Queering CI & Embodying Queer Joy
In this year’s Queer Jam, we’ll explore what it’s like to center Queer Joy, liberate ourselves, our bodies, and our relationships from supremacist narratives, and investigate what it means to queer contact improvisation. Let us infuse queer joy into our bodies and our dances as we dismantle the confines of limiting heteronormative conditioning.
Bring your joy, your grief, your pleasure, your play, your curiosities, your quietness, your loudness, your tenderness and your fierceness. All skill levels are welcome!
During this jam, we aim to create a trauma-informed, anti-racist, and liberatory container in which to explore CI, somatics, co-regulation, deep listening, play, prayer, ritual, song, and reciprocity with the land.
Jam Details
- Attendance: An average of 15 – 40 people will attend this jam and is open to all movement levels & backgrounds.
- Jam Options: Full Jam. And, a Saturday Drop-In (Only if you have been to Earthdance Before).
- Newcomers: If you have never been to Earthdance, we ask that you only sign up for the Full Jam. This will allow us to better welcome and orient you to Earthdance.
Our Fees Explained
Earthdance offers a sliding scale payment for participation in this event, please take a moment to reflect as you decide on where you best fit.
Your level of contribution is self selected and does not need to be advocated for. However, we invite you to remember this contribution is currency and we ask that you stretch where you are able so that those who cannot stretch as far of a financial distance may also have potential access to community events. As you choose your rate please consider the following factors:
- Your access to income and wealth, as connected to family and partnership, both currently and anticipated in the future.
- The historical, systemic impacts of wealth accrual based on culture, race and other intersection marginalizations for you and your family.
- The regional ease of your attendance, while some community members can drive to Earthdance, others will need to consider tuition based on their ability to travel longer distances.
- Earthdance is a community and rental funded organization which recently, historically and uniquely through the Covid-19 pandemic has struggled to have viable income.
Equity & Access Tickets
Although we’re not able to offer any full scholarships this year, we’re excited to offer up to 3 FULL JAM Equity & Access Discounts to individuals who feel part of an underrepresented and/or marginalized group in CI and have a relationship with CI. We know that for those who come from marginalized populations showing up to spaces filled with primarily privileged groups can be a challenge, and can feel vulnerable.
Apply Here! Application Deadline is September 5th.
For those who do not identify as marginalized and are in a represented group of CI, we invite you to stretch in your payment to help support those who cannot stretch and create a more diverse jam experience for all.
Note: While Earthdance is making efforts to better support Equity & Access at all its events, this jam offers particularly strong support for diversity, equity, and inclusion through:
- Reduced pricing offered to people self-identifying as being underrepresented and/or marginalized in CI.
- Classes and discussions that aim to bring up the level of awareness and inclusion at the jam as a whole
- Affinity spaces (jams, discussions, etc.) for particular groups of people to connect, share CI space together, and rest from the pressures of being in a minority status at the jam.
Housing Options
Gratitude Lodge at Earthdance Tickets
Includes a bed in the Gratitude Lodge, Jam offerings, and food during the jam.
The Gratitude Lodge (a.k.a. the Earthdance dorm) is the main lodging facility, connected to the Farmhouse by a short wooded trail. The lodge includes large and small rooms featuring dormitory-style bunks and beds (twin & queen size) and is included in the base Jam cost. Beds are available on a first come basis.
Camping Tickets
Includes a spot to camp at Earthdance, Jam offerings, and food during the jam.
Commuter Tickets
You will have access to the Jam offerings including food for the event.
Commuter Health Care: We ask that you please use caution when commuting and limit, if possible, to just commuting to and from your home and Earthdance, staying away from large crowds to maintain the health and well being of the other Jam participants.
Nine Mountain is NOT available.
PRICING
Cancellation Policy
Refund available up to 14 days (September 5th) before the event less a $75 processing fee.
No refunds available less than 14 days (After September 5th) from the start of the event.
Partial refunds might be given if a cancellation takes place under extenuating circumstances (e.g. a death of a 1st or 2nd degree family member, serious non-preventable illness or accident requiring hospitalization). Refunds in such cases remain at the discretion of the local organizers and will be decided on a case to case basis according to the timing of the cancellation and other factors. We do not offer refunds if you catch a cold, the flu or COVID after the cancellation date.
Health Precautions
No specific requirements on vaccination status are needed to attend this event. Please take adequate measures to limit your exposure in the days before. If you are feeling sick, or have a known close exposure to someone with COVID in the past 5 days, please sit this one out to keep the community well.
Participant Community Support
Earthdance runs as a community, thus part of the participation is that all individuals contribute to 1-2 work shifts (typically meal cleans) throughout the event and participate in a final house clean on the last day of the event. These are great ways to connect more with your fellow participants and Earthdance staff, and to feel more at home in the Earthdance buildings & grounds. Your contributions to this collective caring of this space are invaluable!
Earthdance’s buildings are ADA accessible. More info here.
HOST BIOS
Skins
Hi y’all, my name is Skins. He/him &they/them pronouns. I hold many identities as a shapeshifter. I’m a human multidimensional creature, ritualistic drag&burlesque performer, pleasure activist, massage therapist, dancer of&between worlds, somatic nerd, to name a few. I’m devoted to exploring my own&encouraging others to embrace their embodied intelligence, embodied wholeness, embodied lovability as your unique experience of being you!
We contain multitudes within these bodies. Accessing our wholeness, as a form of play, commitment, and reverence is a core value in my experience of being in my queer heart and body. I delight in witnessing and collaborating with others in their exploration of what enlivens, heals, and integrates their wholeness, pleasure, and embodied knowing.
Exploring the truth of all the wisdom we hold in these bodies is a direct act to abloish oppressive systems that aim to keep us separate from the power of what we hold in these bodies&separate from each other. I believe that being in queer movement spaces where we embody and explore our wholeness together is a form of resistance and empowerment, a form of liberation.
Leela/Lu Kelley
Leela/Lu Kelley (she/they) is a somatic practitioner, astrologer, ritualist, song catcher, and witch clown.
Leela brings a nurturing, creative, embodied, trauma-informed and playful energy to all her offerings, including workshops, rituals, and 1:1 work. She loves the intersection of deeply rooted somatic awareness with expansive states of magic and transformation. She has a background in contact improv, clowning, ritual performance, burlesque, and somatic healing.
Lu’s excited to collaborate with Skins and all participants to create a tender, fierce, trauma-informed space to queer contact improv and play in the field of collective liberation and healing.
You can learn more about Leela at leelakelley.net or IG @5th.house.venus