Dear Earthdancers -

Thanks so much for the lovely time spent having lunch together on my last day as ECLP Bookkeeper. Thanks to Kale for the lunch itself, and All of you for the sweet card and gifts, and for coming together around the table with me. I thought of an important highlight that I didn't remember to name when responding to DJ's question about high and low lights from the past seven-plus years. And that would be participating in just a few Earthdance events when I wasn't putting in my hours as Bookkeeper.

Notably - one or two workshops – an Authentic Movement weekend with Shakti Sadeh and Sue Schell, and "Moving the Environment" with Danny Lepkoff, (who was one of my first Contact Improv teachers in NYC.) I also remember sharing songs and poetry at Earthdance Arts Nights and showing up while on "Staycation" during COVID one evening for a late Summer, outdoor, Second Sunday Jam featuring music by Amanda Turk, a percussionist whose music I have loved in my travels well beyond Earthdance. Not to mention - sneaking into Studio Three after work to practice my Tai Chi Sword form (which I plan to continue doing...and Thanks also for your encouragement to do so).

For me, one of the most unique and wonderful things Earthdance has to offer are the dance studios surrounded and held by what we sometimes refer to in Earthspirit circles as “The Wild.” And the beautiful, moving, creations that come into being in those spaces. I think this is the “highlight” that draws many to Earthdance, and keeps folks coming back. May there be many more beautiful happenings in the Earthdance studio spaces. I hope to participate in some of those happenings, even if only occasionally, as I leave behind the community’s bookkeeping needs. Very Best Wishes to Earthdance, and all who maintain a connection in any way.

Emily Cavin / Bookkeeper

In honor and celebration of February’s Black History Month, Earthdance annually offers two free week-long residencies to two selected black dance-based artists. This annual program is part of our commitment to equity & access and one of the ways we are using our unique resources to further the careers and artistic development of black dance-based artists.

Applications for 2025 are now open. Please click here for more info and to apply.

During our upcoming Teachers’ Training taking place at Earthdance, we will be offering 2 free classes for parents and kids guided by the founder of the method, Itay Yatuv.

ContaKids is a unique and fun activity for parents and their children (age 2 to 5). Through playfulness, movement and touch parents and children develop a new physical form of communication, which is enjoyable for both; children enhance and improve their motor skills and self-confidence and parents develop a sense of trust in their child and themselves.

We invite you to join us for three days and nights of tending the sacred waters of our emotions, through ritual, movement, and song. We gather at Earthdance, a beloved place to many and has become home to a lineage of ever-evolving grief work.

Coming together to move, sing, and feel has great power to connect us more deeply to our wholeness and purpose, opening the door to the unique and necessary ways our Soul can contribute to healing on this planet.

Spring Jam registration coming soon!

This workshop delves into the therapeutic potential of Contact Improvisation (CI), Authentic Movement (AM), and Restorative Contact (RC), as well as other somatic practices. Drawing from our unique career pathways combining movement, choreography, fascial bodywork, psychotherapy, and evidence-based mindfulness practices, we have developed therapeutic material that articulates safety, empathy, mutuality and agency through movement, touch, and verbal processing.

This workshop welcomes therapists, bodyworkers, and individuals interested in personal healing and wellbeing to explore these transformative practices.

“Skimming the Surface” Movement Healing Retreat will support adults that may be overcoming diverse forms of stress and trauma through somatic based expressive movement exercises. These workshops will help participants release blocked and repressed energy causing stress or discomfort in one’s life by integrating movement, feelings, and emotions. 

Offerings will integrate creative movement, improvisation, body reading, energy and breath work, body/mind embodiment and consciousness exercises, shamanic journeying, somatic experiencing, parts work, use of voice, free writing prompts, intuition and Core Energetics. 

With information from the Axis Syllabus© we’ll call in clear choice-making, physical readiness, and enlivened awareness. We’ll play and engage through rhythm, collective groove, unison, spontaneity, variation, and heart perception as ways to connect with the varied knowledge our bodies hold. There will be motifs and movement sequences, meditative scores, guided improvisations, reflection and journaling, and collective mapping. Join us as we delve into ways of calling forth the wisdom of the body through shared dance experiences.

What is The Axis Syllabus?
The Axis Syllabus© is a collection of information pertinent to the human body in motion. This information can be applied to any context of movement. It is an effort towards empowered self-sovereignty and informed choice-making with our bodies. Begun by Frey Faust, with contributions from members of the Axis Syllabus Research Meshwork, the information is reviewed and updated based on emerging, evolving understanding and research related to the moving body.

In this immersive workshop we ask the question- what happens when we consider this relationship as a dance? How do we dance a landscape? How are we danced by a landscape? In the flush of early summer we will work indoors and out, drawing from our primary movement sources of Qigong and Butoh dance, Body Weather, Fighting Monkey, and Contact Improvisation. We will also become intimate with some of the plants, geology, and animals of the Earthdance landscape through animal track and sign, plant identification, and land stewardship tasks.  We will expand upon the many definitions of “landscape” (physical, internal, psychosocial, geological, political); we will explore the role of time, rhythm and cadence within our dance, and we will traverse the spectrum of practical to poetic implications of what it means to dance and be danced by our landscapes.  

The long-time tradition of weekly Sunday CI Jams has returned! Come for a class beforehand, or just for the jam. Stay for the sauna and potluck dinner! Registration not required. 

Class: 5:00 – 6:30pm (rotating teachers)

Potluck: 6:30 – 7:30pm

Jam: 7:30 – 10:00pm

Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia.