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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 13h

Bush, coincidentally, shares a birthday with Emily Brontë, and July annually brings a day where many Kate Bush cosplayers gather to reenact the red dress video on the windy, wily moors.
The allure of this dancing dead girl seems to grow each passing year.

a woman in a red dress is dancing in a field .

ALT: a woman in a red dress is dancing in a field .

media.tenor.com

Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 13h

Two music videos were made, and this one depicts Bush, as ghost Cathy, dancing in ethereal 70's soft lighting and using time lapse photography to emphasise the haunting movements as the fog and dress whirl with her about the stage.
youtu.be/-1pMMIe4hb4?...

Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights - Official Music Video - Version 1

YouTube video by KateBushMusic

youtu.be

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 13h

Let me in a your window for Day 16 of #31DaysOfMacabreDanse. The debut single from Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights, released in 1978, is a self penned number sung from the point of view of Cathy's ghost.

Stills from Kate Bush music video for Wuthering Heights, dressed in white in soft lighting and fog on stage

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 1d

Having succumbed to Dracula, they dance a pas de deux in a misty graveyard before she's killed by the Crew of Light. She wears a simple white dress that combines a funeral shroud with the Gothic woman in white. You can watch the dance between the freshly-turned Lucy and Dracula here:

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's diary (The Graveyard) - Guy Maddin

YouTube video by Julia Davila

www.youtube.com

Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 1d

Pictured are Dracula (Zhang Wei-Qiang) and Lucy (Tara Birtwhistle). The film draws on themes of xenophobia and the repression of female sexuality. Lucy seemingly delights in her transformation and finds freedom in (un)death.

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 1d

Day 15 of #31DaysofMacabreDanse and it's Guy Maddin's 'Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary' (2002), a film of Royal Winnipeg's Baller adaptation of 'Dracula' (1897). Filmed in the silent film tradition, the addition of colours - golden, green and red - add depth and symbolism.

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 2d

The film seems to be a play on the well-rehearsed theme of death and the maiden. As with any lost film, details are hard to verify and so, we must use our imagination to fill in the details. The beautiful posters help.

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 2d

Named 'Totentanz' in the original German, the Beautiful Dancer seduces men, luring them to their death, under the control of a cruel master. She falls in love with one of them, also a murderer, who must win his freedom through a labyrinth hidden beneath the master's house.

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 2d

Day 14 of #31DaysofMacabreDanse, and we turn to a lost a film, 'The Dance of Death' (1919). Written by Fritz Lang, and directed by Otto Ripert, this silent horror film centres on a dangerous dancing woman (Sascha Gura).

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 3d

A one-act ballet, the story follows the Treginnis family, cursed to die in the haunted ballroom. Their deaths are preceded by a ghostly. The heir of Treginnis dies dancing with three ghostly women, leaving his son, young Treginnis, played by 15 yr old Margot Fonteyn in her debut.

Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 3d

Day 13 of #31DaysofMacabreDanse and it's unlucky for some. In this case, the Treginnis family in 'The Haunted Ballroom', first performed in 1934 with music and libretto by Geoffrey Toye and choreography by Ninette de Valois. Image: Alicia Markova and Robert Helpmann

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 4d

The video for 'Living Dead Girl' draws on the silent film genre with a heavy dose of German Expressionism a la 'The Cabinet or Dr Caligari' The dead girl in question uses gothic movement to highlight the effect. youtu.be/BvsMPOfblfg?...

Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl

YouTube video by RobZombieVEVO

youtu.be

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 4d

Day 12 of #31DaysOfMacabreDanse brings a Dancing Dead Girl from the mind of Rob Zombie. Loving Dead Girl (1998) was the second single from Zombie's Hellbilly Deluxe album and features Sheri Moon as the titular Dean Girl.

they pray for the living dead girl is written on a blackboard

ALT: they pray for the living dead girl is written on a blackboard

media.tenor.com

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 5d

The Maiden may be unaware of Death's proximity in some depictions, but artists also explore the moment that the Maiden sees Death coming.

Death and the Maiden painting by Marianne Stokes circa 1908

Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 5d

In these depictions, Death is personified as a skeleton, sometimes cloaked but often unclothed and carrying an hourglass. Alternatively, Death carries a mirror. Both objects symbolise the fleeting nature of youth and beauty that the Maiden represents.

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 5d

Day 11 of #31DaysOfMacabreDanse is a recurrent motif in art and media. Death and the Madien evolved from the Danse Macabre (yes, where we took the inspiration for our name) and became popular first during the Renaisance and later revived in the Romantic era.

Sebald Beham: Die Dame und der Tod, 1541

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 6d

Join our very own Dancing Dead Girls Lauren, Mary, Kaja and Karen as they take us through all things gothic ballet and body horror.

Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 6d

Day 10 of #31DaysOfMacabreDanse and for your Friday night feast we bring you a colab between 2/3 of Danse Macabre and The Ghoul Guides Association youtu.be/R6n5TGVfb6o?...

Gothic Dance | Ghoul Guides Association

YouTube video by The Ghoul Guides

youtu.be

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 7d

The heartbeat rhythm of the song lends itself well to the zombie like choreography that animates the dancers in both examples, and a tune to add to the Halloween playlist!

Still from Royal Dance performance, where the central dancer holds a bloody heart aloft in a spotlight, as the ensemble looks up at it

Still from Royal Dance performance holding a bloody heart aloft with the ensemble gyrating around the central spotlighed dancer

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 7d

Roísín Murphy (also known as one half of pop duo Moloko) performs this song on stage with halting staggering movements. The line "unzip my body, take my heart out" was deliciously interpreted by Royal Dance in 2024 (choreo by Arita Kukovasa)

youtu.be/3_CIjX7YrNI?...

Rosin Murphy - Ramalama (Bang Bang) - Halloween dance

YouTube video by Royal Dance

youtu.be

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 7d

Choreographed by Wade Robson (of Britney and N*Sync fame), the Dance Hall-esque costumes and exaggerated zombified movements earned him a prime time Emmy win for Outstanding Choreography in 2007. The girls move like the living dead, but done with style

youtu.be/CV-mxsPZdGE?...

Top 10 | Wade Robson - Pop-Jazz - Ramalama (Bang Bang) | SYTYCD S2 [HD]

YouTube video by SYTYCD Favorite Performances

youtu.be

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 7d

Day 9 of #31DaysOfMacabreDanse, and our dancing dead girls are stitching a seam across the eye. Season 2 of So You Think You Can Dance in 2006 gave us a zombie group number to Ramalama (Bang Bang) by Roísín Murphy

Still of the female dancers from season two of So You Think You Can Dance, dressed in zombie makeup and dance hall style costumes

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 8d

It ends in tragedy, as it so often does, as the poet lies stabbed and unconscious by the end of the ballet. Though only to be welcomed to the land of dreamers by his love. It can be found here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKXN...

La Sonnambula

YouTube video by TheBalletTapes

www.youtube.com

Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 8d

A love story between a poet and sleepwalker, the narrative blurs the line between sleep and death, as the sonnambula appears ghost-like in a Gothic white dress.

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Macabre Danse @macabredanse.bsky.social · 8d

Day 8 of #31DaysofMacabreDanse and we wonder 'to sleep, perchance to dream' (Hamlet, 3:1) with 'La Sonnambula'. Premiering in 1946, at the City Center of Music and Drama, New York, it was created by George Balanchine.

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