(File photo/paNOW Staff)

By Nick Nielsen

Performances start Sept 20

Re-live Prince Albert’s Snake Dances through Live History at the museum

Sep 4, 2025 | 10:26 AM

A unique way to experience the history of Prince Albert is coming to town on September 20. For the second time, the Prince Albert Historical Museum is working with Live History to bring Prince Albert residents a chance to relive the ‘snake dances’ that used to take place in the city from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Live History is a performing company that travels the world performing plays written about the community they are performing in. Instead of using a stage, their shows are performed in different locations such as the Prince Albert Historical Museum, and they bring the audience into the show so they can actually live out the history they are watching.

Curator with the P.A. Historical Society, Michelle Taylor, said that they chose the snake dances as their theme for the show because they wanted the chance to let people re-live a piece of history that is a little more modern than what they normally showcase.

“We wanted to do something that was in more recent memory because our museum, like a lot of museums, focuses on the really old history of our community. I’m not that old and a lot of our membership grew up in that time period. We wanted to be able to share those kinds of memories with the younger people in our city and just to show that a museum is definitely more than the 1900’s and the war era stuff. We want to bring in younger individuals to keep showing that museums progress in time periods too.”

Siwash sweaters were popular at the Snake Dance in 1961. (Photo Bill Smiley Archives, PAHS)

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With the show set to happen in about two weeks, the writing process has already begun. Helping co-ordinate the show is an interesting process, according to Taylor, who had to start working on it nearly a year ago just to make sure the show would be ready on time.

“When you do the shows, we set up the initial conversation, decide what show we’re going to do, and then about six to eight months before the show, they send out a questionnaire with all of the pertinent information that they may use in the play. So that would be like the theme and who were the major people in the in the city or involved in those events, and why that event was so important to the community.”

For those that have never seen or even heard of the snake dance, it’s something high school students in the city used to take part in around Halloween. Students would gather in separate locations around the city before coming together, ‘snaking’ through the streets of the city before coming together at one of the schools for a dance.

“It won’t be a true snake dance, so we won’t be winding through the streets or anything. The Live History production itself will be based in the historical museum, so I’m not sure if they’ll snake throughout the building, but it is here, so we’re just keeping it close.”

As to what roles members of the audience will be both observing and performing as part of the show, Taylor said Live History is keeping the show fairly quiet.

“I believe the Live History people will be like the major players in the city at that time, so it could be the Chief of Police, it could be the mayor, the school principals, the SLC leadership, that kind of thing, and they all weave together with some local history in a canned production that has some sort of mystery surrounding it.”

The show itself is running twice, first at 2:00 p.m. on September 20, and then again at 7:00 p.m. the same day. Tickets are on sale now for $50 at the Prince Albert Historical Museum, and because of the interactive nature of the show, only 25 tickets are available per show.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com