Another lower-half accessory crafted for the troupe’s use in our performance at a Celtic Belly-dance Fusion show earlier this month. Part kilt, part high-slit bella skirt, this apron brings Egypt to Ireland in a way that feels very punk-rock apocalypse to me. The design is a simple two-13-inch-wide-pleated-panels secured together with long ties at the hips. The brass medallion with chains is framed by a pentagon, mimicked on the back, to give the skirt additional interest, volume, and weight. Pattern drafted by me.
The apocalypse is very in right now; everyday we’re bombarded in fiction media and in the news with stories of the end, that the end is near, that the end is will take all, that the end will be glorious, that the end will be horrific. If we are the end, if there’s nothing after us, it justifies our exploitation of the earth and of each other. If we are the end, who cares what’s next. We won’t be there to see it. If we are the end, what’s there to miss?
That idea is romantic, and gives our lives the easy significance of the last lives before the end. It also relieves us of any responsibility to look forward or to progress. A guilty pleasure, then. Perhaps the apocalypse is so compelling because we never know when our personal ending will come. Stories about the end of everything are a way for us to all share in, and take comfort in, a collective demise, instead of facing our own mortality every day.
