Italian folk dance


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.

History

Middle Ages

The carol or carole, 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 who gives us the earliest mention of Italian folk dance. He describes a group of women leaving a beastly 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.

Boccaccio

However, it is Giovanni Boccaccio who illustrates the social function of dance in the Decameron. 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. There are also social activities before and after the stories which include song and dance.
After breakfast at the beginning of the first day:
For each of the ten days, song and dance are part of the storytellers' activities - at the end of the sixth day:
And further after storytelling on the seventh day:
The dance passages in the Decameron show that the carol was always sung but could be accompanied by instrumental music as well, both men and women danced though women seem to dance more often than men, and all knew how to dance.
Boccaccio also uses two other terms besides carola to describe the dances done, danza and ballo. Some scholars assume that all the terms are synonymous since the dance forms are given no distinctive description, but others take these to mean separate dances and trace the names forward to the Renaissance dances bassadanza and ballo.

Dance in the countryside

These descriptions from Boccaccio are, of course, all of townsfolk dancing but the Decameron also gives at least a glimpse at peasant dances as well. In the second story of the Eighth Day about the priest and Monna Belcolore, of the latter the story says:
The two terms for dance that Boccaccio uses, ridda and ballonchio, both refer to round dances with singing. Another variant of the round dance with song is the Righoletto, known from Florence and the surrounding countryside in the 14th and 15th centuries

Istanpitta and others

In a 14th-century Italian manuscript in the British Library, folios 55v-58r and 59v-63v, contain 15 monophonic pieces of music, the first eight of which are labeled istanpitta. Of the next seven pieces, 4 are called saltarello, one trotto, one Lamento di Tristano, and the final one is labeled La Manfredina. These are the only known examples of instrumental dance music from Italy in the Middle Ages and all of them have similarities to earlier French dance pieces called estampie.
There is divided opinion on the question of th whether or simply the musical form. Curt Sachs in his World History of the Dance believes the strong rhythm of the music, the name, which he derives from a term "to stamp", and literary references point to the estampie definitely being a dance. Vellekoop, on the other hand, looks at the evidence and concludes that estampie was simply a name for early instrumental music.
The other seven dances in the manuscript have the same general musical structure as those labeled "istanpitta" but are simpler and probably more suitable for dancing. Saltarello is a dance name found in later centuries as well but the later examples may not refer to the same dance as these 14th-century pieces. The last two dances in the manuscript, Lamento di Tristano and La Manfredina are notable as being pairs of related dances, a scheme which became common in Renaissance dance.

Depictions of dance

One of the earliest known depictions of Italian folk dance is part of a set of frescoes at the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Part of his Allegory of Good Government painted about 1338-40 shows a group of nine dancers, all women and accompanied by another woman singing and playing on the tambourine, executing a "bridge" figure where dancers go under the joined hands of the two lead dancers.
Another 14th-century illustration comes from the Florentine painter Andrea Bonaiuti. One of his series of paintings The Church Militant and Triumphant done in 1365 at a chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence also shows women dancing accompanied by a woman on tambourine.

Renaissance

It can be seen in Simone Prodenzani's Liber Saporecti, published 1415, which describes music and dance at an imaginary court, and from other works, that in the early 15th century the direction of transmission of dance forms was from the popular folk dances of the towns and countryside to the courts of the nobility. But a new attitude appears at court which elevates dance to an art form. In the Medieval period, no writer describes dance steps or figures, it being assumed that everyone knew how to dance. By the early Renaissance the simple circle and chain dances of the earlier centuries still exist - there are references to the round dance and dancing in circles as late as the early 16th century in Straparola's Le piacevoli notti. But we also find that couple dances and mimetic elements now appear and formal choreographies emerge for the first time. This new Art of the Dance can especially be seen at the major courts of Milan, Padua, Venice, Florence, Bologna, Pesaro, Urbino and Naples.

Dance manuals

With dancing elevated to new heights, dancing masters make their appearance at court and the first dance manuals are known from the middle of the 15th century.
The three 15th century treatises divide their dances into two types, the bassadanza and the ballo, possibly related to the earlier simple dance forms of Boccaccio's time. The bassadanza, allied to the similar French basse dance, is a slow dignified dance without leaps or hops, while the ballo was a livelier dance often containing pantomimic elements. The terms saltarello or piva were sometimes used for more sprightly versions of the ballo. The dances are for couples, holding hands or in lines. Dances in the manuscripts were often given rather fanciful names, e.g. Lioncello, Gioioso and Rosina, which are often found in more than one work and occasionally as dance names in later times as well.

Late Renaissance dance

In the late 16th and early 17th century manuals of Caroso and Negri, a variety of dance types can be seen: slow processional dances, longways, various dances for single couples and even a few for trios or five dancers. All are social dances for both sexes with the men's steps being more athletic than the women's. In all the dances the upper body is kept erect, the arms are quiet and there is little movement above the waist.
Dance suites usually started with a walking sequence, pavana, a term often found in the music of the time but almost never in dance manuals. The passo e mezzo seems to have been a faster variant of the pavana. The faster, athletic gagliarda often followed the pavana but was also done as a separate dance. Other similar fast afterdances were the tordiglione and the saltarello. Further types were the Spagnoletta and the canario with its unique stamping patterns.
Some of these names are seen again in the 1588 poem about life in Naples, Ritratto... di Napoli by Gian Battista del Tufo where dances like Spagnoletta or Tordiglione, and Rogier, Lo Brando and Passo e mezzo are mentioned but not described. But he does tell of a dance with Arab influence and movements from Malta, the Sfessania. Some decades later we find Villanella, and once again Ruggiero, Sfessania and Spagnoletta in Giambattista Basile's collection of Neapolitan fairy tales, the Pentameron. No reference is made in either work to the name which would later be the definitive dance of Naples, the Tarantella, but Bragaglia thinks that the Sfessania can be regarded as the ancestor of that dance.
Even by the late Renaissance and the elaborate choreographies of Caroso, a link between court dance and country or folk dance can be seen. Elements of folk dance invigorate courtly dances and folk dances take over movements and styles from courtly dance. The difference between the two forms was likely one of style and elegance.

18th & 19th centuries

By the 18th century, the name Tarantella does appear in illustrations and travelers's accounts in Southern Italy. When the German writer Goethe describes the Tarantella which he saw performed in Naples during his trip to Italy in 1786-87, it appears as a dance for women only, two girls dancing with castanets accompanied by a third on the tambourine. Madame de Staël had also traveled in Italy and in her 1817 novel Corinne, she has her heroine dance the Tarantella as a solo. But the Tarantella as a couple dance telling a story of love in mime does appear in a description by Orgitano in the middle of the 19th century.
Also appearing in illustrations and texts is the Saltarello as a rustic dance of Romagna in Central Italy. This is a name which also appears in the earliest Italian dance music and throughout the Renaissance. It is not clear, however, that these various mentions represent the same or even related dances.
In the North, in Venice, there was the "wild courtship dance", known as Furlana or Forlana which was danced by Casanova in 1775.
References to figure dances similar to English country dances and French Contradanses also appear as early as the first part of the 18th century. Dances of this type from the 18th and 19th centuries in Italy include La Contraddanza, Quadriglia and Il Codiglione. A letter from the English writer and politician Horace Walpole dated 1740 from Florence declares "The Italians are fond to a degree of our country dances"

Dance research

One of the earliest attempts to systematically collect folk dances is Gaspare Ungarelli's 1894 work Le vecchie danze italiane ancora in uso nella provincia bolognese which gives brief descriptions and music for some 30 dances.
In 1925, Benito Mussolini's government set up the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro or National Recreational Club as a means of promoting sports and cultural activities and one of its accomplishments was a wide survey of folk music and dance in Italy at that time. The work was published in 1931 as Costumi, musica, danze e feste popolari italiane. In September 1945 OND was replaced by a new organization, the Ente Nazionale Assistenza Lavoratori, headquartered in Rome. In partnership with the International Folk Music Council, ENAL sponsored a Congress and Festival in Venice September 7–11, 1949 which included many of the outstanding researchers in Italian folklore as well as folk dance and music groups from various Italian regions.
ENAL was dissolved in late 1978 but earlier in October 1970, the Italian folklore groups who had been members of ENAL set up a separate organization, which in 1978 became the Federazione Italiana Tradizioni Populari. The FITP publishes a newsletter and a scholarly publication Il Folklore D'Italia.
Some prominent 20th-century Italian folk dance researchers are Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Diego Carpitella, Antonio Cornoldi, Bianca Maria Galanti, Giorgio Nataletti, Placida Staro and Paolo Toschi.
An interest in preserving and fostering folk art, music and dance among Italian-Americans and the dedication and leadership of Elba Farabegoli Gurzau led to the formation of the Italian Folk Art Federation of America in May 1979. The group sponsors an annual conference and has published a newsletter, Tradizioni, since 1980.

Folk dances by region

Northern Italy

Northern Italy refers to the regions of Aosta, Piemonte, Liguria, Lombardia, Venetia, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli and Trentino.
Several types of weapon dances are known from Italy, the mock battle, sword dances and stick dances. A number of these are from the Piedmont region of Northern Italy:
The region of Friuli has been a crossroads for different cultures throughout the centuries. The inhabitants are mostly Italian speaking the local Friulan dialect but German and Slovenian are also spoken in some areas.
is an autonomous province of Italy with a majority German-speaking population. The dance culture is similar to that of Southern Germany and the Austrian state of Tyrol with such typical dances as Ländler, Schuhplattler, Dreirtanz, Schustertanz, Bregenzer and Masolka.
Central Italy refers to the areas of Tuscania, Marche, Umbria, Lazio and Abruzzi e Molise.
Southern Italy refers to the regions of Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Sicily.
The peninsula of Istria, today part of the country of Croatia, was ruled for centuries by the Venetian Republic and became a margraviate of the Kingdom of Austria in the 19th century. Italians made up about a third of the population of nearly 350,000 in 1900.. Italian cultural influence has resulted in the resemblance of many Istrian dances to those of Northern Italy. This applies to dances done by the modern day Croatian population and by the Italian national minority found today in the larger towns and some villages in the western part of Istria. Dances done by both the Croatian and the Italian communities include Molferina or Mafrina and Kvadrilja. Dances specific to the Italians include La Veneziana, Bersagliera, Denci, and more importantly the very similar dances Vilota and Furlana.
is today part of Croatia but during the Middle Ages and Renaissance was under Venetian control. Dalmatia, especially its maritime cities, once had a substantial Italian population but this was reduced to 3% by 1900.