Dancing in the dark

ANCIENT pagan celebrations warm the heart of a modern city.

Winter Solstice

IT helps to have a big bonfire going if you fancy dancing half-naked, outside, in the middle of winter.

It helps, too, to have the driving beats of African drumming ensemble Spankinhide, and the company of other like-minded souls. At Northey Street City Farm in Brisbane, all these things came together at last year’s winter solstice celebrations.

For those with pagan leanings, the winter solstice – which happens this year at 3.16am (AEST) on Wednesday – is a powerful moment of renewal, of new beginnings. For others it simply marks the shortest day of the year, when we can breathe a little sigh of relief at having turned the corner, so to speak, even if the coldest weeks are still to come.

It’s always an excuse for a party at Northey Street City Farm. The members of this community project do a remarkable thing: they grow their own food in the heart of the city, on a 4ha patch of land that was horribly degraded when they started back in 1994, but is now a thriving green oasis. What’s more, they do it organically and sustainably. (They preach what they practise, too, hosting school visits and offering courses in permaculture.)

Photographer Marisol Da Silva does her food shopping every Sunday morning at the farm’s popular organic market. It’s not just the produce she appreciates, but the satisfaction of supporting the farmers directly, and the sense of community. “There’s always lots of people and chatter, and breakfast cooking... I prefer that to a fluoro-drenched supermarket any day,” she says.

Da Silva does a bit of twirling around the fire at the solstice celebrations, too – albeit with her camera in her hand. It’s strange to think of such a primal ritual happening in the middle of a big, cosmopolitan city. But then, these people know that they have the sun to thank for their food. The bonfire dancing, she says, is “a homage to warmth and light at the darkest time of the year”.