One thing that really comes to mind right now is the documentary 'Divine Horsemen' by Maya Daren. It deals with Voodoo in Hati, and not only does it give a good feel for the music involved but it shows a lot of the dances that are part of the different rituals.

I'm a religious studies major and I have a lot of info left over from a class I took last semester about Voodoo so I'll go through it. There were a lot of pictures and such, I'll get back to you later today about it.

There is a really neat dance that Shakra does on the Revelations DVD, I thought it was very Baron Samedi when I saw it. It was *really* good.
...
Then there is also Grande Brigitte that you could aspect (loosely of course) with french music, something modern maybe, tattered lace veil over a top hat... some granny boots... etc.

That sound like a fun project!

And I second the Divine Horsemen!

Voodoo is a religion. So caveat emptor: there's a chance a girl could stir something [or someone] up. Also tobacco and libations are part of the dance. Though for some bellydancers that's nothing new...

In any case, you may want to look at some youtube videos, keywords "Katherine Dunham", "Shango" and "Orisha dance".

www.youtube.com/watch

There's vodoun music out there ... maybe you could find some authentic music to inspire you?

I don't know if this info is coming too late. I just read your post today so I'm a little behind. I wrote a blog about this almost a year ago, the blog touches on general themes in ritual dance and how to respectfully put it into a performance setting. I was mainly thinking about Zar, Santeria and Tarantella but the ideas covered work just as well for Voudoun. I think your musical choices sound great. Music is really, really important. And I also liked Trista's recommendation for wearing black lace. Be Ghede-like, not like Ghede. You just want a hint, less is more. .

Yours,
~*Spoonie*~
www.transcendentaldance.com

"August 12th, 2008 Blog Post from Tribe by PoisonedSpoon

Recommendations for Stage Trance Presentations
Yesterday's blog was rather off the cuff but it made me think a little bit and I wanted to continue along that vein today. Now I am not "Lord of the Trance" so I don't have any official say in this but I like to think that my extensive work in the transcendental arts counts for something. Essentially this is just a collection of my personal recommendations and not some kind of mandate from on high.

Not everybody understands the traditional divisions of trance and their relationship to the secular arts so here is a quick reference.

1) At the bottom we have basic trance which is trance without a purpose, this type of trance can be put on stage but I rarely find it attractive enough to do so. This would include mourning dances, rites of passage, holiday celebrations and things of that nature. I've seen Delilah do a lot of nice stage trance; she's actually one of the few people I've ever met who looks good when trancing.

2) Next up the chain we have magical trance. This wavers in sacred nature from person to person as some people place a higher value in magical operations than others. It can be put on stage but I don't know why it would be or what an audience would get out of it. It is one thing to observe it happening and another to have it on display for a traditional audience; I'm pretty sure that something would be lost in the translation. This would include healing dances, weather dances, spiral dances and anything with a basic externally focused intent.

3) The third tier is the first of the ecstatic dances; these are your possession dances of which Zar definitely qualifies. Putting it on stage has a very real potential for mocking the process because it subconsciously alters the spiritual associations of the ritual. It really is the vocalization of the music that is the most significant; so long as the vocalizations are left out then I see no problem with a respectful stage presentation. When you start putting spiritual dances on stage out of context you really begin the death process for that particular tradition because these are primarily experiential traditions; there is no book of knowledge that accompanies them so the hypnotic and verbal associations of these dances are very important and have to remain intact for the next generation. If you remove the spiritual context then that sets off an avalanche of disrespect. Take a look at what happened to Flamenco and Tarantella once the spiritual associations were knocked off balance when the performances shifted from experiential to performance arts.

4) The top tier is also a form of possession or communion dance which puts it into the category of ecstatic dance. The difference between this and number 3 is that this is not a form of dance wherein the dancer is possessed by the English/common equivalent of a ghost, an angel or a demon. In this case the dancer is infused with the pure spirit of the divine (or as much of it as the dancer's body can handle without going catatonic). This is a very personal thing; not meant for the public at all. The keeping of the sacred context is paramount to the continuation of a sacred dance tradition. One of the most genius things I have ever seen is the purposeful split between the Zikir and the Tanoura. This allows spectators to watch something similar but it also completely separates the arts and gives a secular form to public performance and keeps the holy form to appropriate forums.

Whirling ~ Whirling is not inherently a devotional act; it greatly depends on the context that it is presented in. It is not the movement that is sacred, it is actually more the sound of the chanting and the specific words used in those chants. Keep the religious chants out of it and it becomes beautifully secular.

