This beautiful set of 78 oversize (3 1/2" by 5") cards is set in a tarot structure, but doesn't fit any of the "traditional" forms (Marseilles, Waite-Smith, or Crowley-Harris).  "Designed for self-readings," writes Audrey Savage in her introduction to the accompanying substantial (just over 300 pages) book, "these cards can help you to unravel the mysteries of your life and to find the patterns of your unique dance.  This tool is designed to help you move through your daily life with greater flexibility and intention in the areas of your self, your relationships, health, career, finances, and other material concerns."
 
Author Audrey Savage is (or has been) a writer, university and alternative teacher, Gestalt therapist, lecturer, and presenter at tarot workshops and conferences.  Art communicator Paula Frantz is artist in residence at the Indianapolis Marian County Library and is (or has been) an art teacher, storyteller, set designer, and painter of children's faces at Renaissance Fairs.
 
The deck effectively exhibits the illustrator's skill as a visual storyteller.  It is finely and imaginatively drawn, with dramatic use of subject and design to convey meaning.  The colors are rich and vibrant.  The women in the deck are highly individualized, with distinct and intriguing personalities.  I wish I could step into the cards and get to know them all, young, old, and in between, as people!  The young men tend to be more standardized, but the older men share with the women the liveliness of "real" personalities.
 
The cards are printed on sturdy but flexible cardstock and are laminated.  Fronts and backs have a narrow white border, with the card title printed in the bottom border area on the front.  The backs have a reversible pattern using round icons (described below) that represent each of the four minor suits (reversible, that is, if one ignores the "(c) 1999 DOL Inc." in small type in one corner of the back).  The author intends the cards to be used with reversals.  She notes that "excessively negative" readings may result if reversals are avoided, because "cards three through eight or nine in each suit have been deliberately designed to indicate the challenges of the suit."
 
Packaging is one of the very, very few weak points in the set.  Consider a typical tarot package:  a colorful cardboard box containing a book and, set into a plain white cardboard "well" with outer dimensions the same size as the book, a deck of cards.  Now eliminate the outside box and shrink-wrap its contents (the book and, in the cardboard well, the cards) as a unit.  That's how this set is packaged.  Once the shrink-wrap is gone, there's no way (short of tying or rubber-banding the book to the cardboard well) to keep the cards together.  Why didn't the publisher use the cardboard of the "well" to create a box for the cards?  I don't think a box would have used up any more cardboard than the "well" uses.  Sigh.  But then, the artistry of the cards is worth the investment of a card bag!
 
The major cards are the "Major Dance," and are closely related to the standard major arcana, as indicated by the titles below:  VIII and XI are the equivalents of Strength and Justice, respectively.  Each card shows its number as well as its title.
 
0 -- The Free Child
I -- The Guide
II -- The Intuitive
III -- Dancer of Life
IV -- The Patriarch
V -- The Spiritual Teacher
VI -- The Lovers
VII -- The Man of Intention
VIII -- Animal Tamer
IX -- The Wise Woman
X -- The Ring of Life
XI -- The Mirror of Reflection
XII -- The Visionary Spirit
XIII -- Death
XIV -- The Goddess Harmonia
XV -- The Shadow
XVI -- Destruction
XVII -- The Star of Hope
XVIII -- The Underworld
XIX -- Radiance
XX -- Destiny
XXI -- Integrity

The minor cards are the "Minor Dance."  The suits are Self, Relationships, Health, and Money and the Material World, corresponding to Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles.  The correspondences between Cups and Relationships, and between Pentacles and Money and the Material World, are obvious.  The correspondences between Wands and Self, and between Swords and Health, are a little less clear, but I can see them if I think a bit.
 
The court cards are the "Cards of the Inner Temple."  Designated Muse, Dancer, Lover, and Sage, they bear (unless I'm really missing the point) only a surface resemblance to the standard Page, Knight, Queen, and King.  The Dance of Life court designations make it seem as though there SHOULD be a fairly close correspondence with the traditional court designations, but the actual illustrations and card titles don't always follow through closely with the theme implied by the designation.  (The court cards do, however, work very, VERY well in the context of each suit.)

