Offerings

Let me invite you to a workshop on dialogue in touch. I would like to propose you a journey through elements of contact, and free and forced mobilizations within the safe ground of consent. We will start in the body and then research to intensify our ability to perceive, feel and be in deep dialogue with self and the other. I am interested in the conversation occurring on the level of sub-conscious and primal human ability to produce and receive before verbalizing or even conceptualizing. That way the class is an excuse for an intimate meeting with yourself and other people on the level rarely experienced in daily life. I can promise you a time of beauty and intensity…

Portals of Negativity involve a traditional practice from the Kogi people (Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia) that cultivates the co-creation and mutual work with Aluna, the Great Mother. Through meditation and breath, we experience our human (and bodily) ability to transform negativity (any force that doesn’t serve us or the world) into life force, love and gratitude, returning it back to Sé Nenulang, the Earth. You are welcome to participate or observe during the daily ritual. (ca. 15 minutes every morning) .

I am inviting you to discover the world of conscious flogging where we will explore the relationship between you and the power of the flogger, you and your partner, and the space ”in between” in which magics happen, if you dare to enter. Let’s have a close look how a direct impact on the body can deepen our body awareness, and how breath, movement and sound can enhance the bodily sensations as well as to intensify the flow of energy in the body. (Nudity Optional).

What does your mouth mean to you? How much are you aware of it? Do you use its full potential? Can you imagine your life without it? In this workshop we first engage in a discussion and then dive into the mouth/jaw exploration. We will be looking at various faculties such significant body entrance and exit point has to offer, relaxation techniques, bitting, sucking, and dragging.

In these first sessions of the festival we intend to give us as a community the chance to share a vocabulary in CI technique and a toolkit for boundaries and consent to have a base to explore and play with. My part in this will be preparing a juicy cocktail of Contact principles and tools for enjoying this amazing danceform together throughout the festival and beyond. It might be flavoured with some ingredients from acting and NVC (non-violent communication) to give us more skills and freedom to express and enjoy together.

Playfight
In this system I combined my desire for intensity and dynamic play from martial arts with the awareness and softness of Contact Improvisation. From 25 years of experience in different martial arts forms (Judo, Aikido, Kickboxing, Boxing and Muay Thai) and Playfighting I created many exercises, which also enable fewer sportive people to explore and enjoy their warrior energy in a safe environment. Since 2011 I’ve been offering this work countless times in workshops and festival settings all over the globe and the reactions never were less than enthusiastic. One side effect of this work is replacing old stereotypes of violent conflicts (or even trauma) with a joyful and playful togetherness, to experience intensity with presence and respect. Enjoy the opportunity to integrate this powerful aspect of being human!

We spend some precious time together. Within that timeframe I want to plant some seeds that will grow in different directions, depending from wich angle each one of us illuminates them. During the past years in my movement research I found a lot inspiring material. Some of it made me wonder, shiver, ecstatic, excited and feel very rich. I believe that every pleasure has it´s unique timing. There might be ways of moving together that we find joyful right now but a big turn off if we try it again tomorrow or with another partner. During our class I will suggest bodywork and Contact Improvisation material that connect the world of dance and erotic playgrounds. Within a clear suggestion I will always offer a range of pathways to tryout different intensity and intention. So we can always decide how far we want to go inbetween pure CI dance, eroric and BDSMish play. I encourage us to stay curious. What do I actually enjoy – right now? Can I find pleasure in a place I did not expect? Be prepared to play with your comfort zones. Be ready to say Yes and No. Be ready to explore what you want – right now.

 The Liquid Love Experience is a collective journey of the senses.

It is an exploration of sensuality in its purest form and can invoke a strong feeling of love for oneself, one’s community and for life itself! Through the use of copious amounts of our liquid love potion (e.g. organic olive oil, coconut oil or similar substitutes) we are, for a while, able to eliminate friction from our lives allowing for incredibly smooth flowing encounters with ourselves and others. The concept is simple: we pour warm, fine, neutral oil on to your skin, from where it will spread over your whole body and form a lubricious substance, which allows you to engage in flowing skin to skin contact and float in a sea together with other oily bodies. Everyone is invited to respect their own rhythm and limits to touch and nudity. Allow yourself to be moved without intentions or sexual orientation. Be present with erotic sensations and thoughts but rather than act on them, relax into the energetic flow of the bodies around you. This is a place where you can love and be loved in an impersonal and unbound manner and above all a place to super charge your soul.

Rediscovering and developing an erotic relationship to ourselves and others, exploring our innermost intimate needs in the process of deep listening and consent, are vitally important and can be truly liberating. What happens when we extend this exploration of deep listening, presence and consent to non-human interactions? Are we invaders who penetrate with little regard for nature’s needs or do we sense our way in, opening up and adapting? How do we sense the needs of our surrounding environment when explicit verbal communication isn’t available? Through simple excercises of embodied presence, in movement or in stillness, we will delve deeper into human-to-nature nature-to-human love-making, meeting the trees, shrubs, grass, soil and creatures we come across along the way. Come prepared to meet the elements.

You, me, my camera: a threesome; or more. But surely by erotic photography you mean porn??? Pornography is a loaded term, originally describing art which depicts prostitutes – a 19th century concept from a time when a person allowing another to view them naked in a sexualised context was considered a whore. Are you ready to discard this notion? Contemporary society has become obsessed with covering nipples and genitalia as if there hides the root of all evil. Let’s celebrate our raw nakedness, tender and powerful, vulnerable and beautiful. Between being seen and feeling shame lies a universe of discovery. How do we navigate the two, the desire to be seen with the threat of rejection? We will explore indoors and outdoors. Scheduling sessions in solos or in groups.

