Without being an expert on the subject, it’s a theme I’ve trained myself in: I’ve had the pleasure of taking part in a couple of dance competitions. It’s a subject I’ve enjoyed exploring, and one that I’ve always found very neglected on French-speaking Gorean role-playing sims. Frankly, if it had been up to me, I’d have proposed a dance party animation two or three times a month to offer a bit of beau rôle to players incarnating the kajirae present in a community.

Why would I do this? Because, beyond the aesthetic and animated aspects of a Gorean slave dance, there’s another, deeper and more interesting aspect: dance is the privileged moment when a kajirae character can freely express all her emotions and desires, unhindered and with nothing to stop her. The dance doesn’t just tell a story; the story is secondary, because it’s there to serve a primary, essential purpose: it tells the intimate emotions and desires that the slave character often never has the freedom or opportunity to express in any other way.

So, before getting to the heart of the matter, let’s clear up a few obvious points: to perform a slave dance, it’s not enough to have beautiful dance animations, music and dance silks. And it’s hard to improvise a slave dance if you’ve never been trained in how to perform them. You’re going to have to learn how to imagine and write this dance, so you can perform it. You’ll need to hone your writing skills, and you’ll have to do so in a field that’s always difficult: eroticism and sensuality.

Once you’ve passed that hurdle, the rest is relatively easy… so let’s start with the menu!

1- what is a slave dance?

The slave dance is the pinnacle of the kajirae’s role, or rather, nature and deepest desire: to please men. The very essence of the way they dance is to sublimate erotic femininity and sexuality. There’s no such thing as a slave dance without eroticism and sensuality. There are many forms of dance, differing in visual theme and technique (such as the chain dance, the submission dance, the virgin dance, etc.), which we’ll discuss in another article, but the general idea is this: a dance is a moment of sensual, liberated expression of the slave’s feelings, through a narrative and an erotic visual staging whose aim is to arouse sexual desire and arouse the senses of the spectators.

This being said, a slave dance is also a particularly privileged moment of roleplay, requiring writing with particular care to grammar, spelling and literary style. For example, in the slave dance competitions held regularly in Second Life on Gorean sims, the judges rate style and composition as well as spelling and grammar. In other words, it’s important to avoid mistakes, and so it’s really best to write your text in advance, and proofread it carefully, or have it proofread by friends you know have the literary skills.

Finally, a slave dance, whatever its subject and theme, has a structure, usually divided into four parts. This structure must be respected, for reasons of rhythm and staging. It’s less important for an impromptu or improvised dance, but it’s essential when you’re putting on a show, hosting an event or taking part in a competition. That’s what we’re going to talk about now.

Here is a list of Gorean dances mentioned or described in the Gor saga novels, to help you find dance themes and styles to stage: https://www.psychee.org/gorpedia/type-of-gorean-slave-dances/

2- The four stages of dance

A dance is made up of four distinct phases.

In general, each phase is the subject of two to three emotes ; in other words, the text is divided into four parts, themselves divided into two or three short paragraphs. To highlight this division and the way it’s interpreted in a dance, I’m going to quote, step by step, extracts from one of my own dances, a complete chain dance. The latter, by the way, doesn’t exactly follow the proposed breakdown. But that’s okay! Unless you’re competing, what matters most is the beauty of your staging, storytelling and performance, not maniacal adherence to steps and narrative construction.

NdR: I write a lot in my dances, it’s a personal flaw, but you can make shorter emotes, of course! In a competition, I reduce the length of my emote paragraphs to 4 lines of text maximum, so that the spectators have time to read and also watch the dance.

The prelude:

This is the first part of the dance, the one that sets the scene. The music usually begins at the second or third note of this phase. The dancer describes her arrival on the dance floor, her first glances at the crowd, the way she positions herself to start the dance, revealing the type of dance she’s going to perform, and of course, she describes her outfit and her own attitude, since emotions are going to be very important from now on.  Things always start off quite slowly and calmly in a slave dance, and the introduction serves to capture the audience’s attention and reveal what the dance is going to express and tell. Sometimes, this part can work very well with two emotes.

“She seeks the ground beneath her steps. It is she who has wanted to dance, who has hoped, asked and clumsily begged for the privilege. But it’s not the dancing that counts in this supplication. She flexes her toes as they slide across the cold, hard pavement, sending a shiver down her spine. She feels her heart racing, even though she hasn’t moved.

Her knees slide again on the cold stone, giving her a hiccup of abandon, and she arches her back, offering herself to the sky, her bare breasts protruding in the torchlight. Her spine throbs and twists under her sensual will, like a drunken snake. Around her neck hangs the chain, the end of which is placed in front of her master.

