Hindu celebration will take place March 15 at Aurora Town Square

March 13, 2025 · 0 Comments

Holi – the Hindu Festival of Colours, Love and Spring – will be formally celebrated in Aurora for the first time on March 15 with a special community party in Aurora Town Square.

Events include colour throwing in the outdoor square, free Bollywood dance workshops indoors, a story time hosted by the Aurora Public Library, and some delicious delicacies.

Events begin in the Aurora Public Library’s “living room” space at 10.30 a.m. with a reading of “It’s Holi!” by Sanyukta Mathur.

The party continues in the afternoon at 2 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. with Bollywood Dance demonstrations in the Addison Hall Dance Studios, before concluding outside from 2.45 to 4.40 with the colour festival itself.

“This is the first time we’re doing this,” says Nichole Campsall, Cultural Development Coordinator for the Town of Aurora. “With the opening of Town Square and the dance studio there, we have an instructor who we worked with during the grand opening on Culture Days who ran a couple of Bollywood dance workshops. Just seeing the success of the Bollywood dance workshops that we had and seeing the interest in culture and having this great partner who can actually speak to Holi specifically and the meaning of it, I think it was a great opportunity for us to work together to expose this further in the community.

“With Town Square, we want to build these partnerships within the community and continue to build on that and have more new celebrations and recognizing these certain days. With springtime coming around March break, it’s a great opportunity that we can celebrate with families, with children, and celebrate for those who might already celebrate but also new members of the community who aren’t sure what Holi is about.”

The Bollywood workshops will be hosted by Karishma B, and she says it’s all about the upcoming season, bringing people together, and “filling everyone’s life with a little bit of colour.”

“We have had a lot of white and grey lately,” she says with a laugh, pointing to the latest blast of winter. “Holi is a very popular, significant Hindu festival. I would say especially living in Ontario where we have so much diversity, it is nice to come out and celebrate a new festival that maybe you haven’t before. Once again, it really is a festival of colours, love and spring and bringing people together in celebration so that would be… a big sell. Bring the community together and especially in such a fun way.

“I am really happy we’re once again just living in such a diverse place, really happy we get to not only recognize diversity but celebrate diversity as well, and just really I feel like it has a lot of representation that we are coming together as a community to celebrate this festival and once again, it has been a harsh winter so… I love that this festival brings colour and light back into our lives a little bit.”

For more information, visit aurora.ca/whatson.

By Brock Weir