La dansa metafòrica en la festa valenciana

Identifier:  TDX:3088

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX3088

Authors:  Sanchis Francés, Raül

Abstract:
Metaphorical Dance in Valencian Festivities is a doctoral thesis that aims to study the historical, social and cultural context of festive dances in the city and Kingdom of Valencia from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century and their relation to the dances that have survived to the present day. Festive dance is a means of socially transversal expression that manifests underlying concepts, ideas and metaphors through the dance’s own ritual, choreutical, musical, dramatic, etymological and aesthetic components. Through a mask and an often polyhedral and polysemic symbolic narrative, festive dance embodies the tensions and distensions characteristic of a multicultural society based on permanent paradoxical change. This in turn enables tradition to support the principal mechanism on which collective identities are able to rest. Valencian festive dance is rich in forms and nuances and shares the principal images that characterize a large part of the metaphorical background of Mediterranean and European culture. The present article uses a qualitative research methodology to conduct a systematic, diachronic and interdisciplinary study of Valencian festivities and dances. We use historiography, musicology, ethnology and iconography to analyse and investigate some of its metaphorical images. First, we show that in our main source of information, namely Valencian memorial literature, festivals are a notable element. Second, we demonstrate that throughout the Middle Ages all social groups engaged in different forms of dance. Finally, we analyse some of metaphorical images from medieval dance and theatre, including mythically and historically anthropomorphic figures, allegories and festive beasts. In short, we show the fusions and multiple interconnections between different components of Valencian festive dances that gravitate around concepts related to the history of mentalities, such as identity and otherness.