In the series, participants will be invited to encounter, embody, and engage the witch not simply as a metaphor or archetype, but as an affecting presence—a catalyzing force that haunts and moves through us, transforming the body into a site of enchantment, resistance, and ritual power. I view this work in part as an applied form of ‘Ghostly Practice’ where we seek out those spectral affecting aspects of the witch that haunt our personal and collective cultural memory and re-member the witch as a transformative force itself that can be experienced and engaged with as/through haunting within a ritual container.
Rooted in my ongoing dissertation research, these workshops will unfold as guided ritual gatherings that seek and summon the witch’s force into performance. Each session revolves around a theme and invites participants to engage the witch in The Witch’s Dance through modalities that may include becoming and unbecoming, activating and witnessing, conjuring and releasing, dreaming, reviving and revisioning. Drawing from techniques in modern Western witchcraft, ritual dramaturgy, dance, and somatic practice, my goal is to create and discover the conditions for and means of access into experiences of enchantment and embodied power through guided journeys of intuitive movement and collective ritual acts that engage deeply with the witch’s transformative force.