Trisha McBride is a lady of endless energy. Her many talents include designing jewelry, clothing and costumes, choreographing and performing in a variety of dance styles, practicing and teaching yoga and even fronting experimental musical projects. This year at Craft Lake City, she will be performing with her belly dance troupe, Lunar Collective, as well as selling some home-crafted goodies at her booth. “Every July, it’s lockdown time,” McBride says of her preparations for the fest. “Craft Lake City has become a fun dedication for me.”

McBride has participated in CLC for the past three years, ever since she returned to SLC after spending some time living in New York. “There were craft fairs like this happening [in Brooklyn] … but this is Utah! We are the craft masters of the universe!” she says of our homegrown craft extravaganza. This year, she is preparing to present a small collection of fall fashions, including capelets and skirts, as well as some of her staple favorites, like bloomers and hoodie dresses. She has accessories and trinkets to decorate yourself by day or bolder pieces for a performance by night. It was while living in New York that she was inspired to teach herself how to sew. Now her goals include hitting up Fashion Week in Ghana. She admires the designers there because they are still making it all by hand, rather than sending it off to factories to be made by foreign children. “If [a piece] has been made properly, you can feel it,” she says.

McBride also has a special performance planned for the entertainment part of the DIY craft fest. “[This year], I’m putting a lot of energy into the performance piece,” she says. McBride created the choreography inspired by Athenian playwright Euripides’ ancient Greek tragedy, “The Bacchae.” Lunar Collective, which consists of McBride and her duet partner, Kelly Brown, will be joined by over a dozen other dancers to perform the piece. If you are familiar with the tragic play, the idea of 20 or so women performing McBride’s interpretation of “The Return of the Bacchae,” as she lovingly dubbed it, might just scare the shit out of you. The Bacchae that Euripides wrote about are raving, drunken, dancing women who are driven to this state of frenzy by the God Dionysus, the central figure in the tragedy. The story gets pretty gory, decapitation and all, so the interpretation is sure to be captivating, and maybe even a bit disturbing. If you’re familiar with Trisha McBride, you know that she wouldn’t do it any other way. “I’ve had this piece in mind for five years, and it took the right women to come along and make it happen,” she says. The piece is her brainchild, but the collaboration with her dancers is important to her. They spent time together making their costumes, drinking wine and preparing to wreak beautiful havoc all over the CLC festival grounds.