Of all my duties as Restrained Elegance Resident slavegirl, this was the most unexpected. Hywel directed me to make up a slave dance, incorporating the new positions I was supposed to be learning. It was also meant be be beautiful and elegant, displaying my body in as refined and submissive a way as possible. 'Be the embodiment of Restrained Elegance' wrote Hywel in his instructions. I thought managing THAT might take a while!

I loved choreography when I was a dancer, but that was a while ago, and making up a dance from scratch challenged me in a way I wasn't used to. I liked the idea of the dance being slow and ritualistic, the way I could imagine a geisha or a harem-slave performing for an invited audience. Although it was meant to be a dance of submission, I really didn't want to spend the whole time crawling round on the floor; I wanted it to be dignified, formal, but hopefully still sexy.

It took ages. For three weeks I practiced at every opportunity - planning refinements and rehearsing them. Wearing my high slave-collar certainly made progress harder, I developed bruises under my chin from forgetting the collar was there and being over-ambitious with tossing my head around! At first the dance seemed too modest - I didn't want it to be vulgar but I added a more suggestive ending, which I hoped would be better.

And at last, it was time to perform it on camera, and to hope it measured up to the high standards a Restrained Elegance slavegirl is supposed to aim for. Hywel was watching, and I hoped he'd appreciate the amount of barefoot sole display I'd worked into the dance! My pride demanded that the dance would be deemed acceptable, and I hoped he wouldn't punish me when I'd worked on it for so long. He didn't - what he DID do was far worse!

Ariel