martedì 11 gennaio 2011

Pizzica: a folk dance from the south of Italy

Did you think that italy was just Rome, Venice and Florence? Just Colosseum, piazza San Marco and Ponte Vecchio? Oh no! Our country is full of beautiful places and we have a lot of ancient traditions.

I'm going to show you about a dance of a nice area of the south of Italy, which is called Pizzica. The area from which it came is Puglia. It has very old origins and it was used to be danced in couple, by the peasants while working in the fields, especially during grape picking season.
It is a wooing dance: the women wave a neckerchief, a symbol of love, to invite her man to dance around her and to court her. The women wears long skirt which moves during the dance, danced on the floor with naked feet. Women's arms are almost always closed, even crossed behind the back, and they are only used to keep the skirt and to vawe it. The man has to demonstrate his virility so his movements are faster and he tries to sorrounder the women with his arms.
 It's all a game of seduction and engaging gazes and smiles are the most seductive arm.

Here is a video I took this summer of a young girl dancing Pizzica. Enjoy it :-)

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