This wild dance and rhythm of the tarantella, believed to have originated in Taranto, actually dates back to ancient Greece. Puglia and all of Southern Italy was part of Greece, and it was called Magna Graecia. The dance is connected to the rites that women performed in honor of the god Dionysus. Southern Italy was Dionysus's favorite site. The rites called Bacchanalia continued to exist, especially in Taranto, and the whole city participated in a state of euphoria. (See the Greek tragedy by Euripides, Le Baccanti.)...
...The wild and lascivious rites in honor of Dionysus, god of ecstasy, died in Greece but not in Italy. This ritual became more popular in the Middle Ages as a healing trance dance of purification to cure women afflicted by the mythical bite of the tarantula. The archetype of the spider is carried by the collective unconscious. In the Mediterranean this form of collective euphoria spread out during the time of the Crusades, the plague, and the fear of the end of the world. Men and women ran wildly through the streets, dancing, holding swords, spinning, throwing themselves on the ground or in water, and saying that the tarantula bit them...
...The Church absorbed this rite through centuries, as they could not stop the hidden celebrations, and the god Dionysus was replaced by St. Paul.
from Rhythm Is the Cure: Southern Italian Tambourine by Alessandra Belloni
