The Long Dance: Selected Lyrics

By Lars-Erik Emers and Witching Hour Theater

Every woman in this book had a grandmother who taught her something specific: how to fold a cotton tignon, how to set salt in a circle, how to read a kettle, how to keep the door open at three a.m. for whoever needed it. Some of those grandmothers were named after saints. Some kept names the family did not say aloud. None of them shrink to fit.

The Long Dance gathers thirty lyrics from the Witching Hour Theater music catalog - five women across five world traditions (Caribbean, Korean, Carpathian, Louisiana, urban Brooklyn), the elders who taught them, and the young ones they are teaching now. Selections come from seven concept albums and are arranged by motif: the hilltop gathering, the grandmother line, the hour of three a.m., the call that pulls a woman home, the four words that hold the practice across continents, the reckoning, and the hour each becomes the elder.

Light editorial scaffolding opens the world to readers new to it; long-time listeners will find the lyrics laid out for reading in ways the music has not let them be read before.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H3ZG42R1
• ISBN13: 9798199300049
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 130 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"