Fall & Winter 2022-23

Looking back at this past season in Ceremony:

Highlights this past season included working with Community Deathcare Ottawa, a Winter Dance Ceremony, and Gaia Sacred Circle Dancers' inaugural monthly dance. 

Barbara Carter and I brought Sacred Circle Dance to Community Deathcare Ottawa's Riverside Grief Gathering at Strathcona Park last October.  Participants moved from station to station, taking part in a progression of practices/activities lead by different practitioners designed to support them in accessing and being with any grief they felt ready to engage with.

Image: Me with the beautiful Grief Gathering Altar participants danced around throughout the afternoon.

Image: Ancestor Reverence Altar, including an offering of soul cakes

In addition to collaborating on a Samhain dance Ceremony in Ottawa in early November, at home I created my own personal altar to honour my ancestors of blood, who mainly come from Scotland, England and Ireland.

We offered our final (Winter Solstice) Dance Ceremony of 2022 on December 17 at the Rosemount Hall in Ottawa, with the intention: dancing to traditional themes associated with this time of year, starting and ending with Peace.  We all dressed in white to celebrate the return of the Light after the longest night of the year.  Our dances moved us through a process of bringing our energies together, celebrating our traditions and the Light, and then deepening into a sense of Peace that we then left with.

Image: Me at our central altar a few minutes before our dancers arrived

Image: Barbara Carter, Inspired Choreographer & Sacred Circle Dance Leader, instructing the group at Rosemount Hall, Ottawa while I played photographer

The newly founded Gaia Sacred Circle Dancers held their first monthly dance in January with 'Dance in All Its Diversity':  A Sampling of Circle Dances From Around the World.  We experienced a smorgasbord of sounds, rhythms, and cultural flavours.