What is Tarantism?
1.
The uncontrollable urge to dance to relieve one's melancholy.
I think I've got a bad case of tarantism, I just can't seem to stop myself from getting down and funky.
It's really a word, look it up in the real dictionary.
2.
(TAR-uhn-tiz-uhm)- An uncontrollable urge to dance - After Taranto, a town in southern Italy where this phenomenon was experienced during the 15-17th centuries. It's not clear whether tarantism was the symptom of a spider's bite or its cure, or it may have been just a pretext to dodge a
prohibition against dancing. The names of the dance tarantella and the spider tarantula are both derived from the same place.
"The director is in a wild delirium, spinning in circles as though stricken with tarantism, his whirring camera held at arm's length, panning, tilting, arcing and oscillating and making other moves that have no name."
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