“Five, six, seven, eight. Get ready. Hold your broom.”
This is what participants in Frenchtown’s annual Witches Dance hear before beginning their performance. On Oct. 25, a group of 165 women came together in witchy attire to perform a dance routine at riverside Sunbeam Lenape Park in Frenchtown, N.J.
Tricia Hurley is an event organizer and in charge of dance instruction. The choreography for the Witches Dance originated from the German group Wolfshäger Hexenbrut.
“[Wolfshäger Hexenbrut’s] video of this dance went viral, and about six or seven years ago, a group of witches in Pennsylvania asked me to learn it,” Hurley said. “I learned the choreography and changed it a little bit so that it was easy to teach. We started doing it here in Frenchtown, and it grows every year.”
The large group dance that Hurley described was the final act of the show. Prior to it, a smaller subset of the witches performed solos, duets, and small group dances. Kora Kinney danced in a few of the opening numbers and feels that the Witches Dance is emblematic of both the town and her youth.
“It’s been going on for so many years,” Kora Kinney said. “I’ve been doing it since I was like five. It really feels like so much community and so much love. It’s so weird, but so fun. That’s kind of what Frenchtown’s all about.”
Participants and organizers believe there is a greater sentiment behind the Witches Dance than initially meets the eye.
“One, it’s just the community coming together to dance and enjoy this time of year,” Hurley said. “[It’s also] women coming together to be their unique selves.”
Kelly Kinney is another dance instructor and performer, and she feels that the Witches Dance is a message about womanhood.
“The spirit of the witches dance is all about community and reverence and remembering that women are freaking magical,” Kelly Kinney said. “There have been many women that had to come before us so that we can live the lives that we live today, and we need to remember that during the fun times of Halloween and during the fun times of a witches dance.”
For the witches, this event is an opportunity to bring the community together while making a feminist statement. The dance functions as a form of peaceful protest and allows the audience to leave with a deeper message to ponder.
“[We’re] showing up to the community and doing what we’re calling, a new form of AARP, which stands for Artistic Activist Ritual Performance,” Kelly Kinney said. “It’s our way of showing up for what we do believe in and what we do stand for without exhausting ourselves and instead creating art.”
