Baba Yaga comes home to roost with ‘Cold Hard Chicken Legs’

Baba Yaga lives deep in the woods, residing in a house perched atop a pair of chicken legs. This can make tracking her down difficult, since she’s always on the move. Adding to the challenge, anyone seeking Baba Yaga can never be sure what kind of help she might provide, since her nature is ambiguous, her actions driven by a person’s motives and overall being.

“So, even when she does appear, how she treats you depends on the values that you show her,” said Witchlab founder Tiffany Boggins, who first discovered the Slavic folk tale of Baba Yaga five or six years ago while researching different deities and mythological figures, recalling how she was immediately struck by the visual of a house on chicken legs. “If you go to her asking for help, but you’re generally lazy and you don’t want to do things for yourself, she’s a trickster and she can be pretty mean. But if you show her that you are brave and you’re not afraid of hard work, then she can be good to you, and she can actually pass along wisdom.”

Owing to this fickle nature, Baba Yaga tends to be a last resort for the desperate – a reality heightened by her nightmare-inducing appearance, which routinely scares away would-be suitors. While depictions vary, Boggins said she is often described as bony and haggard, with a long nose and a ferocious set of iron teeth. This is also why Baba Yaga tends to be celebrated in the harshest months of the year, when temperatures begin to plummet and even the weather feels more dire.

“We were talking about a winter show, and Baba Yaga is always one of my favorite things to do when it gets cold. … December is usually really tough, but this sort of embraces that toughness,” said Boggins, who will stage the AJ Vanderelli-curated “Cold Hard Chicken Legs” in the Witchlab Lounge beginning with an opening reception at 5 p.m. today (Friday, Dec. 6). In addition to paintings and sculptures by more than a dozen artists – many of which depict various houses on chicken legs (a hut, teetering Victorian mansions, and, in one instance, Barbie’s Dreamhouse) – there will also be a musical performance by Risk Kishk and a reading from Boggins, who intends to share “spooky, cool things about [Baba Yaga] that give me chills.” 

For centuries, Boggins said, Baba Yaga operated as one of the lesser-known mythical figures, owing to a combination of factors, such as her existence “outside of the pagan world” from which many of the more popular deities arise. But in recent times, she has experienced something of a resurgence, appearing as the subject of multiple books, including Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles by Taisia Kitaiskaia. (She also served as one point of inspiration for “Howl’s Moving Castle,” popularized in the 2004 film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.)

Asked if part of the rise in interest could stem from the harsh realities of the last four or five years, which have included, among other things, an attempted presidential coup and a global pandemic that kept many of us isolated from one another for months on end, Boggins wouldn’t discount it.

“I was thinking about that on the drive here, actually, and about the relevance of it with how we’re feeling after the election, and how we could use some scary help on our side,” said Boggins, whose decades-long interest in all things witchcraft has continued to deepen from the time she first stumbled into a witch-themed shop on a family vacation at age 15. “I think we’re definitely at the point where we could use some deep, dark wisdom on our side. And we need to be willing to go into the deep, dark woods in order to find it.”