«Allora Maria prenderà il tamburello e animerà alla danza le vergini ». Paradigmi femminili di danza e conoscenza al cristianesimo

Abstract

This article analyses dance as a language of knowledge and power in late antique and medieval Christianity, focusing on women’s bodies as mediators between grace and disrepute. From the earliest biblical interpretations, dance emerged as both an inspired act and a sign of otherness and impurity. The study examines this duality through emblematic figures such as Salome, Theodora, Miriam and the Virgin Mary, and sources including the Church Fathers, Justinian’s legislation, and Dante’s Paradiso. In this context, dance takes shape as a communal form of knowledge, a symbol of cosmic harmony, and an instrument of redemption. While the male gaze often reduced the dancer to a guilty or demonic body, Christian tradition reinterpreted the Platonic choreia with spiritual and pedagogical overtones. By reinstating the role of women’s dance as a vehicle of wisdom, it was thereby transformed from a symbol of exclusion into a paradigm of order, grace, and access to the divine.