HECO

The project HECO Choreutic Heterotopias investigates the transmission and circulation of the figure of dance in Mediterranean spaces from the Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. It aims to trace routes that highlight the weight of Classical, Byzantine and Islamic tradition in the shaping of the visual culture of the Medieval Mediterranean in the field of rites, festivals, celebrations and performances. With this purpose three thematic areas have been determined: Dance and Power, Dance and Death, Dance and Rites. In the first one, the role of the court, literary or real, of the Christian West and the Islamic sphere is analysed, in which the ceremonies, the rituals and the ostentation of privileges uses dance and the music as a necessary manifestation for the self-representation of the power. In the second one, the origins of the dance and death links are reviewed through various sources and testimonies, with special attention to exemplary literature, ethical-moral genres, and the usage of dance and death representations in urban spaces in the visual culture of the late Middle Ages. As for the third, special attention is paid to the phenomenons of menadism, dreams, possessions and enchantments and their relation to the construction and portrayal of the 'other'.

The three areas share a leading role in the literary and visual culture of the Mediterranean Middle Ages. For all three, it is possible to trace roots and similarities back to the period of Late Antiquity and to track their development in modern times, and all of them evolve at the same time as they create heterotopic spaces, a mirror of reality. In the case of dance, meanings, feelings and emotions often migrate together with the transmission of motifs and schemata that interest motion. Since classical antiquity, the ritual origins of all this have been marked, flowing through Byzantine and Islamic culture. Eventually, in Medieval Europe, the two acquire their own form.

Dance
and
society

Dance
and
death

Dance
and

Rite

Research team

Licia Buttà
Francesc Massip
Roberto Fratini 
Silvia Saladrigas
Eva Subías

Collaborators

Lenke Kóvacs
Angela Bellia
Lev Kapitaikin
Angelica Montanari
Alessandro Arcangeli
Pierre-Olivier Dittmar
Donatella Tronca
Luigi Canetti
Maria del Mar Valls Fusté
Raül Sanchis Francés
Ireneu Visa Guerrero
Sara Sánchez
Voravit Roonthiva
Adrien Belgrano