Ghost Dancers: The Motherly Haunt

The DragonFlies Dance Company, of Moon Belly Dance Studio, is excited to offer a new collaborative choreographic work that explores cultural and spiritual meanings associated with female ghosts. The "ghost dance" is a theatrical fusion of contemporary modern dance with foundations in belly dance and feminist perspectives. 

Three dancers of The DragonFlies Company, Kandice Grossman, Nicole Beasley and Jessie Holdinghaus, each represent a female ghost character. The female ghost is a culturally fascinating figure. In part, because her role as an ephemeral character is not too far of a leap from her expected passive, submissive feminine real-life role. Her subtle, intriguing haunting is a mere extension of this expected gendered behavior. The other intriguing aspect is that the ghost implies a soul that is trapped. She cannot seem to find her way out of this life and into the next. Our interpretation of the female ghost is one who is trapped by her earthly, oppressive gender roles even in death. In fact, it is resentment that killed her.

The central theme of each ghost is motherhood. Each ghosts' submission to essentialist ideas about woman's nature as nurturer, victim and neurotic all play themselves out in this 17 minute choreography. The characters, costumes and choreographies were co-created by each dancer. Jessie plays the overburdened, over nurturing mother who cannot let go of the excessive, hyperactive attachment to giving - to the point that it kills her and she haunts all those she gave to, both begging them to love her and also hating them for taking. Nicole plays the victim mother who is lost and disoriented in her passivity - a true victim of gender violence in waking life, her haunt is forever disoriented and grieving - unable to accept misogyny and the loss of her child. Kandice plays the unfit daughter who's resentment toward her own mother leads to heroin addiction and ultimately death - her haunting is a constant oscillation between outbursts of child-like anger and euphoric highs, scaring everyone she haunts in an effort to get them to also try to escape reality.

Still in the shadow of the lunar eclipse and fast approaching Hallow's Eve, we are thrilled to present this eery work on the foggy banks of the Missouri River at Cooper's Landing on October 11th at 6pm. 

In addition to the ghost dance, we will present two other 15 minute choreographies: Warrior & Duality, both include newer and older choreographies and includes student dancers from the Moon Belly Dance Ensemble. 

Artistic Director: Kandice Grossman

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