tarantella dance

• When Nora tells Torvald she is leaving him, she focuses on her position in the family as Torvald’s “doll wife.” Nora’s tarantella routine is one of many examples in the play that emphasize this apt description.
• Torvald not only chooses Nora’s costume for the party, but he also directs exactly how she must dance while wearing it. This dance shows the audience a near literal example of Torvald treating Nora as his doll.
• Nora rebels against her doll-like status by deviating from Torvald’s dancing instructions in rehearsal. At the party itself, she dances “a bit too naturalistic” for Torvald’s taste
• Even as Torvald creates the dance scheme to fulfill his fantasy of complete ownership over Nora, Nora uses his expectations to begin hiding from and rebelling against them. Through the dance, we can see both Nora’s place as a doll in her home, and the ways she works to circumvent that role. 
•  the tarantella symbolizes a side of Nora that she cannot normally show. It is a fiery, passionate dance that allows Nora to drop the façade of the perfect mild-mannered Victorian wife
•  Nora uses performance to please Torvald, and the tarantella is no exception; he admits that watching her perform it makes her desire her.