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From The Loft

For this month's Loft, the Board of Directors are announcing our new membership program and inviting you to make your voice heard through a feedback survey.

Earthdance's New Membership Program!

Earthdance’s nearly forty-year history is one of a dynamic collective, continuously evolving through cycles of building, organizing, and renewing— impacting generations of dancers and seekers all the while. Now, as part of our ongoing renewal process, we are launching a membership program, with an intention to clarify who the community of Earthdance is, and to support the flow of communication and collaboration within it. We hope that this membership program will facilitate engagement, and also help us to gather insights on the needs of the Earthdance community and how to meet them.

Please check out the details of the proposed program, below. Because we want to integrate your ideas on how to make the membership program better, there's a link to a survey at the bottom. We want to hear what you think!

In motion, 

The Earthdance Board of Directors

INTENTIONS:

  1. Clarify: Who is the Earthdance community that Earthdance the institution serves? 
  2. Increase community involvement through:
    1. Structured access to board members & staff through community forums
    2. Participation in Earthdance teams (e.g., ASC, CICO, Fundraising)
    3. Pathway to Joining the Board of Directors
    4. An internal members’ communication channel
  3. Support the stewardship of our facilities and the land
  4. Increase the use of our facilities between events
  5. Grow collective commitment to the longevity of Earthdance
  6. Create a modest additional yearly revenue stream

PROPOSED BENEFITS:

  1. Overnight stays at a reduced rate of $35/per night between events 
  2. Discounted Artist Residencies including:
    1. Studio rental
    2. Use of the farmhouse or dorm kitchen
    3. Accommodation at the gratitude lodge or camping
    4. Use of sauna and quarry
    5. Use of Earthdance audio and video equipment
  3. Drop-in days for jams and other Earthdance events (these will only be available to members once this program begins)
  4. Discounted rental of our studios for personal use
  5. Avenues of participation and feedback; having access to community forums and a dedicated members’ channel on Slack, Whatsapp, or Signal.
  6. Opportunity to form and join different Earthdance teams and committees
  7. Two members-only weekends per year at-cost. These weekends will include: jamming, facilitated feedback and discussion sessions with staff and the Board of Directors, community work projects, famous kitchen dance parties, etc.

PROPOSED REQUIREMENTS:

  1. To become a member, you must meet the following requirements:
    1. You are an adult who has previously attended at least one event at Earthdance 
    2. You want to claim membership in the Earthdance community, that you’re a part of this experiment in creative living that we call Earthdance. We’re asking, Who is Earthdance? By becoming a member, you’re saying, “I am.”
    3. You pay an annual membership fee of $150 (tax deductible). If cost is an issue, up to 50% can be paid off through a work-exchange agreement.
  2. Members are encouraged to attend at least one members-only event each year
  3. When Earthdance asks for input, members are encouraged to lend their thoughtful consideration 
  4. Members support Earthdance’s mission and act as ambassadors for our community in the world
FEEDBACK SURVEY
 
News & Updates
 

Farewell To Our Longtime Bookkeeper Emily Cavin!

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

Black History Month Artist Residency - Call For Applications

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.

MORE INFO
 
Upcoming Programming
 
ContaKids: Free Classes for Parents and Kids
Saturday, February 8th, 2025 at 10:30am

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.

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Grieving Ourselves Whole: Exploration of Grief Through Embodiment, Song, and Ritual with Chaya Leia Aronson and Charlotte Althea Collins
Thursday, February 27th - Sunday, March 2nd, 2025

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.

MORE INFO
SAVE THE DATE: Spring Jam!
April 3rd - 6th, 2025

Spring Jam registration coming soon!

MORE INFO
Contact Improvisation & Somatic Approaches Applied Therapeutically with Aaron Brandes and Gabrielle Revlock – REGISTER NOW!
April 10th - 13th, 2025

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.

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Skimming the Surface: A Movement Healing Retreat with Valerie Green – REGISTER NOW!
May 2nd - 4th, 2025

“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. 

MORE INFO
SAVE THE DATE – Being With: The Axis Syllabus with Claire Turner Reid and Kerwin Barrington – Registration Coming Soon!
May 15th - 19th, 2025

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.

MORE INFO
Dancing the Landscape Week Workshop with Frieda Kipar Bay and Dana Iova-Koga – REGISTER NOW!
May 23rd - 29th, 2025

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.  

MORE INFO
Second Sunday Of The Month Jams at Earthdance

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

MORE INFO
 
Save The Date
 
SAVE THE DATE: July 4th Jam!
June 28th - July 5th, 2025
SAVE THE DATE: Falling Leaves Jam!
October 16th - 19th, 2025
SAVE THE DATE: New Year’s Jam!
December 27th, 2025 - January 1st, 2026
 

This month's photo montage captures our first iteration of our Spiral & Root CI training!

 
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EARTHDANCE
252 Prospect St., Plainfield, MA 01070
(413) 634-5678
contact@earthdance.net

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Title

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.

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