The Russian Dance

[wendyb1063]

THE RUSSIAN DANCE
Florentine iris, black tea, labdanum, patchouli, champaca flower, benzoin, and ambergris.

The Russian Dance is one of my favorite parts of the Nutcracker, and the combination of notes intrigued me.

Wet: Sharply floral, with black tea astringency.

A few minutes later: a little bit of the champaca flower is showing through now.

It's still rather sharp, but is starting to mellow a bit. It is a fairly bold scent, if that makes any sense. I smell the patchouli now a bit; a little bit of an earthy undertone.

I like it, but I'm not sure how often I will wear it.

[Heavenlyrabbit]

The Champaca, Tea and Patchouli are bolstered by the Benzoin/Amberis. The Iris is really just a bit player to my nose.

 

Patchouli and I have a highly problematic relationship but what's in this blend is so very smooth.

 

Could see guys and girls both loving this.

 

This is going to age beautifully.

[boxinghelena]

I had such high hopes for The Russian Dance since it has two of the same components as in Hellion. BUT it smells nothing like it. Something turned to wood on my skin & it smells....well, not pretty. Maybe the labdanum or benzoin. What a major letdown. I do not like this at all. :@&*$!:

~

[ElizabethOSP]

When I saw the notes, I NEEDED THIS! Luckily, the lovely Ahania was doing a decant circle, and I stumbled in and joined!

 

So. This scent is utterly cracking me up. In the imp it's sweet and perfumy and resinous. And there's a familiar smell tugging at me, and I can't place it. On my skin, there's more of that. It's very pretty, and I like it a lot, and I am perplexed by the blend.

 

During early drydown, I'm thinking, "Is that rose? Or what?" And I decide it smells perfumy in a nice way, but maybe it's not a bottle purchase for me.

 

THENNNNnnnn...it finishes drying down and I AM IN LOVE. Beautiful, incensy, and complex. I finally reread the notes and said, "DUH!!! It's CHAMPACA!!! Sometimes I wonder if I burned out too many synapses in my earlier days. Oh well, I just grow new ones as I go. This is a really great scent for me. My wallet is screaming. I can hear it...poor thing. I smell wonderful!!! Oh and on the LONG drydown patchouli quietly comes out to play. LOOOOOVE!!!

Edited December 21, 2010 by ElizabethOSP

[lahdeedah]

Yes. Yes, yes, yes! I've been waiting for this scent. It's the perfect incense-y blend, smokey and evocative. A blue-grey scent that makes me want to sit in a velvet armchair and read Dostoevsky with a Russian Blue curled up in my lap. Drink strong tea while staring out at the snow falling over the city and contemplate the inner workings of the minds of men. This scent does not much evoke the joyful and playful dance of its namesake: it is serious and sober, and that is fine by me.

[crebbsgirl]

On my skin this is slightly sharp, with the tea taking a front seat. The iris is more prevalent in the wet stages as opposed to the drydoen. The patchouli adds an earthy tang, while the champaca adds a sweetness. There's just a hint of vanillin benzoin here. It's smokey and incensey and just plain LOVE!

[Little Bird]

I'm not sure about this scent. I hate it for about the first hour on my skin, but the drydown is rather nice. First on, I get tons of iris and black tea. Iris is one of my most hated floral notes. It goes sharp and perfumey on me, like a bad, chemically, cheap white floral. And the bitterness of the black tea does nothing to soften it.

After about an hour, though, the warm, vanilla-y benzoin and incensey champaca creep in and this starts to smell rather nice. The perfumey sharpness of the iris fades and I catch whiffs of a dry, sweet patchouli. It's nice, but it takes quite a while to make it to its sweeter, more incensey stage on my skin. I'll probably keep my decant and see how this one ages.

[surlygurl]

Hahahaaaa.... I think Little Bird and I are scent opposites! Of all the scents I've tried so far, this is the one that made me *squeeeee!!* silently when it was fresh on, complete with visions of owning a bottle.

