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Tarantism by Joachim Koester
16 mm film installation (6.31 min), 2007
Tarantism is a condition in Southern Italy resulting form the bite of the wolf spider, known as the tarantula. The bite causes numerous symptoms from nausea, difficulties in speech, delirium, heightened excitability and restlessness in the victims. Their bodies are seized by convulsions that previously could only be cured by a sort of frenzied dancing.
Even the Bishop of Polignano who in the 17th century allowed himself to be bitten to disprove the cure, felt compelled to dance to relieve his symptoms.
This "dancing-cure" called The Tarantella emerged during the Middle Ages as a local phenomena around the city of Galatina and was practiced everywhere in the region until the middle of the 20th century. Meanwhile the dance developed from a form of uncoordinated movements (where people would "quiver and hurl their heads, shake their knees, grind their teeth and make the actions of madmen") till today where The Tarantella is known as a highly stylized dance for couples.
My interest in Tarantism lies in its original promise - a dance of uncontrolled and compulsive movements, spasms and convulsions. My intention was to film a group of dancers that explore this grey zone: the fringes of the body and make a 16mm film structured around six individually choreographed parts, each defined by a different set of rules. The process of creating and filming Tarantism therefore takes the form of a "game", an idea put in motion to generate the movements of the dancers, making a constructed anthropological platform for a journey towards the "terra incognita" of the body.
Joachim Koester 2007
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