The illustration for each suit card (except the Ace) incorporates the suit's icon, or a variant of the icon, as a minor element and identifier.  The Ace is an enlarged, complex representation of the icon itself.  A number of cards, mostly in the Major Dance, use all four suit icons to convey significant meanings:  The Free Child (the Fool) juggles them, a skeletal Death feeds them into the flames, the Goddess Harmonia (Temperance) pours them from one vessel to another, and Shadow (the Devil) tramples them underfoot (or, to be precise, underhoof).  Set in circular frames, the suit icons are as follows:

There's only one card in the whole deck whose design is at all out of synch with the title and explanation in the book.  The miss is a spectacular one, along with the decidedly odd explanation in the book, in this otherwise highly evocative deck with its enlightening, supportive text.  The card is the Seven of Health (Allergies).  I've shown the card to several people to check my interpretation, and we all agree that it appears to be a peaceful, nighttime scene far out in the wilderness.  An immense meteor streaks across the heavens amid a scattering of brilliant stars, and there's a glorious display of the aurora borealis in shades of green and yellow.  A huge, twinned pine tree is silhouetted against the brilliant sky, with several pines silhouetted in the distance.  The pines are all glowing around their edges.  Looking at the card, one can almost sense the wind carrying the scent of the pines and the soft rustle of their needles while one contemplates the vastness and mystery of the cosmos.

BUT!!!  According to the text, what we're actually seeing is two tall healthy pine trees, with several stunted trees nearby.  "This picture," says the author, "symbolizes the allergic process.  ...[T]he substances that cause allergies are in the air you breathe, the food you eat, the water you drink and in the products you buy and use every day.  And they all cause your health to be stunted, much as these trees are stunted."  After an excellent discussion of allergies and their environmental causes, the author suggests a contemplative exercise:  "On a clear night, go out and look at the stars.  Imagine that each star is a substance you are allergic to.  Imagine what each allergen is doing to your health.  Then go inside and clean out all toxic pollutants from your house, office, apartment, car or garage."  Ahem.  OK, then.  I'll contemplate it now... a clear night away from the city lights, the moon at the full, and the stars in their infinite glory.  And I'm thinking, "There!  That star can be ragweed.  And Orion's Belt... those three stars
stand for my sister's three cats.  And the Milky Way is my dairy allergies, and that hazy little bunch of stars can be city smog on an ozone alert day, and the Big Dipper represents toxic runoff in our water system, and....  And each of these countless stars is pouring the light of its toxins on my body and destroying my health and...."
 
The mind boggles.  I'm willing to shift my perspective (literally) and consider the lesser trees as smaller than, not farther from, the large trees.  With a bit more mental adjusting, I can consider the smaller trees as stunted rather than merely young (even though all the trees have the same "glow" around their edges).  But I just can't (nor do I wish to) cope with the concept of stars as toxic pollutants.  (In the interests of full disclosure, I don't suffer from allergies.  And in the interests of harmonizing the illustration with the title and explanation, I can all too
easily imagine the hidden and/or invisible pollutants that we humans have managed to spread quite thoroughly in even the most pristine-appearing environments.)

Ah, but the other cards resonate with layers of meaning, beautiful or disturbing, and always moving (though sometimes the text's explanation is needed for the full impact):

In the Seven of Money and the Material World (Debt), we are looking up at the night sky from the bottom of a deep hole.  'Nuff said.

The Five of Health (Stress) is a seriously twisted and knotted silk scarf, almost ugly in its resemblance to the knotted-up intestines that accompany
overwhelming stress.

The Six of Health (Addictions) is a stark image of a horned animal skull with tiny red eyes and gaping mouth, moving towards us through shattered pieces of glass that are "the shards of a broken life."

In the powerful Eight of Relationships (Abuse), a pair of simultaneously angry and pain-filled eyes "embedded in a purple and yellow mask-like configuration" looms over a single eye that drips with tears and cringes in pain and fear.  (The author calls the eyes of the abuser "mean and cruel," but I see depths of anguish as well.  And the author reminds us that in ways "blatant or subtle and often... so subtle that we don't recognize it as such," we all engage in abusive behaviors.)
 
The Eight of Self (Rebellion) shows "four golden fish... swimming in the proper direction according to fish rules.  One red fish swims against the tide and goes in the opposite direction.  He is the rebellious one.  He is also much more colorful than the other four, and as fish go, he is quite beautiful."  I love that rebel fish!

In the Lover of Self card (Hero vs. Demon), a woman turns from her walk on a long, winding path to contemplate her companions - a rather inflexible knight in full plate armor (the Hero) and a sneaky, sleek, horned and tailed demon (the Demon) who is trying to trip the knight.  These companions are, respectively, the goal-oriented aspect and resistant aspect of the woman's psyche.  She "knows this little game the two of them play" and must "find a way to help these two characters find a way of working together" because "the three of them must walk down the road together."  This card, although it's a court card, provides an intriguing (and perhaps more realistic?) alternative to the "either/or" choices illustrated in a Marseilles-type Lovers card (which shows a man trying to decide between paths represented by two women).

The Animal Tamer (Strength), stoops down, eyes closed, to offer the icon of her Self to a wolf whose mouth is open to... bite her hand? Or to take the icon?

