The Wind Dancer is a holodeck character in Cost of Living, a clown-like face floating in a bubble who guards the entrance to the Parallax colony on Shiralea VI.
The Wind Dancer appears in the fifth-season episode Cost of Living. Lwaxana Troi, unhappy about her coming marriage to the stiff Minister Campio, takes young Alexander Rozhenko to a holodeck recreation of a colony of free spirits, artists and performers.
At the gate floats the Wind Dancer, a painted head inside a drifting bubble, who admits only those whose hearts are joyous and turns away the solemn. Lwaxana and Alexander pass easily; later visitors such as Worf and Deanna Troi get a cooler reception.
Inside are a juggler, a fire sculptor, a poet and the mud baths where Lwaxana teaches Alexander her philosophy of pleasing oneself, lessons that end with her arriving at her own wedding in traditional Betazoid undress.