The music begins, sonorous and bewitching, with a heavy, erotic rhythm. She raises one arm to the sky and spins violently around on the icy pavement, her hair following the movement in a diaphanous ballet, making the chain clink as it deftly wraps around her. She holds back, exposing her slender waist and white throat”.

The crescendo:

This is the building phase of the dance, the one that tells its theme and highlights the dancer’s emotions, such as her struggle, in the capture dance, to escape the man who wants to capture her, then her revolt when he succeeds. The expression of the emotes used must heighten the tension, feeding the feeling in the audience that the climax of the story is yet to come. The story, like the expression of emotions and the sensuality of the dance, must follow a gradual upward curve. There has to be a sensitive, powerful suspense at the end of the three emotes of this phase.

NdR: I often see dances that tell a story… but a dance is there to tell sensitive emotions, and interact with the audience. The story told is an excuse to interact with the audience. A dance is always addressed to someone, most often the master of the kajira, or the man who requested the dance.

“Her first glance is not for the man towards whom the chain is running. She looks away, her face full of sorrow, and with a movement of her hips, she lifts herself up to the sky to throw her despair into it, and throws her arms out, distraught, in a silent cry. She is a captive who dreams only of freedom, and she struggles to refuse to submit, as if her whole being, moved by the dance, burned with revolt, to the rhythm of the tambourines.

Breathless, her breasts throbbing, she flutters in ravishing swirls, exploding her nakedness, so fragile at this moment. She struggles against the chains, still screaming, begging some mysterious torturer to grant her mercy. Unravelling herself, she slips into her shackles, which only tighten their grip on her more, rippling her loins and white breasts.

And then, at last, a look of surprise and fear, in an arc of her whole body, which seems to slump to the ground in majestic renunciation. She stares at her master, stretching out her arm in a rush to him, to beg again. But not in surrender. She fights against enslavement and against her chains, her delicate face transfixed in pain, beads of sweat glistening on her forehead, her hair now free, scattering into a mane of fire.”

The climax:

Here, the entire dance reveals its subject and purpose, the full expression of the dancer’s emotions and desires, but also the theme and climax of the dance narrative. This is the part that reveals the keys, but also the part that most exposes the dancer, both physically and emotionally. This is where the eroticism must explode as the subject of the dance reaches its climax: the slave is finally captured and submits in a dance of capture, or the slave joins the feet of the master holding her chain in a dance of the chain, etc. This climax must be reached in the third emote, after an explosion of emotions and eroticism in the dance and staging.

“Since she can’t win by fighting, she swings wide, her back arched, until she caresses his thigh with the full mass of her red hair. As if dodging, she rolls over, bringing her legs together in a sensual spindle, to throw her back back again, and embrace the crowd with her burning gaze, making her own the most powerful weapon of women: seduction.

In a ballet alternating between feline steps, barely skimming the flagstones, as if playing with gravity, and dizzying twirls, ringing the bells of her bracelets, she stretches her neck, stretching her slender body, to offer lascivious smiles around her, eyes heavy with erotic promise. And sometimes, briefly, she extends a hand, which she quickly withdraws, as an invitation to come and take her, and grant her escape from her servitude.

But the blows on the chain bring her back to her state, she falls and collapses in a rustle of silk, arching her loins to get up, but falls again, stretching right and left. The bite of the invisible whip that scourges her reminds her that she has no escape, the rings of the chain that encircles her slide over her white, swollen breasts to impose their mark: she is woman and slave, she is possessed, and she has no alternative.”

The Conclusion:

Made up of two or three emotes, this often serves to close the visual book of the dance. Since the aim is to please men and inflame their desires, the dancer will often present herself, in a posture of offering, submission or supplication to her master (or mistress, no one will see anything very shocking in that), if he or she is a spectator, or she will go to the one who was most enthusiastic about her dance, or to the evening’s guest of honor to offer herself to him. It’s also a moment for the dancer to smile at the audience, to show her love, her devotion, her gratitude, her joy… and also her tears, her desires and shortness of breath, her senses in turmoil and her erotic desires of the moment.

NdR: the slave dance invariably ends in a posture of submission, prostrate, arms and forehead on the ground, at the end of the dance, usually facing the kajira’s master, or the person who requested the dance. The kajira does not move until the applause and congratulations are over, and then only on command.

