BELLINGEN’S recent Taranta Festival, celebrating Italian and Mediterranean culture with sounds and flavours, offered authentic cultural experiences and ancestral healing through collective arts immersion.

The community festival, held from 2-5 November, brought the community together through dance and song.

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“We hope to make it an annual event and for the community to believe it belongs to them,” Festival co-organiser Hayley Egan told NOTA.

“It exceeded expectations with the way it was received by the community, both in attendance and feedback.
“Overwhelmingly positive!” Hayley said.

In 2019, her partner and Festival Artistic Director, Salvatore Rossano, held a Taranta Festival in Melbourne.

In 2020, the Festival was cancelled due to the pandemic.

The family then moved up to Bellingen, bringing the Festival with them.

“We don’t have that strong Italian presence here like there is in Melbourne, so we are aiming to get everyone to get in touch with their own roots and traditions and learn about others and experience the arts in that collective way,” said Hayley.

This concept was cemented through a ‘Sharing Circle’ at the Festival in which people raising children shared their experiences of what it is to be bilingual.

This included parents who were Swedish, Mexican, Italian, Greek and Dutch.

Poignant moments were also captured during the Festival’s evening concert at the Bellingen Memorial Hall.

The Valla Voices choir sang, from the perspective of a local fisherman, about the plight of displaced refugees from North Africa ending up in the little villages of Southern Italy.

The audience sang ‘Hallelujah’ with Israeli singer Noam Blatt and Laura Targett in honour of those affected by the Gaza conflict.

Meanwhile, Yazidis from Syria and Iraq celebrated their joyous tradition of dance.

Other weekend highlights included ‘Crazy Nonna’ making giant strands of pasta for a long procession of children to hold, amusing street theatre by the Zany Zanni band, and 120 people feasting at the Long Lunch in the Showground Pavilion under the pelting rain.

By Mary KEILY