Exploring Winter Traditions of Ukraine

In this seasonal gathering we’ll learn about Ukrainian winter rituals and their meaning with musician and storyteller Beverly Dobrinsky.

🌿experience a seasonal ceremony

🌿learn a traditional song

🌿sample traditional foods

Event Description

Musician and storyteller Beverly Dobrinsky will take you into the mysterious time of winter darkness and explain the cultural aspects of her ancestral winter traditions. She’ll help us prepare for the long cold nights through exploration of Ukrainian myths such as the ‘spider magic’ that decorates the Yalynka (Christmas tree), and the Malanka ritual of ‘goat prophecy’ that brings great abundance for the coming year.

Beverly will share her own familial stories and teach songs representative of the different times of the winter cycle: one koliadka (Christmas carol) and one shchedrivka (New Year’s carol) sung during Malanka, the Ukrainian New Year festivities.

Please join us in the lantern-lit sanctuary of Secret Headquarters to sip hot tea, sample tasty Ukrainian snacks, and learn about these unique traditions!

Event Notes / Be Prepared:

● Tickets are available by sliding scale: $25-$40. Suggested admission: $30.

● Doors open at 7:15 PM and the event will start promptly at 7:30 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 homemade kutia (ground nuts and apples). 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. If you have financial barriers preventing you from purchasing a ticket, please email and we will do our best to accommodate. We thank you for your support!

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 composing a “folk opera”—Finding My Own Voice— a legacy project which tells the story of inter-generational trauma and the possibility of healing. It is a very personal story which features the relationship with her grandmother and how she comes to realize how her Baba’s hardship and trauma has affected her descendants profoundly. With this realization comes a determination to untie this traumatic knot and release both her grandmother and herself, and her entire lineage, past, present and future, for all time. It is ultimately a tale of cultural retrieval, reclamation and healing.

Facilitator Website Link:   

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.

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