“Dance of the Tarantella”

   Originally, the Tarantella (Pronounced As: târntel) was a legitimate Italian folk dance of lower to middle classes. The Tarantella has gone by many odd spellings such as Tarentule, Tarantel, Tarantella, and Tarentella . The name essentially means in English “Tarantula Spider (pronounced tranchl.”) In Buzabatt, (near Kashan, Persia), it was reported that a Tarantella dance existed just as in Sicily. If the spider specified as “Stellis ” had poisoned anyone, they were advised to dance to the sound of music.

   It was considered severely unlucky to dance the Tarantella alone, so it was danced as a couple or by two females (Goethe says three,) which was probably due to the boredom of dancing alone. Love and pleasure are apparent throughout this dance. Each motion, each gesture, is made with the most voluptuous gracefulness. Animated by the accompanying mandolins, tambourines and castanets, the woman tries, by her rapidity and liveliness, to excite the love of her partner, who, in his turn, endeavors to charm her with his agility, elegance, and demonstrations of tenderness. The two dancers would unite, separate, return, fly into each other’s arms, again bound away, and in their unlike gestures alternately express love, coquetry and inconstancy.

   How long has it been around, I don’t really know, but the earliest writings I can find mention the St. Vitus dance in 1374 and nothing until Jean Coaralli, who in 1839 produced the ballet called “La Tarentule.”Madame Michau (c.1840s) introduced the dance to the dancing public in 1844 (this version was often used in ballets.) However, it was said that: “to dance the Tarantella in ballroom circles, as they danced it at Naples would be impossible” and going on to say “Therefore, when Madame Michau introduced it in London in 1844, she made a selection of only about eight steps or figures, that had great mastery among the higher classes there.”

There are three sources for the origination of this dance.
1) One is the bite of the Tarantula, Arania or Apulian Spider (= Lycosa Tarantula) or Wolf Spider (Tarantula being most popular.) The dance was used apparently to cure the bite of the spider (a cure if you will.) The bite of the spider was presumed to make one hallucinate. The town’s folk will play music while the afflicted person would dance nonstop, to ward off the spider’s venom.
2) Others say when bitten, the Tarantula spiders venom, would make the person uncontrollably move about as if dancing. In 1374 (other reports say 1021), an “Outbreak of Dancing in the Middle Ages ” referred to as the St. Vitus Dance that went unexplained until the realization that these dancers had been bitten by the Tarantula spider. (1374 - Aachen, Germany-dancing madness, lasting hours, believed due to the bite of the Tarantula Spider, also considered to be first dance marathon in history.)
3) The Third story is of the town’s named Toranto and Tarentum , its supposed origin. Women working in the fields, who would be bit by the Tarantula spider would dance off the venom. It is said that having been found that profuse perspiration, which seemed to force the poison out through the pores of the body, was the only remedy for the bite of this venomous spider, and as exercise was their chief means of inducing perspiration. (Many believed back then that the this Spider’s bite to be deadly, and during those times, there was no anti venom available.)