20 - 25 February 2024 (Retreat)
25-28 February (Integration days)
dive into the experience
OFFERINGS
Discover the proposals for the coming edition
INTENSIVES
Thresholds
offered by Pilar Echavarria
Thresholds are the limits of sensory capacities. The magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or manifest.
During the last Touch&Play, I felt the incredible creative potential awakened by the Exploratorium, imagining creating an entire festival with a focus on performance and creation.
In a space that invites us to be free in our sexual expression, we can choose what to do with this energy. Sexual energy and creative energy come from the same source. And in my experience, when we allow sexual energy to move in our bodies, we can channel it into familiar languages of sexuality/sex, or we can stay there, in a state of listening and presence, inhabiting ourselves on that threshold, in that liminal space, to create something new…
I believe that’s where the magic can unfold.
This is an invitation to a process of authentic creation, through the exploration of the body in ‘dance states,’ to bring it toward a piece of art that opens you and others to a raw exhibition of flesh, form, and earthly circumstances: A performance, a poem, a dinner, a ritual, an installation, a painting, a video…
Dance as meditation, as a field of inquiry into Being, as the acknowledgment of the multiplicity and singularity that I am, as an act of liberation and pleasure; as the possibility of plunging into the abyss. To find intimacy with oneself, with mystery, with other bodies, to discover and create new relationships with objects, with space, with the stories we tell ourselves.
An invitation to be magicians, mad ones, priestesses, witches, whores, queers, to be death, the devil, an angel, or a child. To create worlds, open dimensions, give a key, to encounter others from vulnerability, innocence, mischief. To dare to play, inhabit ourselves as wild beings, breathe art.
A journey to include the infinite of Being, with the support and expansion of nature and waters; using tools and scores of: Contact Improvisation, Butoh, Dance and Resonances of Water, Authentic Movement, Somatic Arts, Ecosexual Explorations, Wonderland Rituals, Breathing Practices, Self-inquiry and Meditations, Dance States…*
From Sacred Intimacy to our Animal Body
offered by Ximena Velasco
This class is an invitation for travelling into a journey of discovery, making room for connecting with our feeling body, breaking limits that are imposed from social behaviour.
We will be exploring ways of Arriving to ourselves, cultivating Presence, developing a stronger sense of Embodiment, inhabiting our inner space, our symbolic universe, our senses, our primal land that is our Body, inviting our Animal side, non domesticated self to come out and play.
In this work I will be sharing a combination of tools for connecting deeply with your uniqueness and your creativity. We will explore together somatic touch, voice and sounds, contact improvisation, authentic movement, weaving sacredness with craziness, respect with playfulness, sexuality with care, freedom with responsibility, intimacy with wildness. We will be working with the individual as well as the collective and exploring the bridges in between.
Our Nature: Sauvage
from the Latin root Forest
offered by Marie Murray
Biodiversity is being in bounty- dissolving a static anthropomorphic lens by way of the composting heap of a regenerative mycelial network of cycles of birth, death & rejuvenation. We will become the compost heap and melt into the mystic heart of oneness with one another and our surroundings, playing with ever evolving recognition of desires, boundaries, and form/formlessness.
Nature is inherently queer- untamable by any binary decree of sanctioned separation. During Our Nature: Sauvage, we are called into and by the earth to somatically explore the philosophical tickles of our curiosities- if something is in our nature, what is out of our nature, and how does this relate to “as within, so without” Hermetic Principle?
A central mechanism of colonialism globally has been to delegitimatize indigenous co-creative relationality with the elements and land. Cutting the tree at the roots creates a mentality of separation between earth source and human life. This zeitgeist severely limits the connection and potential of weaving with the wonders of a web, simplified to something like stumbling on a strait line. Through embodiment exercises we will explore the savage, a word derived from the Latin root for forest. The journey of this workshop will be a return to the origins of the forest, an honoring of inherent interconnection and sensation. Together- let us rediscover to reweave a stitch in time with the web of wonder and wildness.
This exploration will revolve around meditations with the tree of life, group trance rituals, elemental embodiment exercises, predator/prey play and activations of sacral chakra and throat chakra sonic expressions of savagery.
SINGLE CLASSES
Cultivating Presence and Letting Go: A Tantric Approach
offered by Kaviar Dragón
Embodied tantric exercises, to explore +/- polarity in different forms, all as a way to deepen our access to yin and yang qualities within us.
Here we explore how it is to emit and to receive, and give tools to expand awareness of both in and out of a container, and how this can benefit us in love and in life.
Somatic Grief Ritual
offered by Leela Kelley
Through this Somatic Grief Ritual, we will give our bodies, spirits, hearts, and minds the time, space, and support to release, move, and transmute our grief. When we grieve together, we create more space and capacity for joy and celebration. When we honor our grief, we open the door to love and gratitude. This ritual container will be anchored in body awareness, movement, prayer, and community connection.
RITUALS and other ARTISTIC PROPOSALS
Moist
offered by Gerardo
An artistic exploration of the connection with other beings and other bodies through the sensation of feeling merged with others. Leaving behind the “I” to become a “we”.
Contact improv night
Kink night
Performances
Exploratorium
Touch&Play Jam
Dance your life
Underscore
The Oracle
Community offerings
Ecstatic Dance by Malaika Darville
Sold out
More about the OFFERINGS
In a span of six days we’ll be offering the space and frame to play and discover within the foundations of the Touch&Play Project.
We will be collectively cultivating the space to dance, discover and connect within the framework of the Touch&Play culture.
There will be a variety of facilitated classes around (the edges of) Contact Improvisation, Movement, Consent & Communication, Self-Exploration, Sensuality & Sexuality, BDSM, Nature&Wilderness, Community and Spirituality.
Also we’ll make sure there are free slots which allow time to breath, integrate, connect further or which might be space for some voluntary community offerings.
We like to keep a certain flexibility in structure for needs that arise out of the group process, such as discussions, rituals, singing circles, jams and additional creative content.
Our time together begins with an opening circle ritual and cultivating a community of care through our consent framework.
After starting together in a daily morning ritual, each morning we will have the opportunity to take one intensive and going deep with the same facilitator and group.
The afternoons will hold single classes, community offerings, ritual, and spaciousness to rest, play and integrate.
Evenings are full of dance, play and exploration.
INTENSIVES: an Intensive Class is taught most every morning of the retreat. Each participant signs up for only one. Although we will try, we can not ensure you will be part of you first choice. Intensive offerings run parallel so you will be part of only one group.
SINGLE CLASSES: different Single classes happen in the afternoon and you can spontaneously choose a class you would like to join.
Together, we will collectively cultivate a space for dance, discovery and connection, all within the rich framework of the Touch&Play culture.
Touch&Play is alive. The organisers reserve the right to change or make adjustments to the schedule or teaching team at any given time and with short notice. Thank you for your understanding.
Founded in 2009 the Touch&Play Project has a rich background in facilitating and creating different fusions/compositions of learning spaces around the exploration of the “Relational Body“. Through it’s structures (e.g. soothe&care, peace council) it offers a safer container to invite our emotions, sexualities, body politics and power dynamics into dance and relating. Core values are inclusivity, authenticity, physicality, embodied consent, sex-positivity, bdsm-friendliness and community building.