INTENSIVES

Everyday we will journey with our Intensive (aka Troupé) in an everyday workshop framework with a guiding facilitator or a co-created group Lab experience.
Each time the environment will change to explore the relationality of embodiment in space. In addition to the two facilitated intensives, there will be a third self-guided Artist Retreat Lab option for returning participants.
This years options are:

Sensual Gravity:
Bridging the Chemistry & Physics of Contact Improv with Taina and Moti

Touch&Play was born from a provocative inquiry into CI founder Steve Paxton’s assertion: “If you’re dancing physics, you’re dancing Contact [Improvisation]. If you’re dancing chemistry, you’re doing something else.”  This led to a 15 year deep dive into many taboo topics that T&P did not shy away from, including: sensuality, sexuality, power dynamics, gender roles, kink and beyond. These emergent threads offered profound insights, yet often veered far from the original dance that inspired the festival.

In this intensive we return to the original inquiry and the primary dance form that led to this journey. What is the role of sensuality, sexuality, power and intimacy within Contact Improvisation?  How do we honor and preserve the integrity of the physical form while also welcoming the complex alchemy of our full human experience?

These are the questions we’ll gravitate towards as we weave the threads of chemistry and physics into our dances.  With consent and safety at the core, we’ll explore the edges and create dynamic spaces of self discovery, community play, care and co-creation.  This is an invitation to dance with presence, honesty, and courageous curiosity—to discover what becomes possible when we bring all of ourselves to the floor.

* This intensive is open to C.I. beginners and all levels, though if you have no experience at all we highly recommend going to a Contact class and/or Jam before this event.

The Kink Lab:
A Somatic Playground for Pleasure & Power Exchange with Jennifer Rahner

Step into The Kink Lab, an immersive, body-centered exploration of power, play, and pleasure. This experiential intensive blends somatic movement, dance, guided embodiment exercises, shadow work, journaling, and interactive group practices to help you discover your unique kink personality—whether dominant, submissive, or somewhere in between.

Through breathwork, dynamic movement, and playful power exchange exercises, you’ll embody different roles, release shame, and develop deeper self-awareness. Explore the push and pull of control and surrender, move beyond mental analysis into felt experience, and uncover the desires that live within your body.

This consent-centered, trauma-informed space is designed for curious beginners and experienced kink explorers alike—offering you tools to communicate boundaries, express your authentic desires, and cultivate confidence in your kink identity.

Come play, experiment, and step into your most embodied, empowered self.
Are you ready to enter the Lab?

Self Guided Lab

(returning participant Intensive alternative)

Initiated by Hazel & Kshanti, this minimally facilitated, self-directed artist retreat invites a small group of individuals to explore personal and creative growth edges through their chosen medium—be it dance, poetry, performance, painting, sculpture, song, zines, or beyond.

Each participant arrives with a unique inquiry or project, shaping an emergent laboratory of transformation where personal evolution and artistic expression meet, merge, and/or transcend one another. The opening circle will offer a woven basket of community support for those moments when witnessing, reflection, or shared wisdom may nourish the journey.

All materials must be self-provided. Recommended for those who have previously attended one or more Touch & Plays.

SINGLE WORKSHOPS

Each afternoon you can spontaneously choose the class you would like to join.
This years we will offer:

Collective Self-Pleasure Ritual:
with Traci Hart

Grief Ritual:
with Hazel and Kshanti

Around the world, grief rituals have been an intricate part of communal practices to support health, resiliency and connection – giving space to release what is held individually and collectively. When space is created to allow grief to move, it supports deep healing, liberation of old patterns, and a greater capacity to experience life. It is said that grief is the greatest gift to our ancestors.  When we feel the grief our bodies carry (and that our lineages have been carrying for thousands of years), we are metabolizing the trauma that our people were unable to digest.  When we give space to feel all that our body feels and move what is ready to move, we increase our resiliency and capacity as individuals and in community.
This ritual is an invitation.  There will be no expectations about how or what shows up or moves through you.  You are welcome to arrive with all that you are and all that you carry and simply be present in whatever capacity you are able in the moment.

Connecting Thru CI + Contact Jam:
with Soeine + Andrew (Live Music)

A space for those who want to explore their bodies as a means of emotional—and possibly spiritual—connection with other beings in this world and beyond.

Soeine´s artistic practice is rooted in the notion of improvisation.
What is improvisation? A way of being authentically oneself—alert and aware—navigating the ever-changing web of life in search of balance and harmony.

While Soeine defines herself not an expert, this improvisation practice is grounded in somatic movement, including Gaga movement, contact improvisation, and release techniques. She has  been exploring how to share what she discovered through this work beyond the context of staged performance.

This offering emphasizes emotional connection through touch rather than technical form.
The body as a vessel for emotional and spiritual experience.
Soeine holds to support others in accessing authentic self-awareness through their own bodily exploration.

We become open and connectable.
When we are closed, no light can enter us.

EVENING EVENTS

Every night there is a specially curated event.
This year we will offer:  

Connecting Thru Kink:
with DeeJay + T&P Team

Our first evening fusion exploring the tools, terminology, and nuances of setting up scenes and/or experiences through the nuanced approaches & lenses of BDSM, kink, sensuality & Eros. Beginning with demoing of scenes & Kink Bingo, followed by group exercises for both new & experienced players, and then flowing into free exploration with toys & techniques.  

UnderscORGY:
with Traci Hart + Princess

An evening of playful presence, sensual connection, and embodied exploration.

Inspired by Nancy Stark Smith’s Underscore and infused with the playful, juicy spirit of a cuddle puddle gone rogue—this gathering invites you to move, connect, witness, and feel with an openness to intimacy, desire, and erotic curiosity. 

We’ll borrow familiar elements of the Underscore—telescoping awareness, observing, composing, noticing the gap—and see how they come alive in the open-hearted, pleasure-positive vibe of a play party.  

Think: rolling, melting, eye-gazing, giggling, breathing, touching (or not)—all with moment-to-moment consent and a strong spine of self-attunement.

Whether you’re here to cuddle, flirt, fuck, or just soak in the vibe, you’re welcome exactly as you are. There’s zero expectation of how intimate you’ll be—just an invitation to stay curious about your desires and tuned in to others’.

New to the Underscore? We’ve got you. A pre-event talk-through will break it down, and we’ll kick off the evening with a short orientation tailored to this new (and possibly naughty) version of the form.

Expect familiar glyphs… plus a few new ones designed just for the Underscorgy.

Let your body lead. Let your pleasure speak. Let’s co-create something delicious.

Ritual of Ecstatic Belonging:
with Hazel + T&P Team

This ritual will lead us into our final evening experience of connection and play.  We will come together in sacred space to fill ourselves with the soothing balm of support, the sacred honoring of our elemental nature and the ecstatic joy of being alive.  Enter the ceremonial space with your desires, your hopes and your aspirations.  Know that at the essence of who you are is so much more than the pain and disconnection you’ve been steeped in and internalized.  Soften the edges of what you’ve been to receive deeply all that you need.  Accept the invitation to be woven into the tapestry of this world more fully.  Guided invitations for partnered practices will offer integration of our time together while spicing up possibilities as we move into open time for play.

The Exploratorium + Cabaret Night:
with Traci Hart + Bubbles

Exploring the different possibilities of sensuality, play and touch through emergent offering stations. A space to try something new or offer a station for something you would love to share! 

Connecting thru CI Jam
with Soeine

For the opening evening, a facilitated Contact Improv (CI) workshop leading into an open Jam. This is geared to introducing structure, flow and potentials of CI dance as a bridge to connection in the sphere of the relational body.