 

Florentine Iris! Soooo pretty! Soft & pretty and cool. The champaca (my fave floral note) is right behind it, lending support. Oooh! And there's the tea! I could really like this. I want to smell this way forever. But....what's this? Something dark & sour? Labdanum & patchouli, more than likely. This scent gets darker & more sour as time goes on. It smells like my lovely florals fell in a big vat of sour mud.

 

Eventually, my florals climb out of the sour mud vat, but the smell lingers. Too bad for my pretties.

[filigree_shadow]

Kinda stinging. I think if this had all those notes except iris, I'd like it fine. It's doing this weird thing where it smells powdery, perfumey, and stinging (like almost metallic) all at once.

 

Man, this is just not my day for perfumes. Nothing I've tested today has worked for me.

[GhillieDhu]

This sounded like it could be SO GOOD, but The Russian Dance does weird things on my skin. At first it smells like dry, leafy resinous patchouli, similar to Aureus and Greed. Then it turns into fresh-baked dark rye bread, which I suppose is appropriately Russian, and also is a nice smell, if unexpected. Unfortunately, there's a funky ammonia-ish hint of bathroom smell underneath it that comes out after half an hour. Tea just doesn't like my skin, and I suspect it's inciting one of the resins to bad behavior. Alas.

[Schmoozy]

This has the makings to be a wonderful scent, but the iris and pacthouli are the only notes I can make out and in fact overpower everything else.

[Iceblink]

The Russian Dance is surprisingly fresh-smelling for something with patchouli and all of those other notes in it. The iris is front and center when it's wet. Dry, I'm getting iris and ambergris. Really not picking up on much patchouli here, although I suspect that with age, this blend is probably quite different.

I like what I smell so far. It's perfumey and sophisticated. Will test again, definitely!

[kelpsoda]

wet - strong laudanum and iris. strong and Black smelling. I was hoping the champaca would come out, but it's missing in action. The ambergris (or something else?) gives it a very classic perfume smell - almost leather-y. I don't think I could pull it off, but this would be good for a powerful woman who is dressed to the nines.

 

Whew! this is much too strong - I'm going to have to wash it off.

[milo]

At first, I get kind of a vetiver-like blend, though not as strong as true vetiver. As it dries, it is soft and pretty with a bit of powder. Very feminine. It kind of reminds me of one of the alien blends this summer, I think the Staged Moon Landing. Very nice, I might hunt down a decant at some point for when I wish to smell soft and pretty.

[reynardine]

I keep thinking that patchouli will work on me (my mom is fond of it and I don’t mind it), but for some reason, it goes odd on my skin. But that’s not what ruins Russian Dance for me. It’s the labdanum. That flat, almost metallic smell just turns my stomach. In the future, I need to avoid that note.

[thekittenkat]

In the decant: Tea, patch, benzoin, and the florals.

 

Wet: Tea and the sharpness of the iris.

 

The dry-down: The patch and ambergris appeared to give this a needed depth and earthiness. It is just a little on the sweet side, but floral, not foodie or fruity. The tea is just gorgeous. I was afraid of the iris note, but perhaps florentine iris is not as bad as a regular iris note, and perhaps all the other notes are holding it in check. And they are all note that I love. Surprisingly this might make a good spring-time scent, with the florals and the good earthy notes (not dirt, mind you, just an earthy evocation or effect). I'm delighted and may have to get a bottle.

[porcelina]

at first, this is a dark, strong scent, almost sort of acrid. as it dries, it becomes more resinous and maybe a little musky (the ambergris?). it smells really good in the drying stage. however, by the time it is completely dry on my skin, it smells like stale flowers. damn you, florentine iris.

[ofthegood]

Man, I was so excited about this blend - I love black tea scents and really hoped that this would be magical scent for me. But I never got a whiff of tea, but... patchouli, patchouli, patchouli. It was present in the vial, but just kept developing and lingering during wear, overpowering anything else I was looking for. Definitely a dark blend, and the patchouli makes it earthy. But not the spicy masculine black tea I was expecting, AT ALL.

