Northern Slave Dance Series at Gorean Dance Oasis
Northern Style Dance Workshop Series
Summer 2016
Recently the Gorean Dance Oasis (GDO) offered a dance course entitled the “Northern Dance Series.” This series of three workshops was presented by the Oasis girl, Snow Mistwoood, and was designed for someone who wishes to write a dance based on the culture of Torvaldsland. It is the Gorean Dance Oaisis’s hope students would learn how to add northern flavor to any slave dance they write, including Book dances.
Several bonds who had taken Snow’s well-known tavern dance classes requested a dance class designed specifically for bondmaids to compose a Torvie-style dance. Before offering the course for the first time during the summer months of 2015, Snow, a northern-bred slave, wondered if she was the best instructor for this course because she had not entered her first dance competition with a pre-written dance until after she had moved south and had the mark of the north cut from her thigh.
Snow’s Master, the Slaver Koardan, quelled her apprehensions and simply stated, “Mine, you can take the girl away from the north but can never take the north away from the girl, teach them how you write your bondmaid dances based on quotes from Marauders.” With her Master’s words in mind Snow based the entire northern dance series on that perspective… the Book, “Marauders of Gor.”
The three-day course series began with a visualization strategy that Mily Sandalwood first introduced to Snow to in one her Ko-ra-ba Kajira Academy dance classes. Students in the Northern Dance Series course selected an image that represented Torvaldsland and they learned how to research quotes using several different sources. Then applied a Marauders quote to bring meaning to the image they had chosen. Each section of the dance series receives different images to stretch their imaginations and think deeply about the story the picture might tell.
This is a great way to gain new inspirations and stimulate ideas for any dances. Truly it is amazing when a dancer sees in a story in an image and begin to interpret a dance from that image using motions and emotions. Slaves are all so very different dancers and have such vivid thoughts to paint a picture through dance.
To add regional flavor to northern-flavored dances, students would read a few pages of Marauders leading up to the quote and a few pages after the quote to have a better understanding of the quote relative to the context in the Book. Through reading dancers gain perspective and many solid details about the setting, the geography, history, clothing descriptions and colloquial expressions that could add a Torvie feel to a dance.
Next, students of the Northern Dance Series go about tackling emotions and express those emotions through motion, dance faction style - the ability to show emotions and a story through movement rather than telling your audience what you are feeling or storytelling. This leads to a lively discussion about bondmaids actually being able to a Book dance.
Except for the one brief mention of the “passion dance of a nude slave girl,” none of the Book dances (http://www.thegoreancave.com/research/dance.php?offset=240) took place in Marauders but it is very possible for a northern slave to dance a belt dance or tether of dance or a pole dance.
With every slave dance there is a range of emotions and stages the dance progresses through. So just because it did not occur in Marauders a bondmaid most certainly could experience the same emotions and dance through the phases,Torvie-style. In class, students examined several Book dances and brainstormed how a northern style dance may look during these phases. The movements and facial expressions of a bondmaid may also differ because of the cultural nature of a northern slave but the emotional impact would still be evident.
In the last course of the series, Part Three, the instructor does much less talking and the students discussed the style of music, animations, costumes and props that could add a Torvaldsland flavor to a dance. It was all quite fast-paced but totally opened-ended for those dancers who attended to be as creative as they wish and draw from the inspirations of others to create a dance unique to only themselves.
On Saturday, November 12, 2016, a Torvaldsland Dance Exhibition to highlight these creations will be held in the Gorean Dance Oasis dance arena for students of the Northern Dance Series to perform a dance based on a Marauders of Gor quote and receive a GDO badge.
Three sections of the Northern Dance Series will held at the Gorean Dance Oasis Castle Ruins in 2016:
Fridays, July 8, 15, and 22, 2016 at 10AM SLT
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, August 9, 10, and 11, 2016 at 5:30PM SLT
Sundays, September 11, 18, and 25, 2016 at 3PM SLT
Please follow the Gorean Dance Oasis, Gorean Dance Contests and Gorean Dance Community SL groups for notices of classes.