Dance of the Rence Girls

Drawing by Andrea Seri
(See more of his work at www.andreaseri.com)

The Dance of the Rence Girls

This dance is unique, in that it is a dance of Free Women. The Rence Growers live in tiny communities on rafts which float free in the Vosk delta, perhaps only 50 or 60 individuals each. Four or five of these communities will come together once a year, at Festival. After a day of games and contest, and an evening of feasting, the young women perform a sort of ritual courtship dance, after which they are chosen by the young men. The dance is described by Tarl Cabot, who has been enslaved by the Rence Growers, and must witness the dance while tied to a pole, waiting to see which of the girls is his mistress.

Then there came a drumming sound, growing louder and louder, a man pounding on a hollowed drum of rence root with two sticks, and then, as suddenly as the singing and clapping, the drum, too, stopped.

And then, to my astonishment, the rence girls, squealing and laughing, some protesting, and being pushed and shoved, rose to their feet and entered the clearing in the circle.

The young men shouted with pleasure.

One or two of the girls, giggling, tried to slip away, fleeing, but young men, laughing, caught them, and hurled them into the clearing of the circle.

Then the rence girls, vital, eyes shining, breathing deeply, barefoot, bare-armed, many with bands worn for festival, and hammered copper bracelets and armlets, stood all within the circle.

The young men shouted and clapped their hands.

I saw that more than one fellow, handsome, strong-faced, could not take his eyes from Telima.

She was, I noted, the only girl in the circle who wore an armlet of gold.

She paid the young men, if she noticed them, no attention.

The rence communities tend to be isolated. Young people seldom see one another, saving those from the same tiny community. I remembered the two lines, one of young men, the other of girls, jeering and laughing, and crying out at one another in the morning.

It was Telima who began first to pound the woven rence mat that was the surface of the island with her right heel, lifting her hands, arms bent, over her head, her eyes closed.

Then the other girls, too, began to join her, and at last even the shiest among them moved pounding, and stamping and turning about the circle. The dances of rence girls are, as far as I know, unique on Gor. There is some savagery in them, but, too, they have sometimes, perhaps paradoxically, stately aspects, stylized aspects, movements reminiscent of casting nets or poling, of weaving rence or hunting gants. But, as I watched, and the young men shouted, the dances became less stylized, and became more universal to women, whether she be a drunken house-wife in a suburb of a city of Earth or a jeweled slave in Port Kar, dances that spoke of them as women who want men, and will have them. To my astonishment, as the dances continued, even the shiest of the rence girls, those who had to have been forced to the circle, even those who had tried to flee, began to writhe in ecstasy, their hands lifted to the three moons of Gor.

It is often lonely on the rence islands, and festival comes but once a year.

The bantering of the young people in the morning, and the display of the young girls in the evening, for in effect in the movements of the dance every woman is nude, have both, I expect, institutional roles to play in the life of the rence growers, significant roles analagous to the roles of dating, display, and courtship in the more civilized enfironments of my native world, Earth.

It marks the end of a childhood when a girl is first sent to the circle.

Suddenly, before me, hands over her head, swaying to the music, I saw the dark-haired, lithe girl, she with such marvelous slender legs in the brief rence skirt; her ankles were so close together that they might have been chained, and then she put her writs together back to back over her head, palms out, as though she wore slave bracelets.

Then she said, "Slave," and spit in my face, whirling away.

I wondered if it might be she who was my mistress.

Then another girl, the tall, blond girl, she who had held the coil of marsh vine, stood before me, moving with excrutiating slowness, as though the music could be reflected only from moment to moment, in her breathing, in the beating of the heart.

"Perhaps it is I," she said, "who am your mistress."

She, like the other, spit then in my face and turned away, now moving fully, enveloped in the music's flame.

One after another of the girls so danced before me, and about me, taunting me, laughing at their power, then spitting upon me and turning away.

The rencers laughed and shouted, clapping, cheering the girls on in the dance.

But most of the time I was ignored, as much as the pole to which I was bound.

Mostly these girls, saving for a moment or two to humiliate me, danced their beauty for the young men of the circles, that they might be desired, that they might be much sought.

After a time I saw one girl leave the circle, her head back, hair flowing down her back, breathing deeply, and scarcely was she through the circles of rencers, but a young man followed her, joining her some yards beyond the circle. They stood facing one another in the darkness for an Ehn or two, and then I saw him, gently, she not protesting, drop his net over her, and then, by this net, she not protesting, he led her away. Together they disappeared in the darkness, going over one of the raft bridges to another island, one far from the firelight, the crowd, the noise, the dance.

Then, after some Ehn I saw another girl leave the circle of the dance, and she, too, was joined beyond the firelight by a young man and she, too, felt a net dropped over her, and she, too, was lead away, his willing prize, to the secrecy of his hut.

The dance grew more frenzied.

The girls whirled and writhed, and the crowd clapped and shouted, and the music grew ever more wild, barbaric and fantastic.

Raiders of Gor, pp. 44-47

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