“Now under the silent yoke of an imperious gaze, she tries, crawling on the floor, to hide herself, in a vain flight, freeing in a bow of her loins the whole length of her slender legs, inhaling in a last lascivious complaint, still confronting the fetters of the chain that now runs the length of her body, whose cold metal makes her nipples protrude and wrings from her a whole torrent of shudders of delight.

The struggle is unequal, her undulations to fight and refuse the yoke of the chain only strengthen its grip, running over her body taking away all her freedom. Link by link, she approaches her master, still struggling to refuse the obvious. But she meets his gaze again, and this time, in the twist of her spine that dictates her whole body in a movement of eroticized abandon, it’s towards him that she reaches out, pulling her hair to one side, revealing her neck, in a gesture of absolute vulnerability, to which is bound the chain that seals her fate.

Consumed by his gaze, burning with all her senses, lustful, she comes crawling towards him, holding what’s left of the length of chain in her hand. In a final erotic gasp, her green eyes glistening with tears, bewitched and infatuated, she prostrates herself before him, sealing her fate, placing her hand in front of her master’s foot in a final gesture, her throbbing-veined neck offered to his mercy.”

Technical info:

To make life easier, I’d advise you to write your dance in an editing program like Word. Here, it’s with Word and its page formats that I’m going to measure and explain the technical aspects of writing your dance.

Roughly speaking, your dance, once written, should be around 600 to 800 words long. You can do a little less or a little more (my dance above is 880), but you should aim for this overall target. A dance should be between height and twelve paragraphs long, about 4-6 lines each, i.e. about 60-80 words.

NdR : You can make dances with much shorter texts, with paragraphs of only two or three lines, of course! For example, if the dance is based mainly on a visual performance, with animations, sets and props that emphasize the visual spectacle and not the narrative! Here’s an example of a group dance, synchronized and focused on the visual, with a very short text. You’ll notice that I’ve included a timer for the launch of each emote from the start of the music:

10s

/me In a single step, the three dancers glide across the sand in majestic harmony and deep gravity. Tonight, they offer their being and their grace to honor the city of Iskander. They take to the dance floor in a sensual ballet, their steps guided by the orchestra. Their gazes set the audience ablaze, in a majestic ode to their exposed bodies.

1mn10

/me Percussion and choir vibrate the air with power; the dancers twirl in perfect harmony, like magnificent vestals. The grace of their movements magnifies the strength and willpower that gave life to these walls; slaves possessed by the citizens, they honor their conquests and their glory.

2mn17

/me For the time of a dance, sumptuous odalisques, the kajirae launch a cry of glory with the chorus that accompanies them. In a whirlwind of erotic fever, they celebrate a triumph of will, setting soul and spirit ablaze. Finally, in a final burst of sound that strikes the air like a thousand victories, the dancers bow, acknowledging their masters, offering their hearts and souls to Iskander’s omnipotence.

3- How to start writing a dance?

By knowing what you want to say, and what emotions and desires you want to convey! If you haven’t been given a theme, you’ll have to rack your brains to find out what type of dance, and therefore what scenario, what story, will be best suited to these emotions and desires. And don’t forget to think about your own dance animations, and try them out straight away. They’ll inspire you and help you write! (see below)

To start with, you need to know the setting and the audience you’re going to dance in. Since it’s all about staging, impressions, emotions and suggestions, it’s best to think about including the environment in your written interpretation of the dance. The senses are very important, so don’t just think of the visual, but also of smells and sounds. And of course, decide right away how erotic the dance is going to be! Because then the written language won’t be the same, between suggested sensuality and unbridled sexuality!

Then you have your construction: prelude, crescendo, climax, conclusion. And you can start your first draft by sketching out the narrative stages of your dance. Telling the story in few words is the easiest, and provides a solid foundation for enriching the text and tackling the main subject. Note, of course, what feelings your dancer is going to express, as these will come alive in the next stage, through the expression of the beauty and gesture of the dance.

The next step is to include the descriptive richness and suggestive power of your dance. A dance is a body in motion that frees itself from the rules of gravity, a feminine beauty that exposes itself in aerial movements and postures that are always full of grace and sensuality. A dancing slave is always beautiful, so talk about her beauty: her skin tone, the curve of her breasts, the mane of her hair, her perfume, her eyes, her smiles, the beauty of her hands, the finesse of her ankles etc etc etc.

Once this is done, find out where to include the feelings and emotions you want to convey, the ideas and wishes your dancer wants to share through her dance. Insert them into the description of her beauty and her dance steps, fitting in with your overall narrative.

