Brea

I am very curious about this. I am considering getting a snake (mostly because I like snakes) but I want to know what the history, practicality, experience, etc, is with dancing with snakes.

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adiemus

I thought it was mainly from India, snake charming and all. Personally I don't think I'll be doing it - we have no snakes in NZ (and long may it last!!)

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Moon

One of the members here, Slinks from Autralia, does Amcab style and she sometimes dances with snakes. But she's not on the forum now

s1dur1_sab1tu

There are a few good articles about this on Gilded Serpent and on the web. I did dance with a snake for about a year at a club gig. I had a super nice bull snake (heterogeneous - aka half albino) named LoLo. Some things I found helpful were:

* not wearing any bracelets for the snake to get permanently entrenched in, or scratched on.
* not dancing under a chandelier or ceiling fan for the snake to get interested in.
* don't let them get in your big hair sprayed hair - they can be hard to remove. There's a great story there...
* have a contingency plan if he/she goes down your pants or bra (shakes finger, naughty snake) and head them off early - don't let them go there, it's not very classy.
* know what kind of snake you have because people will ask incessantly what kind of snake is it, is it real, is it alive, etc. I love the 'is it alive' thing, like I'd dance with road kill or something.
* protect your snake from the environment and people, if people insist on petting him/her show them an appropriate place on his body, people tend to go for the head (like a dog) and that's an easy way for them to spook the snake and get bitten. If you don't like the looks of someone it's ok to say 'no touching' or 'not right now, he's had enough' also.
* If you are performing for a short time and don't want the snake to move a lot, you can chill him a bit before the show. I used a doctors bag with a small ice bag on one side and the snake in his little case on the other. Don't chill him too quickly though, that's rough on the snake.
* try to limit your movements where the snake is, imagine how he must feel trying to hold on to something in this odd environment. I used to put mine on my wrist and basically hold it out most of the time (so he didn't get any ideas about a place to hide in my bra), or in front of my body, holding that fairly still, letting my body and other arm do most of the dancing.
* don't imagine that you can train the snake to stay in one spot on your body. even people who have great relationships with their snakes report that this is a crap shoot at best.

I'll try and find those articles for you....

Good luck!

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Ms KittieSparkle www.tulsabellydance.com

s1dur1_sab1tu

Snake Dancing

Maria's Snake Advice for the Gilded Serpent

These seem to have most of what you'll need to know. Also forgot to add, snakes like to bm outside of their cages, so it's good to get them between bms and feeding, if you're performing (aka feed the snake, he has the bm, then it's fairly safe to perform). It's all about the timing. Or also, if you're not sure when his last bm was, you could bring the snake out of the cage prior to performance for a few hours and lessen the chance of an on stage bm.

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Brea

Hi,

Thanks for the links and advice! I am currently in contact with someone who has several snakes for sale, one of which is a blood python. Do you think this type would work, or is it too large/heavy? Are there particular types that are better than others for dancing?

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s1dur1_sab1tu

Well I think it depends on the snake really. The bull snake rates pretty low on social ability, but mine was always really nice. It had been handled a lot by boy scouts/educational groups before I got it.

Some of the exotics I looked at were very heavy....like 50-100 pounds or more. LoLo only weighed about 5-10 pounds at the most. The requirement for that job was a 4-5 foot long snake, according to the boss 'width was not important." tee hee! Anyway lewd jokes aside...I would do a search of breed temperament on the internet.

Heres a quick excerpt from a vet site:

Certain snake species almost always retain a gentle, docile nature when they are raised from infancy(boa constrictors). If fact, a healthy young boa constrictor makes the most suitable pet among the tropical snake species available. Other species (the larger pythons) are unpredictable and tend to be quite pugnacious as they mature, whether or not they are handled frequently. Reticulated and Burmese pythons are especially unpredictable when they are anticipating being fed. Snakes of these types, especially those handled infrequently, become conditioned to associating feeding with human contact and often cannot distinguish the difference between these 2 situations. The small Ball python has the most predictable and even temperament of all of the python species.

- Some species (anacondas) rarely develop temperaments suitable for captivity. Wild-caught adults of all species generally make unsuitable pets because they resist taming. One notable exception to this is the California Rosy boa. Even when obtained as an adult, they usually have a very shy, docile nature.

So there you have it.

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janaki

Sorry Brea, I am not into snakes, there is so much you can do with bellydance. Why you wanna bring in a poor creature into it? IMO, snakes belong in the wild not on the dance floor. It is ok to do little gimmicks and tricks to make your dance interesting but not with animals.

Michelle A

Hi Brea,

I had a ball python for about 10 years, given to us at infancy. He was very hand tame when we held him a lot in his younger years. After my daughter was born he was basically ignored, poor thing, and it did get to the point that I felt nervous sticking my hand in his cage. We finally gave him away.

As far as dancing with them goes, I'm afraid I don't find it that interesting or exotic, most likely due to familiarity to keeping them.

I wonder if the snake actually likes being danced with?

Brea

Hi all,

I wasn't certain about it, so that's why I asked. It seems that there are those in the snake camp and those without. Either way, I still like snakes. I often wonder how they feel about dancing?

Maybe I could dance with a rubber snake. LOL!

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