Tarantella, the 'dance of the spider'
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"Also known as 'the dance of the spider', the Tarantella is derived from the Italian word tarantola, meaning 'tarantula'. The tarantola gets its name from the town of Taranto in Puglia, where the bite of the local wolf spider (the tarantula) was widely believed to be highly poisonous and led to a condition known as 'tarantism'.
Tarantism was an epidemic that swept through Taranto and other parts of Italy between the 15th and 17th centuries. According to legend, once bitten by a tarantula, the victim, referred to as the tarantata—who was almost always a woman of lower status—would fall into a fit in which she was plagued by heightened excitability and restlessness. Eventually, she would succumb to the condition and die.
The only cure, it seemed, was to engage in the frenzied dancing ritual of the Tarantella. Townspeople would surround the tarantata while musicians would play instruments such as mandolins, guitars, and tambourines in different tempos in search of the correct healing rhythm. Each varied beat would affect the tarantata, leading her to move in erratic ways in line with the tempo. Once the correct rhythm was found, the victim—dancing the Tarantella alone until exhausted—was thought to be cured, having 'sweated out" the venom'!"