Welcome to our upcoming event, Everything, Everywhere, All at Dance, where the dance floor is truly utilized as a microcosm of life, and where the Contact Improv, Fusion, Ecstatic Dance and sex/kink positive communities can all play in the same space.
The day kicks off with six hours of immersive somatic-based workshops led by a variety of experienced practitioners. These workshops offer a unique opportunity to engage with your body, mind, and spirit in deep and meaningful ways.
Join us for an evening of playful expression, in-depth explorations, and community-building as you indulge in your discovery process and uncover new pathways on the dance floor together.
Contact-Fusion: Exploring Self, Other, and the Collective
We’ll build a foundation together, learning how to stay connected to the self, other, and the collective, as it’s easy to lose ourselves in being able to hold each of these connections at the same time. We will also delve into some of the fundamentals of Contact Improv and Fusion, with a focus on attunement and slowing down.
Then we’ll traverse the intersection of Contact Improv and Fusion dance, which can actually feel fluid and not clunky like some folx experience when trying to merge the two. So even if you’re new to either form of dance, you’ll be able to explore where these two different forms of dance meet.
We will also discover the possibilities of what a 4-person partner dance can feel like through the structure and form of Fusion, as well as the fluidity of Contact Improv.
This workshop is intended to set the tone and container for the rest of the event, starting to build connections with others and learning some fundamentals for those new to any of these dance forms.
Rope Dance: Contact, Tension and Polarity
Rope Dance is an embodied practice of merging contact improvisational dance and rope. It’s a practice full of exploration, playfulness, curiosity, creativity, spontaneity and possibilities.
Contact improv can help to enhance your embodied presence and connection in rope scenes. It is also great for learning body mechanics and the ways you can manipulate other bodies, or be manipulated. Sometimes Rope Dance ends up looking like a two way rope scene, where the roles can switch back and forth or merge into one, playing with both control and surrender through movement with yourself and another.
The first half of the workshop will be exercises on the fundamentals of contact improv, first learning to follow and explore your own movements (connection with self). Before moving into paired exercises (connection with other), we’ll discuss navigating boundaries and consent both verbally and non-verbally. The second half will move through exercises that introduce rope into the dance. This can transition into an open dance after the workshop where participants can continue to play and explore on the dance floor.
* There is no need for experience with either contact improv or rope to join this workshop! This is a complete beginners workshop and can be a lovely introduction to how it feels to play with rope in both roles while learning the fundamentals of contact improv.
* Loaner rope is available for the workshop, but feel free to bring your favorite 15-20 footer.
* Wear a long sleeve shirt if you are concerned about the rope irritating your arms.
One Rope Play: Finding Freedom through Restraint
One Rope Play is a practice of rope bondage that as you guessed, involves one rope. It is a beautiful foundation for both rope beginners and an approach that highly experienced riggers find to help deepen their practice. It’s a way to get out of your head about tying knots, focus on the connection and following intuition/impulses in the moment.
Though the practice doesn’t need to involve any knots, you’ll learn a single column tie that you can integrate into the practice and is a foundational tie for complete beginners to rope. You’ll learn how to manipulate someone’s body and support them into positions that feel safe, secure and a sense of being held, to allow for letting go and surrendering. You’ll get to experience both roles, being the one creating the experience and the one receiving.
This will be a partnered practice that you will do the entire playshop with so you can come with someone or create that trust/rapport through attending the Rope Dance portion beforehand or some of the exercises in the first portion of the class before the last portion of the workshop that is more intimate.
All rope will be provided for the playshop.
Dancing with Erotic Nobility
Erotic Nobility is an embodied state harmonizing sensuality, passion and seduction with humility, grace and dignity. So what could it look like to nest inside a culture that collectively aspires to this healthy balance?
Together we will explore ways to steward our erotic energy on and off the dance floor and within our communities in ways that foster both pleasure and safety. We will explore the importance of self-love and emotional clarity, the impact of power and privilege, and practice attuning to the difference between what pulling vs radiating energetics feels like.
Through somatic inquiry, dyadic council, embodiment games & partner dance, we will realign ourselves towards congruence with our values & intentions and play within our integrity and devotion to Eros. Join us for an exploration into Erotic Nobility to enrich & empower the pleasure and safety within our dance community.
Sensual Wrestling: Unlocking Play, Pleasure & Power
There is a smoldering erotic power within each of us….a strong primal life-force energy that is yearning to be fully unleashed…asking you to revel in your own magnificence…to dominate and to be dominated, safely and consensually.
Join us animals as we explore and unlock the realms of Play, Pleasure, and Power. You will be guided into practices where you’ll embody earth’s elements, take tasks that we do everyday and transform them into exercises that will highlight archetypes that we may not otherwise play with or find pleasure in.
