Alliance of International Production Houses

Both archetypal female figures, “the witch” and “the maid”, are two poles of the same misogynistic matrix – despised and feared at the same time. In a solemn and sly incantation, “Magic Maids” demystifies the many ways in which the history of European witch-hunts intertwines with global networks of care work and the exploitation of the colonised female body. International artists Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera have collected the literally unheard stories of care workers in the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, the echoes of which now haunt their bodies. “Magic Maids” is both a ritual and a dance performance: by embodying the ambivalent female figures, the dancers pledge themselves and the audience to fighting against the invisibility of care work and structures that despise women. In an evening of dance, magic and struggle, the broom no longer symbolises oppression, but feminist resistance.