If you’ve read the works I’ve been creating, the scenes either take place in an asylum, or the character is leaving the asylum to return home. Though I try to hint at the time period without coming right out and saying it, the stories are set anywhere in the 1920’s and 1930’s, a time where anyone could be dumped off at the local “crazy house” and left there to stay–forever until death did they part.
You’d think when Asylum came on, I’d have watched that show like a hawk. But like I’ve said in other posts, I didn’t faithfully watch American Horror Story: Asylum, though I did catch a few episodes. If you read Pleasure House and Dance of Desire, you’ll notice that I include dancing as part of my work. When I present Master Of The House, you’ll still read scenes with dancing.
Why this intrigue with dance? Because it’s not only fun to watch, it’s fun to do. Dancing has been around since the creation of time, used in ritual and ceremony, including the ceremony of wooing someone of the opposite sex. Dancing is healthy, but it’s also sexy, alluring, and guaranteed to get the lust boiling, if performed a certain way.
From dancing in the buff to sparkling, flowing costumes, a dancer can express an array of emotions to happiness to sadness, to “come hither if you dare.” In Asylum, the creators added in the dance scene with Jessica Lange performing “The Name Game”–which she performed herself, if you hadn’t guessed already. I love this scene, not only because it’s dancing, but I like the way the creators of Asylum showed the craziness of the human mind, and how we all can free associate in an instant, with only a few words spoken or the vision of an item as a small hint to get the mind rolling in all kinds of directions. I’ve included a link to that Name Game scene performed by Jessica Lange. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