 

The final lingering smell on my skin was musky, dirty, sour, incense-y patchouli. It was like head shop in a bottle.

[zankoku_zen]

The Russian Dance reminds me to the GC Moscow. It's primarily tea and ambergris with a faint swirl of iris. It also reminds me to the scent of a Lush store, as there is something slightly powdery to me.

 

However, it dries to a musky, patchouli powder. SAD.

[cuervosueno]

I didn't get a bottle of this--I'm not a huge fan of iris and champaca never really works for me, even though I always want to like it.

 

But I was gifted with a decant of it, and it is surprisingly nice....it has a sort of dryness that I associate more with orris than with iris. It's a dry, grey sort of scent that is elegant and sophisticated. The tea isn't nearly as strong as I like in the blend (which for me is true of almost all BPAL tea scents) but is in there, as a hint of tea, like the steam rising from the cup. I don't get much patchouli. The labdanum shows up fairly early on. I've never been able to identify what BPAL's ambergris is like, so I can't say much about that. Ladeedah described it well: it has the feel of sitting in a chair drinking tea, and is definately a grey scent. Surprisingly appealing!

[lilwhiterabbit]

I'm so sad about the Russian Dance. It's nothing but strong acrid black tea, champaca and patchouli on me from the get go and stays that way until it vanishes without a trace less than ten minutes after application. What the hell, skin chemistry? Iris is one of my favorite notes, so I was hoping for a little floral action, and I tend to like tea and incense as long as they aren't overwhelming... I just don't know what happened with this one. It should have worked, but it totally didn't.

[mistressfizz]

Sniff: Earthy, mild. Not a very strong tea note.

 

Wet: Much softer than expected! I can't pick out individual elements, only a dry, earthy overtone with faint flowers.

 

Dry: Late night sitting in a wicker chair outside, clouds from the spring rain rolling above, snow capped mountains behind, and a valley of wildflowers below. Yup. This one has a real sense of place, and of darkness settling over earth and flora.

[edenssixthday]

The Russian Dance - I'm surprised there aren't more reviews, and more positive reviews, for this scent. On me, it's predominantly an iris scent, and it's so pretty in that powdery-floral way that iris has. Very feminine, soft, and pleasant. The ambergris gives it a really nice warmth to it, and honestly, I can't identify the tea, labdanum, patchouli, champaga, benzoin or anything else because the iris really does dominate -- but it doesn't dominate in a dominatrix kind of way, smacking your nose around all over the place. It's very gentle and sweet and lovely. I really like it, and it lasts a nice long time and a little bit goes a long way, so slathering would be a Really Bad Idea. A tiny dab on the back of my wrists keeps me wrapped in scent all day long.

[inurbanus]

I bought this last year in a fit of Yule-binging madness and haven't gotten around to testing it until now. Shame on me! Anyway, I generally like most of the notes in Russian Dance, especially the resin notes. (Mmm, benzoin!) On my wrist, it smells like warm, lightly spiced patchouli sweetened with a little bit of powder from the iris. I really like the version of BPAL patchouli used in this - it's definitely not the "gnarly" patchouli in blends like Goblin and #Occupywallstreet. It blooms beautifully on the skin and makes me think of fresh earth. As a whole, the blend reminds me of some of the old school GC blends, maybe from Ars Amatoria? I can see that this would be a divisive blend - it is a little sharp at the beginning and there are other blends similar to this. In fact, I'm not even sure if I'm going to keep my bottle. But it's definitely wearable and I think those who like the Lab's patchouli blends would do well to check this out.

[theseagrows]

ahh, i have been wanting to try this for years, and i was so looking forward to this, and it is very nice! yet...all the wrong notes seem to amp on me i was really drawn to the iris, tea and champaca, but instead the resins seem to be amping up a lot more. i get a slight pencil-shaving scent, that i often get from bpal's frankincense or sandalwood if used in large quantities. i can't even sense the champaca flower. oh well, i am still glad i got to try this finally!