Leucci, Tiziana. "The "Moresca" and the "Kolattam" Stick-Dances in Pietro della Valle's 17th Century Travel Accounts of South India."

Leucci, Tiziana. "The "Moresca" and the "Kolattam" Stick-Dances in Pietro della Valle's 17th Century Travel Accounts of South India." In Perception and Reception of Early Dance [Proceedings of the Early Dance Circle Conference held on 18-20 May 2018], edited by Barbara Segal and Sharon Butler, 143-155. Cambridge: Early Dance Circle, 2020.

URL: https://www.earlydancecircle.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/13-Tiziana-26-10-2020.pdf


Abstract:
In the beginning of the 17th century, the Italian nobleman Pietro della Valle (1586-1652) left his native city of Rome in order to travel to the East. During his long journey, which lasted for 12 years, he visited several places in the Middle East, Turkey, Persia and India. Interested by the cultural and political traditions of the countries where he travelled, he started to learn the languages of some of them to better know and understand the local socio-religious customs. Being himself a fine scholar, a musician and a composer, he was particularly attracted by the music and dance traditions of the regions he visited. He also collected a number of Asian musical instruments and brought them back to Rome. Thus, in his letters to his friends, narrating his experience of his travels, he refers in a detailed manner to the music and dance performances he observed during his journeys. Some of his descriptions are so accurate that Pietro della Valle is considered today one of the first precursors of the modern ‘ethnomusicology’ and ‘ethnochoreology’. In this paper I will focus on his perception and interpretation of the dance and music performances he witnessed, in the year 1623, in the South Indian Nayak kingdom of Ikkeri (today Karnataka State), by comparing them with the coeval ‘Moresca’ dance that he was accustomed to in Italy.