Sailor's dances

Sailors on the Sea of Jars are noted for their tradition of performing collective dances. The tradition dates back several centuries and is of interest to thaumatologists because of its widely-supposed link with the worship of Zargyod, the pre-Wesmodian god of luck, metals and the sea.

Performance

Context

Sailors perform a variety of dances in a variety of contexts, though until relatively recently the intention was never to entertain onlookers. Only a few dances, most of them short solitary measures, were performed on land, with large collaborative dances performed aboard ship, almost always out of sight of land, often scores of miles from any spectators who might have seen them. Some researchers have gone so far as to speculate that the large dances, or the existence of a set canon of them, was in fact something of a professional secret among the sailors in the pre-Wesmodian era, a cultural tradition not shared with outsiders, although there is very little direct evidence that any actual secrecy was practised. Passengers on ships regularly observe sailors perfoming these dances without concern at being watched, for example. The appropriate times for large group dances simply tended to be those when there are few outsiders about.
Since the Wesmodian Reformation the prevalence of sailor's dances has waned considerably and few captains or ship's masters particularly encourage them. That said, they are rarely actively discouraged and a number of dances remain a part of the institutional culture of the sailors of the Sea of Jars, and most sailors know their parts in at least a few such recitals. In some cities, notably the northern outposts of Oluz and Halumay, the dances are esteemed as part of maritime culture, and the Commercial Guilds of those settlements sometimes host recitals of them in that spirit. In others, by contrast, the dances are seen as tasteless and uncouth; the people of Chogyos, a city effectively run by the Guilds, tend to regard them as actively vulgar.

Measures

Sailor's dances were, and remain, a heterogeneous tradition, with the same names sometimes used to describe wholly distinct combinations of steps and motions on different ships. A few broad commonalities can be observed, however. These dances typically involve extensive use of the limbs rather than gyrations of the torso, with the arms and legs moved through a series of semi-standardised positions. The result is often a rhythmic hopping motion as the dancer alternates which leg he is moving to one of these positions and the one he is standing on. These motions generally involve very specific numbers of dancers performing in precise unison, often in a line abreast or a file (sometimes alternating between the two), with unison maintained via music, typically performed on metal pipes by a supernumerary accompanist or (less commonly) songs sung by both the dancers and their colleagues in the broader crew.

Thaumatological significance

Zargyod, the god of luck and the sea, was the subject of a distinct pre-Wesmodian cult among sailors and it is widely supposed among scholars who study these matters that these dances derive from some form of worship of the god. Exactly how this worship might have worked is unclear as the oral culture of the sailors has progressed to the stage that no very clear cultural memory of the practice appears to have survived. The theory is that particular dances were performed to pursue the favour of the god at important times in the voyage. It is within the bounds of possibility that these dances were intended to manipulate the laws of probability around a ship by courting the favour of Zargyod, so this is a potentially fertile area of research.
Some scholars in the field have begun planning or even undertaking fieldwork on the matter, though no published research has yet resulted from this work. Ezynon Moronyad, a thaumatologist famed for his long-running efforts to catalogue maritime folksongs and folk music, is vocally dismissive of the study of the dances, which has discouraged some less experienced scholars from pursuing the matter.
One notion that is gaining traction in the general conversation is that these dances might be productively combined with those associated with the worship of Ajqyod, Zargyod's fiery brother. Those dances are - for certain values of the term - better-documented than sailor's dances and the notion of grafting one tradition onto the other, either for magical effect or as a way of filling in gaps in the knowledge of both - is an intriguing possibility.