In the Mirror of Reflection (Justice), we stand behind a woman dressed in a purple robe who holds out the icon of her Self to her image in a full-length mirror - but we can also see that the mirror's image is dressed in white and holds out the icon of Money and the Material World.  Which image is reality?  Or is the truth somewhere between the two?

In a charming twist on the traditional Chariot, the Man of Intention tries to restrain the "unruly horses [who] have obviously overturned his small, colorful chariot, which is broken and stuck in a gully.  The horses... are having a high spirited time of it on the rocks above the man[, who] has a long, loose rein on the horses."  I also like to think of this card as showing a man who, having found a broken chariot and a couple of wild horses, is working with determination to pull these elements together in order to obtain the power to reach his destination.

The Spiritual Teacher (the Hierophant), a stocky, kindly mixture of an old-world Father Christmas and an elderly Orthodox priest, sits in an old stone room on an old stone throne between two old stone pillars.  We see the symbols of many different faiths.  He winks at us with a slight smile on his face because, "he knows that there is more to the spiritual path than he can provide.  He knows that spiritual experience is hard to submit to a dogma, and that each individual must find and follow their own spiritual path to the divine."

The Free Child (the Fool) stands in blissful innocence at the edge of a cliff, eyes closed, juggling the four suit icons - while at the other end of the Fool's Journey, in the Integrity (World) card, an adult flies effortlessly yet purposefully over the lands beyond the cliff's edge.  Oooh!
 
Each card is illustrated in black and white (and shades of gray) in the accompanying book.  In addition to the illustration, the section on each card includes a description of the image; some background information and a general explanation for the card; the card's "symbolic" and "shadow" meanings; an exercise for "meditation, contemplation, and conversation"; and a special exercise to "deep[en] your understanding of [the card's main concept] in you."  For the latter exercise, the author provides a dozen or so unfinished thoughts relating to the card.  Each thought is to be completed by pulling from the deck (without looking) another card, and then noting how that card relates to the unfinished thought.  For example, some of the thoughts given for the Free Child (described in the preceding paragraph) are "my sense of freedom," "the cliff I am close to," "the balls I have in the air," "I am afraid of discovering," and "my leap."  (My leap!  Oooh again!)

A section on spreads follows the sections on the individual cards.  The obligatory one-card spread is made newly intriguing by the author's suggestions for meditating on, and dialoging with, the card's image.  Following traditional three-card and Celtic cross spreads is a seven-card spread whose card positions are, laid out from left to right, Past Experiences, Expectations, Present Situation, Present Influences, Present Attitude, Outcome, and Result.  ("Result" refers to your reaction to the outcome.)  The author suggests using this spread to get a more focused direction after using the Celtic cross spread (with the cards used in the Celtic cross spread set aside so they don't turn up in the follow-up spread).
 The section on spreads finishes off with three new (to me, at least) and fairly complex spreads:  an in-depth "three level spread" of 21 cards that addresses broad patterns of influence and reaction over a lifetime; a 10-card "decision-making spread" that involves laying out the cards in "pro" and "con" columns for the mental, emotional, physical, worldly, and spiritual levels; and a 15-card spread that shows the "direction your life will naturally flow," "possibilities for alternative action," "forces beyond your control," and "assistance in making decision."
 
Between the individual card exercises and the various spreads, the book provides much food for thought and what amounts to an entire course for self-study and inner growth.  The book concludes with an appendix on the Cycle of Life Experience (the psychological theory on which, per the author, the Dance of Life Cards and Book are largely based) and a wide-ranging bibliography (which gives a good bit of insight into the author's mindset).
 
And have I mentioned that the cards are beautiful little works of art?

Images of 21 of the Dance of Life cards can be viewed on the author's website.  The link to the website's home page is www.danceoflife.org.  The direct link to the website page with the images is http://www.danceoflife.org/cards.html.  Click on a thumbnail image to see a larger version of the image and read a related excerpt from the book.  The direct link to the website page with the author's explanation of the purpose of the deck is http://www.danceoflife.org/purpose.html.

The Dance of Life website includes online ordering information for the deck/book set.  However, I obtained my copy at a discount through amazon.com (a discount off the "discounted" price mentioned in the website), and I've seen them in at least one independent shop.
 
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Guest Review Copyright 2000 by Laura Jackson
used with permission
 
THE DANCE OF LIFE CARDS - AN INTIMATE TAROT
Concept and Text by Audrey Savage, Ph.D.; Artwork by Paula Frantz
(Indianapolis, Indiana:  Book Weaver Publishing Company, 2000)
ISBN 0-929698-03-07