seem an unlikely place for seemingly lewd tales of tarantulas and
musical healing. The institute’s building is even a little hard to
find, its simple, gray logo slipping by like an apartment sign.
But inside, one will find Salento.
On the wind-carved shores of Italy’s southeastern Salento
region, local lore goes that if a woman is stung by a tarantula’s
bite, she must seek a cure more musical than antidotal.
Dressing the poisoned woman in a long white gown, the girl’s
family recruits a team of musical doctors – men who employ an
alternative medicine of the tambourine, harmonica and flute to suck
the spider’s venom from the writhing girl’s soul. It is then, with
the pulsating beat of the pizzica tarantata, that the woman dances,
spinning and weaving violently until the tarantula inside her
"dies. "
This week, passersby will likely hear the forceful rhythms of
the pizzica tarantata flow from the quiet Hilgard institute as part
of "Essential Salento, " a multi-faceted celebration of the culture
at the heel of the Italian peninsula.
Curated by visiting UCLA professor of folklore Luisa Del Giudice
and produced by UCLA Film School graduate Alberto Pranzo, the
festival officially commenced with an Armand Hammer pizzica concert
featuring the Aramirè ensemble. It continues this week with a
Wednesday screening of the new film "Pizzicata, " which tells the
story of a girl afflicted with tarantismo, the tarantula’s
bite.
An exhibit of Salento photographs by Fernando Bevilacqua, a
self-described "militant Salentine, " stretches the festival’s
longevity, occupying the lobby of the institute through Oct.
25.
The program, a collaboration between the institute, the Italian
province of Lecce, the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs
Department and the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum, is also the product
of Del Giudice’s extensive ethnographic research in the Salento
region.
Del Giudice, who is of southeastern Italian descent, found the
pizzica dancing and arachnid legends of the region intoxicating. On
her last visit to Salento, she broke her foot while dancing in the
fast and furious June 29 tarantismo festival, a fact that didn’t
stop her from research.
"The incessant rhythm of the pizzica is so powerful, " says Del
Giudice, who lectured on the subject before Sunday’s film
screening. "It’s one of those primal things. "
Filmmaker Edoardo Winspeare, director of the festival’s
highlighted "Pizzicata " and a Salento native, says it was only
after he left Lecce for film school in Munich that he could really
appreciate the compelling pizzica.
It was looking at the gripping folk dances with new eyes that
spurred him to direct a film involving the spider phenomenon.
The tale he weaves in "Pizzicata, " though, is more a
cross-cutting love story than an exploration of the tarantismo
marvel. The 1943 period piece, which Italian and American critics
have compared to 1995’s "Il Postino, " is about an Italian American
pilot whose plane crashes over Salento. He falls in love with the
daughter of the widower who shelters him and learns the music and
dances of the Salento along the way.
"I chose to tell a fairy tale, " says the soft-spoken Winspeare,
who entertained questions after a Sunday screening of the film.
The title, "Pizzicata, " welds love (the pizzica dance) and
death (tarantata, the name given to women affected by tarantismo).
This combination sums up the beautiful but harsh landscape of the
Salento, home of frequent brush fires and a capricious
Mediterranean climate.
Chiara Torelli, the film’s lead actress, also spoke at the
screening and explained that although she grew up in the province
of Lecce, she learned much of Salentine lore from the production of
the film, which opens nationwide this February.
"I learned how to dance and appreciate my culture, " the actress
says in Italian, through Winspeare’s translation.
Such appreciation and absorption of culture is the purpose of
"Essential Salento, " says Del Giudice, who also teaches Italian
studies at UCLA.
She and Pranzo, festival producer, are planning an international
and interdisciplinary UCLA conference for the year 2000.
"Performing Ecstasies: Music, Dance and Ritual in the Mediterranean
" will involve UCLA ethnomusicologists, folklorists and
anthropologists, among others.
When not scripting extravaganzas of specific Italian regions,
the Istituto offers Italian language classes and spearheads film
festivals, like last year’s retrospective of the late performer
Marcello Mastroianni.
Del Giudice says the new generation of Italian Americans make up
her ideal audience when immersing the public in a culture as
colorful – and spider-rich – as that of the Salentine.
"I’m trying to get people to reattach to their culture, " Del
Giudice says, "Helping them understand why they say the things they
do, feel a certain way. "
ON-CAMPUS: "Essential Salento " continues this week with a
screening of the film "Pizzicata " on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the
Istituto Italiano di Cultura at 1023 Hilgard Ave. Aramirè will
perform at the Italian American Club of San Pedro on Friday at 7:30
p.m.
CHARLES KUO
The Istituto Italiano di Cultura, in addition to hosting
festivals, also provides Italian language classes.
Copyright Fernando Bevilacqua
Photos by Fernando Bevilacqua bring to America the wonders of
the Salento region of southeast Italy.
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