Exploring Winter Traditions of Ukraine

🌿experience a seasonal ceremony

🌿learn traditional songs

🌿sample traditional foods

Warm up in the lantern-lit sanctuary of Secret Headquarters where we’ll sip warm tea and learn about the Ukrainian winter celebration Koliada. Musician and storyteller Beverly Dobrinsky will explain the cultural aspects of traditional clothing, food, songs, stories and rituals that mark the mysterious time of winter darkness. She’ll help us prepare for the Winter Solstice by sharing personal stories and recipes, and she’ll teach songs representing the different times of the winter cycle, including a koliadka (Christmas carol) and a shchedrivka (New Year’s carol) sung during Malanka, the Ukrainian New Year festivities. We’ll explore myths such as spider magic and goat prophecy that originated in ancient villages, and there will be surprises!

●     Tickets are available by sliding scale: $30-$50. Suggested admission: $35. 

●     Doors open at 6:30 PM and the event will start promptly at 7:00 PM. Please do your best to be on time as late arrivals will be disruptive to activities in progress.

●      Space is limited to 30 participants so please register early.

●     Beverly will bring a traditional kolach (festive bread) and either kutia or piroshky. If you are so moved, please bring some fruit to share. 

●    Please feel free to wear vyshyvanky (embroidered shirt, dress or scarf) or other beautiful adornments.

●    Your donation contributes directly to supporting our programming to continue ongoing learning and cultural sharing. We thank you for your support. If you have financial barriers preventing you from purchasing a ticket, please email and we will do our best to accommodate.

Fascilitator Bio:

Beverly Dobrinsky is a Vancouver musician and storyteller who works both as a soloist and in various artistic collaborations. In 1991, inspired by the centenary of Ukrainian immigration to Canada, she founded “Zeellia”, a Slavic Soul sextet which specializes in E. European traditional music with a contemporary edge. She produced three Zeellia CDs, and performed with Zeellia across Canada and in NY city. She was the musical director of the Barvinok Choir, a choir based in Vancouver’s historic Ukrainian Hall from 2001-2022. In 2009 she was the artist in residence at the Carnegie Community Centre in Vancouver’s downtown east side and led “The Carnegie Village Project,” a community engaged project using song, poetry and story to express the uniqueness of that particular community. Over the years, she has been involved in several projects with Vancouver Moving Theatre, including “Bread and Salt” in 2013, and the evolving “Big House” from 2009-2015. She is currently working on creating a podcast series—Finding My Own Voice— a legacy project which allows her to look back at the arc of her career as a musician and storyteller; and in so doing honour ancestors, family and community who have supported her along the way. In this series, she will be examining her own process of uncovering and divesting colonial expectations and inviting other artists to present their work and discuss their own process of colonial divestment and cultural retrieval.

Secret Headquarters is gratefully situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honor, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Host or Publisher Secret Lantern Society