Hair Tossing ~ Hair tossing is a PTD (preferred technique of descent) for some people in multiple trance traditions (the dance of Damballa [Yonwalu] uses it, I use it from time to time with Ecstasia, it is performed in Sufi ritual and just about any other trance tradition I can think of with only a few exceptions); it is just a basic trance movement that is easily recognizable to a large number of people. In most transcendental traditions the head circles do not constitute the whole of the dance, just the beginning. If you do it right you will drop into a trance unless you force yourself not to; it is a very powerful technique and there is a very good reason that it's use is so widespread. The movement itself is not sacred, it just indicates that something mystical is happening on stage when presented in performance dance.

Head Bobbing ~ This is another PTD technique and it really varies between person to person. Determining its meaning really depends on the manner in which it is presented. It could have a lot of meanings depending on what the dancer is wearing and what he/she is dancing to. Like I have already said... keep it light and don't use sacred chant

What to Wear ~ I know a dancer or musician means serious business when they are wearing all one color. If you are presenting a trance type performance dance then you will want to avoid the color black at all costs (unless you are presenting a mourning dance) because it does not simply imply death; it represents disease, decay, murder, leprous festering bacteria ridden miasma of all things foul. Trance dancers do not wear this color unless they are doing something very specific and generally very bad. (Or unless they have no idea what they're doing...) Solid white is a good color; representing purity, marriage and spiritual neutrality. (So if you actually do trance or value the traditions of trance you will probably want to wear this color.) Solid red is another good color; it represents things that are a bit more playful, neither good nor evil. Solid blue is great if you want to represent something more romantic, transcendental concepts of love and sex are represented by blue.

Beyond that there's no need for a person on the outside of a trance tradition to get any deeper; just know that all colors have a meaning and even subtle changes in music have a meaning. The movements of the dances invoke a sort of feeling from the audience when you're doing a stage presentation and that is why these movements are used so frequently. I'm really directing this towards the belly dance community so just be aware that there are other alterations and things to be made depending on the type of trance tradition you are representing on stage.

Less is more. When I see these things on stage I just want to see a hint of it and not a full ritual-play. I loved the Tanoura guy that I posted a link of in my last blog because he was dancing to pop music and he made absolutely no pretensions about what he was there to do (entertain). I like Jillina's seated hair tossing interludes because they give a hint of it without going overboard. Arish Lamm scared the crap out of me with his troupe's performance at Spirit of the Tribes because they did put on the whole pageant; they did truck out a painting of the Virgin and dance clad in all white in front of it complete with head shaking and pantomime exorcism. (No disrespect to Arish Lamm, I loved the performance I just wasn't expecting it so I wasn't in the right headspace.) I never want to see anything like that from people who don't actually belong to a transcendental tradition because there are too many opportunities to screw up. I would believe that Arish Lamm or at least a few people in his group do belong to a transcendental spirituality and so in the end I was ok but I bit my nails through the whole thing waiting for the big blasphemy to show itself. If I were at a show where I expected to see a lot of religious and spiritual dances on display it would have been different; I would have started out expecting that everybody involved would know what they were doing but at a belly dance show I didn't know what to expect. It is hard for me to relax and appreciate the performance in scenarios like that because I am an ecstatic dancer and these things are very real and very serious to me. It has to be the right sort of venue, context and presentation for me to not squirm in my chair agonizing as to if these people are going to piss off ______ spirit by mocking his/her/its ceremonies.

The same thing goes for when I hear the music and chants set to normal belly dance. It causes my brain to sputter because I have the strong hypnotic associations that tell me when I hear X music that Y is going to happen. And if Y doesn't happen then it screws with my head. Also if I hear trance music that I've been trained to drop to... I will feel my knees buckle as I try to walk away. I don't think that non trance artists appreciate what 14 years of transcendental training will do to your body and mind or how fast an experienced trance dancer can drop. It might take a baby dancer a good 20 minutes to drop but I can hit evocare in about 30 seconds and drop into a trance under the right circumstances in under 5. So disrespecting the music is a really bad idea. I did actually trance out while sitting in my chair watching a Kassar performance because of the music. I laughed about it when it was over because I didn't see it coming; I'm just glad I wasn't standing at the time.

These are just some things I think performance artists should keep in mind when it comes to performing stage trance."

I have a voodoo dubstep track on my new release coming out in september - my side project, Darkened

did you already do this solo?