U-G-L-Y You Ain't Got No Alibi

I've been thinking a lot about ugly. So much of what has attracted me about goth culture is the romanticizing of what is unknown, frightening, or downright unsavory. The older I get, though, the more I am of necessity and by dint of simply surviving coming to embody the Crone. I'm over 35, and my own face frightens me when I encounter it in bright sunlight at, say, eleven in the morning. The ravages of time. My teenaged self prisoned in my chest like Merlin in the tree where the sorceress Nimue put him.

This becomes an issue in photo shoots, too. With all the technology available, I could of course get rid of the eye bags I've got (in which small rodents could happily snuggle for the winter, I assure you--since I've been averaging five hours' sleep a night since I got the puppy). I choose not to. I kind of like them. They are baroque, ornate, puffy, the tarnished color of bruises on bananas. They're mine. They're the map of a life, just as my tattoos are.

Right now I'm choreographing an Alien piece, which is meant to stand for the utter joy a creature feels at being solitary and unobserved, and therefore free. The audience will get the voyeur's pleasure of spying on what a lethal predator does when she's alone and simply puttering around after waking up from a nap.

Look in the mirror. What do you see? Creatures that have their eyes in the front of their head are predators. The title of the piece of music I'm using is "Bathed in Love." I've always thought that the predator/prey relationship is one of love.

What does all this have to do with ugly? Just that I'm freelancing more at home rather than being out in the world, and I'm acutely aware of what a toll the beauty myth takes on my everyday dealings, how such nonsense as framing others' expectations saps my power. When I'm home I don't have to wear makeup, or even clothes. I don't have to bind my breasts so they look perkier.

Reminds me of when I shaved my head, and my mother-in-law asked me why I did it, and I said it was because it's so easy to be pretty, and so much more interesting to find out what's underneath the obligations to delight the eyes of other people.

The root of the word "glamour" is the same as the one for "grammar," and points to the relationship between Logos and spellcraft. The ability to put people under your spell, irrespective of what you look like. Reminds me of some of my favorite lines from Yeats: An aged man is but a paltry thing/a tattered coat upon a stick/unless soul clap its hands and louder sing/for every tatter in its mortal dress.

As youth flees from us, what recourse do we have but to develop the spirit, the mind, the heart, all brimming with the delight of a life richly and exquisitely lived from within, with awareness, plugged into the five (in my case, six) senses?

Who wants to see ugly bellydance? Isn't dance supposed to galvanize the onlooker with its beauty, strength, flexibility? Should all art be beautiful?

The movements I'm thinking of to depict this effort of carving Medusa out of rock where her own gaze has prisoned her has to do with the grace that comes from awkward.

Welcome Deirdre Voodoo!

The Voodoo Sisters would like to welcome Deirdre Voodoo!

An accomplished Turkish and Egyptian-style dancer, Deirdre Voodoo became a friend of the Voodoo Sisters when she became our rubber kidney supplier. It doesn't get much better than that.

See Deirdre and Melissa Voodoo in action in "The Golden Golem," below:

The Shimmy Diet

This is the time of year when weight-loss advertisements--many of them targeted to women--run rampant. Do you make resolutions for the New Year? Is one of the resolutions to drop a few pounds?

I don't make such resolutions anymore. Since I quit smoking nine years ago, I've gained and lost the same thirty pounds about five times until I just resigned myself to a certain easy-to-maintain size, on the advice of my doctor. She said, "If you have to change your whole life to be a size 2, what's the point? Gaining and losing is just as bad for your health as an 'extra' ten or twenty pounds.' "

Then one of my friends gave me an ice cream maker for Yule. I've made olive oil ice cream, which was fabulous, and today I'm going to try peanut butter chocolate caramel ice cream.

All of this adds up to what I'm calling the shimmy diet. Because, seriously? I'm attracted to women with tummies, whose generous curves bespeak a love of the table and all its sensuous promise. It's why I got into bellydance to begin with, to see delicious women shake, rattle, and roll. This is not to say that sylph-like dancers are not beautiful. They are. I simply prefer watching voluptuous women bellydance.

My shimmies are a lot easier during the wintertime, when carbohydrate-rich food ensures you can see my shimmies from space. And that's the way I like it.

If you're going to make a resolution for this new year, make it about health and not about perpetuating the beauty myth that is breaking the back of women's happiness and sexuality. Make this the year of the shimmy!

For Beginner Bellydancers

I've had a ton of beginners asking me about what videos to use if they can't get to a real teacher.

You NEED to take a look at Autumn Ward's new DVD. Buy it direct from her so she makes some money off the project. (No, I get nothing from this. I just know how she teaches-- really, really well.)

http://www.autumnward.com/

-mv

The Voodoo Sisters Make the Bitch List!

Yes, it's true-- the Voodoo Sisters have a mention and a pic in this month's issue of Bitch magazine!

Pick it up on your local newsstand!


-mv

My boys, Voodoo Consort Number One and Sweeney Dog.

VoodooDog