Mer Sedna

Mer Sedna is the performance project I've been doing for about a year and a half with Katrina Ellison.

Mer Sedna is a fusion of Butoh (Japanese modern dance-theatre) and American Tribal-Style Bellydance (ATS), and is principally Katrina's brainchild, but she lets me come along and play. I'm trained in modern Egyptian Bellydance and American modern dance, so the techniques are cousins anyway.

Quick rundown on what we're dealing with here, though I'm by no means an expert on either: Butoh is based on ideas of transformation/transmutation, and it often deals with darkness and grotesque imagery. It arose in the wake of the bombing of Japan in the 1940's as a rejection both of traditional Japanese theatre and of western modern dance. Here's a clip of Kazuo Ohno, one of the credited originators of butoh.



American Tribal Style Bellydance, on the other hand, emerged in San Francisco in the 1970's, and it's called tribal "style" because though it borrows some movement/costume ideas from North African Berber tribal culture, it's not really related to any one of the region's 300+ tribes. It's a method of group improvisation where a set number of bellydance movements are practiced to precise unison, and each movement then can be cued by whichever member of the group is leading. It tends to attract a pretty alternative crowd, (as does butoh) so there's usually a large costuming element of dreadlocks, tattoos, piercings, etc.

Below is a clip from Fat Chance Bellydance, who preserve a stronghold of ATS performance and schooling in San Francisco.




Ahem, pardon me, I could dance-nerd out all day about this kind of stuff, and these aren't even my dance specialties.


So, Mer Sedna seeks to fuse these things, which are very compatible in one way - check the slowness, sinuousness, hyper-controlled movement, and well, seriousness of both. But they're also from two different planets in another way, in that butoh is almost purely energetic and formless, where ATS is almost entirely form.

So I think it's fascinating and wonderful that Katrina is working to reconcile these things, and I find the mix to be something dark, feminine, beautiful, formal, energetic, aformal, sinuous, and serious. But you can make up your mind for yourself. Below is last weekend's performance at the Beltane Cabaret, in a lineup of more traditional bellydance acts, which you can click through to see. You can also click through to see our second set.




The audience seemed to enjoy it, and they didn't even need a dance history lesson to get it.