Join Kate Causbie (Seattle/Puglia) and Francesco Faustino (Puglia) for an afternoon pizzica workshop in the heart of San Francisco on Saturday, January 6th, 2024.
Lines Dance Center
26 Seventh Street (between Market and Mission)
San Francisco
1 to 3pm
In this workshop, we will explore the traditions and basic movements and songs of the social pizzica pizzica folk dance from Salento. We will also look at:
—The difference between pizzica pizzica and various tarantelle
—The role of pizzica as a social community dance, both historically and contemporarily after the revival
—Categories of pizzica — including tarantism — and awareness of local distinctions
—The basic steps and movements, and how to use them in the "conversation" of the dance
Please register by December 15th
Note: The class will be held in English.
Kate is from Seattle, Washington and since 2018 has been chasing musica popolare traditions from Puglia, the homeland of her paternal grandmother's family. Francesco Faustino is a pizzica dancer from Puglia, who joins us as a special guest.
Kate is passionate about fostering bridges to these traditions for communities of folks abroad with connections to Southern Italy, and is a strong believer in the power of music and dance to encapsulate memories, experiences, and identities lost to cultural assimilation.
Check out this recent video from Kate's instagram to get extra inspired about our class with both of them!
We also have a facebook event page with more videos of Kate teaching
We will be in a gorgeous dance studio at Alonzo King's Lines Dance Center, located at 26 Seventh Street in San Francisco. We are in Studio 4 on the 5th floor.
The studio is half a block away from the Civic Center BART/MUNI station. There are several affordable parking garages near by, as well as both metered and unmetered street parking. Free bike parking is available on the 3rd floor.
If you are taking public transportation or parking nearby and are uncomfortable walking to the studio alone, we can pair up to walk to and from the BART station together. Please reach out if you would like someone to walk with!
Note that masks are not currently required at Lines, but we strongly encourage your wearing them.
Cost:
$30 to $70 for the two-hour class, and the registration button is below.
The class is priced on a sliding scale, and we appreciate you registering at a price you feel you can comfortably afford. If figuring that out feels stressful for you, please scroll to the bottom of this page for a way to determine where you might fall. It is based on trust, and you do not need to share any info or reasoning with anyone else.
If you are unable to attend at the lowest price, please reach out and we will do our best to accommodate you. If you would like to pay more or sponsor a dancer at a lower rate, please feel free.
Similarly, if you know you are able to attend, we ask that register early. Our instructors will be traveling to teach, and there are studio expenses associated with this offering. Thank you!
Thank you to everyone who stepped up to register by December 15th! We have enough folks to justify continuing (yay!), and luckily we still have room for more, so register soon if you want to attend.
Note that if there is space left at the door, the cost will be $70. Please pre-register if you need a lower rate.
There are no refunds, but you are welcome to transfer your registration.
What should I wear?
Wear anything you are comfortable in! Some people enjoy skirts for this dance style, but they are not necessary. Bare feet, dance shoes, or socks (if not too slippery) are all fine on your feet. No hard soled shoes in the dance studio, please (it is a sprung floor with a marley surface).
Can I bring a tamburello (tambourine)?
Nacchare (castanets)?
Yes!
What else will be going on?
Chances are good we'll have snacks. (I mean have you met Italians and diasporic Italian-Americans?! We want to feed you.) Bring a water bottle, and there are water fountains at Lines to fill them up as needed. There will also be some sweet merch for sale.
Wait, what is pizzica?!
Pizzica is a dance that is part of the larger Italian folk dance category of tarantella. This is a nice article about it. You can also check out Monica's You Tube playlist for lots of examples. But the best way to learn, short of going to Salento yourself? Come take our workshop!
Accessibility
By 'all welcome' we mean all are welcome! We will have chairs for people who would like to sit during class, either as they move along with the instruction or to take breaks. Certainly singing, clapping along, and general enjoyment is welcome at any point if you don't want to dance the whole time. There will be more experienced movers there, and folks who might have just heard the word 'pizzica' recently, and we'll all dance together.
It's a folk dance, and all folks are welcome.
Email us with any and all clarifications, and questions! We can't wait to dance with you in the new year!
"We wanted to revive Salento’s pizzica, and in a very precise, studied way. Salento’s music is not only pizzica, but we needed pizzica, because pizzica moves, shakes, and we were not only interested in the musical aspects, but also in the social ones. The pizzica involves everyone. I wanted this music to become the flamenco of Italy, or the tango of Italy. We had the precise will to make this movement mass: we wanted thousands of people to know the pizzica."
Edoardo Winspeare, in Il ritmo meridiano. La pizzica e le identità danzanti del Salento, 2002
Each bottle above contains sentences that describe a person's current financial experience and class. The bottle on the far left represents the upper end of the sliding scale spectrum. Folks who identify most with the statements in the far left bottle qualify to pay for class tickets at the upper end of our sliding scale. The middle bottle represents folks who sometimes can pay for the upper end of the sliding scale, sometimes the middle, and sometimes the bottom half. The bottle on the far right represents the lowest end of the scale and folks who qualify to purchase class tickets from the bottom of our price spectrum.
For ease of reading, here is the text from each of the bottles in the above graphic:
Top of the Scale (or the left bottle):
Middle of the Scale (or the middle bottle):
Bottom of the Scale (or the right bottle):
* Basic Needs include food, housing, health care, and transportation.
** Expendable Income might mean you are able to buy coffee or tea at a shop, go to the movies or a concert, buy new clothes, books, and similar items each month, etc.
This graphic and content is from Alexis Cunningfolk, and is used with permission.
Copyright © 2024 - All Rights Reserved
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.