BROOM DANCE

The many natures of Baba Yaga

Broom Dance backstage

Department of Illumination’s 10th annual Lantern Festival in Picton, Ontario. Photo by Alex Filipe @alexfilipe.photo

Baba Yaga’s house

Photos courtesy of Nicolas Aubrey @zoomstudiomontlaurier

Alison Gowan plays hurdy gurdy for Woman Who Holds Up the Winter Sky

Broom Dance is a shadow puppet show for winter and winter witches, a shadow song for the threshold, for the liminal lace between light and dark, between house and the howling wild, sense and the rest. A luminous bow of song and cut paper to wild dark and to winter night.

Join us as we sweep into the domain of the forest-dwelling crone, Baba Yaga, from Slavic folklore, whose chicken-legged hut is perched on the realm of the otherworld. Into the enchanted kitchen of the gift-giving Italian witch Befana. Through the wild realm of Matka Boska z wilkami, The Divine Mother with Wolves from Polish folklore, who tends to the wolves and protects the flocks of nearby villagers.

The first bones of Broom Dance played at the Department of Illumination’s Firelight Lantern Festival, Picton 2022, and were re-set in 2023 in a week-long residency at MAK Gallery, in partnership with Startup House in Gananoque. In 2024 we developed the show with generous support from the Canada Council for the Arts at the Dirty Paws Living Lab Studio at the Maitland Tower complex on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

Broom Dance continues to tour in Ontario and Quebec.