Sophia Blanton
Biography
Sophia Blanton is a ritual dancer and mythic scholar. A lifelong wiccan Priestess, she crafts movement practices and theatrical ceremonies that bring the essential wisdom of myths, legends and folktales into fuller embodiment for Priestesses and audiences. She’s created her own unique brand of “Prayerformance” based on the technique and philosophy of Isadora Duncan, but also weaves in folkloric movement tracing Universal patterns through her Balkan ancestry.
Website: https://www.sophiaworldance.com/
Programme
Seizing the Staff of Wisdom – Crafting your Crone Staff and Folkloric Stick Dance
In this two and a half hour workshop, we’ll be inspired by the Staff as a symbol of initiation and inter-generational wisdom-transmission as in folktales like Baba Yaga. I will bring a collection of paint, cloth, ribbons, feathers and hot glue for your use in the staff-making, but encourage you to be creative and bring your own decoration items as well. I will collect sticks and rods of different kinds, but it’s fun to source your own either from town or nature. A great stick to use can be a broomstick or a wooden curtain rod or old cane. Be creative – see what pops out to you while in Glastonbury and let’s have fun with what we create!
We’ll spend the first half of the workshop creating our special Crone Staff, then the second half learning a very simple yet impactful Stick Dance with roots in folkloric dances of the East Mediterranean.