Descent: Dances of the Dark Goddess
A night of theatrical, ritual, experimental and dark fusion bellydance as
an invocation, celebration, and expression of the sacred Dark Feminine.
Where do Eros, the Sacred, and the dark heart of the Underworld intersect?
We answer this question with the art of bellydance…
Descent 2008 promo poster
Descent: Dances of the Dark Goddess first cast its spell in Nov 2008 at the Julie Ince Thompson Theater in Cambridge, Boston. That sold-out 100-seat show led to Descent: Dances of the Dark Goddess II: DESIRE, in Oct 2009, being presented in the large and lovely First Universalist Society Sanctuary in Salem, MA, where attendance exceeded the previous year’s journey.
For Descent Aepril encourages, nurtures, and indeed requires performers to go deeper and further with their performances than they normally would—or even could, in most venues! The performers’ brilliantly creative and courageous responses to this demand have resulted in a level of performance at Descent that is rarely equaled anywhere.
Performers have come from throughout the northeast U.S., and have included Desert Sin, Darshan, JeniViva, Vadalna Tribal Dance Co., Sarah Jezebel Wood, Alia Thabit, Sabrina, Ela Rogers, Aepril Schaile, and many more. The first Descent was graciously guided by Zan Asha of ChoveXani. For the second Descent, Aepril performed several dramatic invocations, poems and stories of the Dark Goddess in her various guises.
The Descent workshops, by Djahari of Desert Sin, JeniViva, and Sarah Jezebel Wood of East Coast Tribal, have been great successes—full, fun, and badass!
Descent also features sale merchandise and free info from some of New England’s best Bellydance, Gothic, Wiccan, and Occult shoppes and organizations, like Laurie Cabot’s The Cat, the Crow, and the Crown, Fool’s Mansion, and the Salem chapter of the Knights Templar Oasis.
Plans for Descent: Dances of the Dark Goddess III were pre-empted by the Ascent of the Dark Goddess in the form of Exquisite Corpse Dance Theatre’s original, full-length ritual-theatre bellydance production “The Book of Lilith”, which received excellent reviews for its debut run of three sold-out shows here in “Witch City” Salem, MA!
Thank you again to everyone involved for helping to manifest some very special events!!!
Descent 2009 promo poster
It has been told since the time before remembrance…
In the season ruled by Hades, during the darkening of the moon and the waning of the year, the Goddess makes her Descent into the Underworld…
A dark place of shadow and taboo, of reckoning and utter vulnerability, of spirit and psyche and truest self; of sex and violence, yet of ultimate peace and healing…
The Dark Goddess—ancient and eternal aspect of the Divine Feminine, modern archetypal force—a figure of worship, awe, horror, fascination; a force of destruction, creation, beauty, death, sex, rebirth…
Immortal…
Behold some of the darkly feminine themes explored by the artists of Descent: Dances of the Dark Goddess…
The Dark Queen and the Madwoman, the Temple Priestess and the Sacred Harlot, The Destroyer and the Lover, the Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt, Serpent haired Medusa and mad Maenads, American Witches and ancestral Stregas, the divine Light within the darkest Night…
The dance of the different forces that live within every woman: romance, innocence, fear, darkness, danger, destruction, passion, DESIRE…
