Corpo a corpo. Agoni e danze cerimoniali nella Sicilia contemporanea

Abstract

the choreutical movements of the statues of saints are still today a constitutive and qualifying component of the ritual process of numerous Sicilian religious festivals, in particular those of Easter and the spring-summer ones of the patron saints. The races and dances of the Risen Christ and of the saints are generally accompanied by competitions, struggles, displays of virile attitudes, erotic allusions, the display of gold and evergreen fronds, the consumption of peculiar foods and desserts or a set of ritual symbols of an orgiastic nature which, in referring to an experience of the agro-pastoral world, appear as originally intended to celebrate and promote, at critical moments, the cosmic rebirth and fecundity, to stimulate the growth of plants, to support human fertility and animal, to re-establish the community by reaffirming its partitions and constitutive principles, to exhibit the characters of specific age groups; as emblems, together, of passing season and social status.