Next, check that you’ve kept to the general format of around 4 to 5 lines, or even 6, of word text per paragraph, i.e. per emote. This must not be exceeded: too much text would exceed the maximum number of characters allowed in Second Life chat, cutting your emote in half. Above all, the audience must be able to read your emotes and watch your dance at the same time! While I believe that narrative is more important than visuals, you can’t sacrifice one for the other.

Finally, before you get to the stage of figuring out how to play your dance, share your text with friends so they can proofread it. We all make mistakes, omissions etc., and an outside eye will find them more easily.

A word of advice: the richness of language lies in a certain poetry, exploiting parables and synonyms. Don’t be afraid to use a synonym dictionary on the Internet to help you!

4- Playing the dance

So, you’ve got your dance, your friends have liked it and helped you correct the text, and now it’s time to perform it. Of course, staging the dance itself requires a suitable dance floor and audience facilities, as well as music if possible, but we’ll come back to these technicalities in another article.

For the dance, you’ll have to deal with two constraints: the first is how to time the interval between two dance emotes, and the second is how to coordinate your dance animations with your text.

Dance duration

In a contest or competition, a dance never exceeds six to eight minutes, and must be performed to a single piece of music. In a show, a dance can last up to 15 minutes. But I’ve seen private dances improvised in front of spectators go on for 30 minutes! Of course, if the dance is improvised, you need time to write the emotes.

The calculation is quite simple: an emote every 45 seconds to a minute or so is a good average.  With an 8-paragraph dance, you’ve got a show lasting around 6 minutes, with 12, 9 minutes. That’s pretty rough, but assuming you have a dance written in ten emotes, and that you estimate each emote from the first (which starts as soon as the music begins), the dance will last around 10 mn.

And if you want to take your time, and the music is less important than the text of your dance, you can loop the music, for example, and make your show last 15 minutes, spacing each emote by 1.5 minutes, giving your audience time to react. This way, they can comment on the dance, write down their reactions, applaud… or even talk about something else between two dance emotes, even if we rather want them to be passionate about what’s happening on the dance floor!

Dance animations:

Roughly speaking, a dance animation in Second Life lasts 30 seconds. Some may be longer, but if so, I suggest you time them to find out how long they are. In general, we don’t chain dance animations one after the other. An animation can be repeated for one or two minutes.

Most often, four to six distinct animations are chosen, generally one for each phase: prelude, crescendo, climax, conclusion. They should, of course, be as close to your text as possible. I personally like to switch between standing and floor animations, but it all depends on your story and interpretation. So, each animation will last for one to two minutes, roughly speaking. In competition, this visual choice is just as important as your appearance and outfit, but the audience’s opinion will above all be based on the beauty of your text and its written staging. That said, visual beauty is important.

And, in competition, you really have to not only choose your dances well, but also manage to synchronize their passage from one dance to the next in a harmonious way. In such cases, a programmable dance hud with an internal timer is used. My personal hud is the MetaHarpers Choreo HUD, Dance Edition, but there must be others just as effective. I like it because it’s relatively easy to use.

This means you’ll have to pull out your wallet, unless the dance floor you’ve prepared includes quality dances. Choosing the dances for each phase is important; sometimes it even helps enormously with the written inspiration. So choose them before you’ve even written your slave dance. A quality dance animation costs between L$150 and L$250. So it is, indeed, quite an investment. It’s then easier to rely on dance floors or pole bars that allow you to put together several animations at a lower cost, and that all dancers could use. That said, I like to use dances that I’ve personally chosen. But it’s all a matter of means.

Improvisation:

This is the hardest part, but it’s only relevant to informal settings or role-playing evenings. In short, role-playing is the realm of unpredictability. For example, during a chain dance, a master holds the dancer’s chain. Suddenly, he pulls on the chain to bring the dancer back to him, in the middle of the dance, to steal a kiss. The emote, prepared by the dancer, can’t anticipate this surprise, so she’ll have to revise her emote to include this unpredictable event.

So, yes, this is where it gets tricky. Rest assured, this never happens in competition. And in role-playing, you won’t be rushed because your dance lasts 30 minutes instead of 15. So don’t panic, revise your emote on a notepad or word text, for example, include what’s happening around you at the time, and improvise freely as you land on your feet to keep going.

You’re not in a contest, and with a little imagination, you’ll be able to pick up the thread of your text with ease. And if there are a few mistakes or clumsinesses due to improvisation, nobody’s there to judge you either, as long as the overall quality makes your dance a beautiful moment of emotion and sensuality.

And I insist! Don’t panic, just let yourself go and have fun!