I want to offer you a journey into our constantly moving breathing body. Based on the wisdom of the Cranio Sacral system, we will explore the moving liquids in our body. The Cranio Sacral rythms are connected to a profound impulse of life starting in the watery home of the womb, expanding and contracting us throughout our entire life. Allowing our body to sink into a state of deep relaxation, we will allow biodynamic reactions to release tension and free ourself from limitations. This allows us to explore natural movements that appear, find back to the natural flow of our body system and gain more freedom on many levels. After diving into our own system in a phase of solo exploration, we will invite a listening quality of touch and sensing each others fluid bodys in movement. Connecting to the pure life energy we can dive into a group journey of liquid bodies. The Breath of Life can be integrative and deep, sensitive and nourishing, connecting us to the source of life and the experience of coming home in a tribal gathering what started out as a watery existence in the warm embrace of the womb of our mothers. Qualities to be found and experienced in this workshop – feedback of participants “no wanting but simply being”, “a deep state of listening”, “no words, no mind”, “nourishment in touch and connection”, “feeling safe and home in a shared movement exploration”.

We are only able connect to others in an free and authentic way when we are deeply connected to ourselves. In this workshop we explore where and how we feel different emotions in our bodies. Do we feel it? Is there any numbness, pain, vibration? This is where we bring our awareness to and listen to the story our body tells us. What do I like? What are my bodies desires? How can we find peace and pleasure in our bodies? We explore all of this alone or in partner exercises through dance and movement as well as through a witnessed mind-body dialogue, inspired by authentic movement. We are stripping off the layers of society labels and discover who we are without them to show up as our true selves in order to attract the connections we really want to have in our lives. .

” The Singing and Sounding together will attune our hearts to the group heart and the heart of the moment.

The Vibration of our Voices will support us ground in our centre and in the circle to get ready for the day.

The Circle Songs I’m going share with you are coming out of different traditions and backgrounds: Sufi, Yogic, Shamanic,

Indian, African, Rainbow, South American, German – all with the intention to bring healing and love into the present moment

and to open up the quality of listening with all of our cells.”

The multidimensional pathways to and with joy in CI Dance are saturated with insight and learning which is why its depth to me, is endless.
This workshop aims for two treasures:
1. To provide for some dance tools that feel juicy and enabling to further play with the form
2. To open up curiosity and the inner scientist for the subtle pleasure that underlies every single move that we make with our dancing bodies: alone and in touch.
There will be some time to connect to our oldest intimate dance partner: the floor. We will release and melt into it, move with other dance partners and alone, roll, enjoy compression, go with and in counter directions, share weight and playtime and dance with the pull of gravity and outer space weightlessness!

In this workshop we shall reflect upon the role of male allies. How can women and other genders feel heard, respected, and supported by men? How can men feel like they are actively fighting against sexism? We shall be discussing and exploring practical tools to embody inclusive feminism. This workshop invites people of all genders to come together to work towards deconstructing patriarchal attitudes and to develop greater care and understanding.

This workshop is a laboratory of human rewilding. How can we move away from preconceived ideas and judgments about physical appearance, gender differences, or sensory hierarchy? How can we retrieve some of our more basic instincts and primal sensations? Through a slow exploration of senses that are not those used most frequently in our culture, we shall endeavour to change our perception of other individuals. Our ultimate goal is not mere sensation, but authentic connection. The space we hold is intended to be one of experimentation and vulnerability that empowers us to connect with each other as well as with ourselves as playful human animals. We aspire to witness, embody, and celebrate the beauty of human diversity.

Some of the most transfixing images from cinema, history books or performance art show women losing their shit – or finding another state of mind – in obsession, hysteria, ecstasy. This workshop will be a tribute to the aesthetic qualities of these twilight zones, like the subway scene from Andrzej Żuławskis “Possession”, photographies of the contortions of the hysterics from Charcot’s Salpêtrière, myths of eerie witches or phantasma of exorcistic rituals. We will investigate the often neglected grotesque, slimy, monstrous, weird elements of eros. Acknowledging, that we might have trained to have the perfect seductive bedroom-look, but it could be more rewarding to allow ourselves to go into (supposedly) ugly grimacing. Together we will hold the space for you to let it out, pose strangely, swear, drool, speak in tongues, scream demonically and NOT be the soft, neat and quiet female* that is usually the only version society accepts, so we can all say “This is horrible! Please don’t stop!”
Drawing inspiration from Butoh dance, exhaustion work, Grotowski method and horror movies, we will share our wishes, phantasies and ideas to create little scenes of freakouts and breakdowns for everyone who wants to tap into the powerful sources of the psychotic womxn.

Se+positive spaces have their archetypes: the caretaker, the clown, the seducer… and those who make us cringe with their inappropriate shoulder rubs, sharing too much information, staring – but then avoiding eye contact, their aura of neediness, greediness, of both self-righteousness and uncertainty. What happens if we don’t complain about and avoid them, but see them as a fascinating part of the party, a reminder of our own awkwardness, a chance to empathize and an inspiration for play?

We want to question prejudices and look for more creative ways to deal with creepiness, by unfolding our own weirdo and using awkwardness as an open source and a possible turn-on. Couldn’t it be excitingly intimate to follow one person around, fall into childlike begging for closeness to the unreachable or approaching a creep confidently to either find something for our own pleasure or to confront them about their unsettling behavior?

Let’s understand what exactly freaks us out and how we can communicate with people perceived as troubling. Let’s question why behaving ’normal‘ should be more desirable and ask, how dealing with what gives us the chills can make us feel stronger, honest and empowered.