In my everyday life I am a dancer.  That’s my job.

I keep it pretty secular.  I don’t push pagan or hippy stuff on my students or audiences and I tend to get annoyed when anybody tells me how I must be really connected to the Goddess through Belly Dancing, and did I know it’s an ancient dance in praise of the Goddess? (It’s not, you hippy idealists, sorry bout that.) Because my dance usually has nothing to do with the Goddess at all – it’s a calling, and I work hard and train every day at it like an athlete. I don’t dance to get crazy ecstatic goddess vibes or anything – I dance to get better at dancing.

I really dislike the idea of calling myself a Pagan Artist or a Spiritual Artist, because honestly being a “spiritual artist” often seems to be a pass card to produce shoddy art, have a profound lack of any real technique or skill or talent and still expect everyone to think what you did is incredible.

…Yes I went there.

Back to topic.

I dance because I love dancing, dancing is the best and I have to dance. It’s Goddessness stops and ends at the fact that I know dancing is My Work and what She wants me to do for the next 10 years or so, not as a Priestess of transcendental hippy dancing, but as an agent of beauty and awesomeness.

That aside, I want to do and create stuff in honour of the goddess, and I think like anything you do for Her, you bring your current skills and talents and passions to the table – be they dancing, or accounting, or midwifery. I’ve been wanting to explore pagan and goddess themes in my work for a while, and now my abilities are up to a point where I can do it without being horribly clichéd and appalling and clumsy, I thought I’d try it.

For the last two Sabbats working with my Priestess Training in Glastonbury, I’ve been creating dances to try and emanate the qualities of the goddesses we’ve been working with – the Crone and Danu, Goddess of Winter and the Stillness. No props, no gimmicks (or at least not too many!), just dancing and creating a feeling in honour of the Goddesses, maybe bringing a little of that Goddess’ vibe to touch my audiences.

My audience’s don’t know my intentions – I’m a stealth pagan, and all they know is that I am here to dance for them. These dances are rehearsed, but improvised – there is no choreography, just a thin frame of what I want to do.

Enjoy, and do tell me what you think 😀

Samhain: Kerridwen

Midwinter: Danu