5- Conclusion

Let’s be clear: writing and staging a slave dance for the first time is intimidating, even frightening. It’s hard to know if it’s going to be a success, you’re bound to expect something to go wrong, and I have to admit, I find it very intense, even for 8 minutes of RP! I have terrible stage fright when I take part in a competition or a show, and once the dance is over, I’m emotionally drained. And I’m sure you’ll feel the same. But it’s a wonderful moment to experience!

Of course, even the first time, you’ll never succeed as well as you expect. But it’s an exercise in writing, literary art and stagecraft. To succeed, you have to try, ask for advice and try again!

There are two things to bear in mind, however: the slave dance is a moment of emotion and sensuality. You have to play the sexy, dreamy and erotic card to the hilt, but at the height of your own tastes and expectations. A slave dance is a highly personal literary essay. Each dancer describes, narrates, interprets and transmits her emotions in her own way. So if there are rules and codes, as well as advice, as you’ve just read above, it’s also YOUR dance; it’s your moment, yours. So, once you’ve satisfied the imperatives of these rules and codes, don’t be afraid to refuse any suggestion to modify your text that doesn’t correspond to what you’d like to write, tell or transmit.

Now you’ve got the basics, it’s up to you to give it a try!

6-Full example of improvised slave dance

Finally, here’s the very first dance I wrote a few years ago, as an example, mistakes included. It was a little too long, I was shaking with anxiety when I wrote it, I didn’t really know the codes yet, so I had to improvise a large part of it on the spot, in front of the audience:

“She places her feet on the sand of the dance circle, with soft, cat-like steps, turning slowly on herself, as if she wanted to tame the space, its dimensions. For a moment, her gaze becomes sharp, cutting like a blade, as it jerks around her. She memorizes the space, makes it her own, measures it, then turns, slowly, her back to the audience. She just turns her head, bent over, smiling softly, calmly. Her vivid green gaze is a blazing blade. And she falls in on herself in a single gesture, crouching with her back to the stage, in the fiery flight of her hair.

She takes hold of the dance floor, her outstretched arms dig into the sand, drawing it, she stretches out like a cat, and twists, gently, her body is a snake, and from a crouch, she unfurls into a silhouette skimming the ground, her body taut as a harp string, arched over her legs, which redraw the sand, she turns, gently, until once again facing the spectators, her gaze surprised, curious, scrutinizing. She seems to ask with her eyes, a breath, mute, staring at them: Who are you?… What do you desire? What do I desire? Is it a dream? Then her hand opens, and she balances a small, fragile larma on the sand, still contorted in this unstable equilibrium. It sits at the center of the circle.

Then she begins the dance. Upright in an impulse, she narrates in slow steps, clutching her arms as if to protect him, her heart sad and affected, looking around her at what she hopes for so much and misses so much. Her arms fly to draw curves, her back arches to project her to the heavens, it’s the people watching her that she takes to witness, her face begs them: how can I show him, can’t he see? She looks around her and, gentle, sad, loving, draws a larma with her hands, her fingers running through the air like delicate brushes. Her footsteps skim across the sand, where she supports herself with her toes, seeming to fly, to graze. And the larma barely trembles, liable to break at the slightest misstep.

She tells of the desire to give herself to him, to kiss him, the pain of not feeling him. Her lips form soft words, without noise, a powerful and bewitching song, from her World, that she won’t pronounce. In her head, music guides her, a cradle for bewitchment, it’s the spectator she begs to see, to understand how much this larma she seems to hold, and venerate, love, is her hope, the only message, for her Master to understand, and wish, to take her, who wants to give herself. Her body twists like the song of bitter suffering, and the hope of her arms, she dances her hand over her skin, curling and quivering, and her face begs, her gaze pleads. At her feet, the larma has become the landmark around which her steps dance, brushed and caressed by the sand, and her waving hair becomes a torch to follow her.

She whirls faster and faster, caught up in the frenzy of an amorous plea, her body a snake coiling and twisting as if to deny the limits that restrain it. She throws her legs out gracefully, so briskly, in such wide swings that you’d think he’d never resist, but she brings her arms and legs back in sensual curves, her breath wild and panting, her gaze burning, searching for that master who makes her yearn so much. Her hands strike the sand in balances as precarious as they are fragile, and always the larma remains at the center of the track. And in a final burst, a flash of her gaze to the spectators, a hope, He is there, she catches the larma in flight, twirling like a blade in the flame of her hair.

She kneels at last, falling into Nadu, on the edge of the circle. It’s the Master she’s handing it to, or would like to, smiling, happy, she’s dared to give her gift, will he understand, will he want? Her eyes glisten with tears, and hope, and in her clasped hands, held out in offering, the larma…intact.”