Sometimes, we’ll experience it strongly, in big and expansive ways…
And other times, it’ll be more subtle and soft. And if we can listen, we’ll be moved in deep and profound ways…
Together as community, as we move as one and as individuals, joyfully pushing up against others as they giddily push back, discovering desires through movement and connected touch with others as we wrestle sensually into the night…
After a full day of workshops, exploring new pathways to play on the dance floor we’ll collectively create a container to dive into what’s possible when everything is welcome on the dance floor. Inviting in connection, attunement, playfulness, silly absurdity, all the feels, spirituality (some other word?), raw primal energy, sensual sauciness and whatever else arises in the dance.
Be, Maya Light and Elliot Katz will lead an opening circle to set the container, leading some exercises to create connections and building trust. We’ll clarify some intentions for how we can all play together in ways that are inclusive, attuned and have communication tools for how to invite others into dances. Including how we can be aware of and respect the approaches and culture norms that differ between different dance communities.
One way we’ll be creating clarity on the dance floor of what people are desiring in relation to others is we’ll have one very large circle of white rope and black rope on the ground. By dancing in the black circle, you’re indicating you’d like to dance alone and not be approached. Something that feels has been lacking in the Ecstatic Dance community where some people (particularly female bodied folx) get tired of having to state a boundary of not wanting to have a contact dance, over and over. By stepping into the white circle, you’re saying that you’re open to the possibility of being more intimate, sensual and maybe even sexy in your dance. Outside of the circles will be normal approaches to inviting a partner dance, whether it’s through a direct verbal ask or a slowly moving into a contact improv dance through mirroring and non-verbal cues.
Be
Be (pronoun Be) is passionate about the intersection of embodied movement/dance, sensuality/sexuality and kink/BDSM. Be loves creating safe(r) spaces for play, exploration, growth and healing as a means of becoming more fully who we are.
Be has been creating these spaces for the last 15 years in the Bay Area through classes and events, always pushing the envelope of what’s possible to explore. From a range of 2nd base events, Womxn in Charge, Bi/Pan Playful, Dripping Womxn and classes/playshops such as Intro to Kink, G-spot ejaculation, Rope Dance, One Rope Play, Contactsage, Acrosage and Aquaprov.
Be brings 20 years of experience as a bodyworker that shows up through an embodied calming/nurturing presence. Along with 8 years of Somatica training for a deeper understanding of sex, intimacy and relationships.
www.Kink.Coach and www.RopePlay.Dance
Maya Light
Maya Light is deeply enamored with the realm of creative expression, supporting others to access and explore the full range of this human experience. As an international DJ, she has adeptly honed the craft of weaving soundscapes for over 8 years, captivated by the tangible conversation she experienced on the dance floor.
She then delved into the art of curating intimate spaces, wholeheartedly embracing the transformative power of group fields as catalysts for unraveling and growth.
She also studied embodied anatomy at the School of Body Mind Centering, where she delved into a yin form of body work emphasizing safety and deep co-regulation, enriching her understanding of the interconnectedness of mind and body. Creating spaces to unlock and seamlessly integrate new pathways is her biggest passion.
Maya Light
Elliot Katz
Elliot Katz, coFounder of the Pulse Partner Dance Collective, has been hooked on Fusion partner dancing for over a decade. As creator of Showing Up Trustworthy and The Masculinities Dialogue, Elliot offers awareness and attunement to the human dynamics of power, consent and desire that play out in all our relations. Elliot views the dance floor as a mirror of our inner lives and brings passion and playfulness to create containers of safety and exploration.
After 20 years learning through a sociological lens and over a decade in the Men’s Work and Initiations circles, he sees how the suppression, control and shame of our erotic lived experience is a core wound that emanates out in all levels of harm. He continues to devote himself to where widespread cultural healing is needed at the intersection of patriarchal masculinity, sexual repression / violence, and personal embodiment.
Fruit
Fruit (they/them) is an Identity Exploration Specialist — both personally a crusader for expansion, playfulness, and expression through creativity, and as a champion and inspiration for others to do the same. Fruit embraces multiple mediums, roles, projects, and versions of themself and funnels their experience into their facilitation.
Their experience is grounded deeply in dance, yoga, and identity play through the lens of fashion. They started facilitating personal growth and development in 2019 and are now stepping into facilitating that in ways that are closer to their heart in the realms of attunement, embodiment, connection, somatics, kink, intimacy, and play.
Fruit
Jason Rich
Jason is a creature that champions receiving the wide range of sensations which life evokes. With 23+ years of deepening into his bodywork practice he pulls from a wide range of modalities in order to be with and help facilitate the movement of the different nuances of what people wrestle with inside of themselves.
With a multifaceted passion for holistic wellness and self-exploration, Jason is deeply immersed in the transformative practices of yoga and dance, finding solace and self-expression in their fluid movements and spiritual depths. He indulges in the art of massage and wrestling, embracing touch and physicality as vehicles for both relaxation and intense engagement. Beyond the body, understanding archetypes and being fascinated by the symbolic language of the psyche and its reflection in the human experience is a driving force for him.
