It’s a Wednesday night in Seneca Falls, and a group of women prepares for another busy weekend of performances. In a few days, they’ll don pointy hats, grab their broomsticks and dance into their roles as modern-day witches. But they aren’t just dancing for spectacle —- they’re raising awareness.
The Witches of the Water’s Edge, a volunteer dance troupe that started recruiting members in March, uses performance, community and creative expression to establish visibility, support and raise money for survivors of domestic violence.
While similar ‘dancing witch’ groups exist elsewhere in New York, co-founders Jes Sherwood, Keri Heyde, LouAnne Leddy and Debbie Koch established the troupe after they noticed there was little-to-no presence in the Finger Lakes region.
“There was kind of a void between Auburn and [the] Rochester, Buffalo area,” Sherwood said. “One of our girls was in Seneca Falls, and we were like, ‘let’s get something going out here!’”
The group joins a worldwide network of dance troupes inspired by the German Wolfshäger Hexenbrut witch dance. While some groups exist primarily for entertainment, the Witches of the Water’s Edge chose to center their efforts around philanthropy.
“We perform at festivals, parades [and] different events at different venues. We dance and we collect donations, and we take those and we donate them to charity,” Sherwood said.
Their chosen charity is Safe Harbors of the Finger Lakes, a nonprofit organization that provides free, confidential services to survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse and human trafficking in Ontario, Seneca, and Yates counties.
Safe Harbors executive director Marisa Przepiora said the collaboration has helped them reach more people throughout the community.
“This partnership has already spread so much awareness about our agency and our services, and we’ve received so much feedback about them,” Przepiora said. “It’s allowing us the visibility that we need, so people know there’s an agency out there [where] they can reach out for help, for free.”
Since launching the troupe, Sherwood said the community response has been astoundingly positive.
“We’ve had venues and event coordinators contacting us, wanting us to come dance at their events,” she said.
The group has 14 active members and a nearly-full performance schedule through Halloween. The mission, Sherwood said, holds a large significance for many of its members.
“With domestic violence being our cause, we tend to draw in the women that have been affected by that directly or indirectly, so there’s a lot of shared experience there,” Sherwood said. “It’s kind of a place where we all feel safe to be vulnerable with each other.”
Sarah Smolinski, who joined the group in March, is one of those women. Although she had not danced much since childhood, Smolinski said she was drawn in after seeing similar groups perform and learning that a new chapter was forming in Seneca Falls.
“I was super, super excited,” she said. “Jess and Keri have amazing personalities and are just so empowering of women that I was like, ‘Oh, I could really do this.’”
The organization’s charitable cause resonates deeply with Smolinski’s personal life as well. She owns Ashia’s Closet, a thrift store in Seneca Falls that supports domestic violence initiatives and honors Ashia Gray, a local woman who was killed in an act of domestic violence in 2020.
“My mission is domestic violence and being able to give back to that community,” Smolinski said. “Being with a group of women that have the same mission is just really neat.”
The most engaging part of the group, Smolinski said, has been the overwhelming feeling of community and female support.
“Once you join it, you’re part of the family,” she said. “It’s a great way to meet people and hang out with some pretty powerful women.”
This sense of community extends beyond the troupe itself. Przepiora said organizations like the Witches of the Water’s Edge help bring conversations about domestic violence into public spaces, reminding community members that these issues affect people in every town and neighborhood.
“When people start to learn that [those] in their own lives are experiencing these issues, it opens their eyes,” Przepiora said. “A lot of people think ‘that’s not me, that’s not my people, that’s not my community’ — but it really is.”
And for survivors, those connections can be an important part of healing.
“When the community surrounds a survivor, they can draw strength from that,” she continued, “and I believe it’s incredibly important in their healing journey from trauma.” facebook.com/watersedgewitches
Kalysta Donaghy-Robinson is a multimedia journalist and writer based in Upstate New York covering arts, culture and community-focused stories.
