Arianne MacBean – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

I used to tell my dance students that the dance floor was like a Big Mama, aways there to catch them, always there to sink into, always there to press back. This was my way of teaching them to trust the floor, that it was not a place where they needed to fear crashing into, but a place that wanted to take them in, hug them, love them. As dancers, we spend much time focused on the floor, how to release into it with control, how to push off it, even how to defy it and manipulate it. It becomes our partner in all dances, this blanket beneath us. But I haven’t been in a dance studio for a few years and so I have found myself looking up, instead of down.

As the story was told to me, my parents were listening to composer Claudio Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna when my name was decided. I would be called Arianne, after mythical Ariadne’s melancholy refrain, sung to the heavens after being abandoned on a deserted island by her lover, Theseus. Raised on the Greek myths as bedtime stories, my father regaled me nightly with tales of gods, goddesses, and mortals twirling in the maelstrom of life. I was in awe of Cyclops and Sirens, but it was the myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur that I requested most often.