Walk your talk
The Team
Swan Aleon
Troupe intensive leader: Shedding Light – Shedding Skin
Swan is a theatre maker, applied philosopher, and psychotherapist specializing in somatic and post-Jungian approaches to self-inquiry. They wrote their PhD thesis on processes of personal and social transformation at the University of Cambridge, trained at the Jacques Lecoq school of physical theatre, and hold certificates in tantra yoga, breathwork, and hypnotherapy. They are the founder and director of the Institute of Devotional Arts, which offers art and mindfulness experiences for inner and outer peace.
https://devotionalarts.org https://larencontredesreves.com; https://swanalyon.com
@swanalyon @instituteofdevotionalarts
Dawaune Lamont Hayes
Troupe intensive leader: Center Stage: Theatrics, Somatics, Movement & Grace
Dawaune Lamont Hayes (he/she/they) is a vocal movement practitioner, regenerative artist, and cultural curator born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. They love to gather people in intentional spaces to help folks reconnect to their bodies and inner joy. They host a series called Free Movement and Vocal Release that invites people to co-locate sound with tension in the body and release it in a group setting. When they aren’t hosting, you can find Dawaune barefoot under a Catalpa Tree with a blanket and journal manifesting a better world.
Main: @dawaune.one
Events: @nightshade.222
Practice: @movement.in.progress_
Casey Loomis
Jupiter
Artist in Ritual
Jupiter (they/them) Black, transgendered- nonbinary, queer, educator, activist, witch, specializing in somatic healing , process arts, contemporary dance movement theater arts curriculum development.
Co-founder of Moon Prism Arts Collective, a queer makers space & arts community in Easthampton, Ma, & Literacy Educator in Holyoke Public Schools.
@jupiterreturned
Leela / Lu
UnderscORGY and Somatic Grief & Prayer Ritual
Leela Kelley is a somatic therapist, ritualist, astrologer, and clown witch. Leela brings a nurturing, creative, embodied, 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. If you met her on the astral plane, she’d be in the form of a snail-cat-dolphin and might be on the lookout for a snack daddy. You can learn more about her at www.leelakelley.net or IG @ 5th.house.venus
Igna
Exploratorium Evening
I’m a queer bi+ poly undetectable quite noticeable smiling human. I was born in Bolivia and lived there most of my life. I’m the founder of a cheese factory coop and an avid team leader and team worker. Community and co-creation are my paths. Lover of life, traveller, family constellation facilitator. Into hugging trees and humans, dancing, meditation in all its forms, (Iearned and practiced since I was 12) crystals, spiritual growth, yoga, mental and physical health.
https://www.facebook.com/ignuish – IG @ignuish
Marie/Murry Eyeball
Lucidity Curator
Marie/Murry’s (fae/they/she/eyeball) primary partnership is with the meandering magic of the Muse. Living in devotion to this waking dream, fae shapeshifts between and beyond archetypal roles of boundless bard, dream druid, death doula, & cosmic clown creature. Their offerings are a convergence of creativity, connectivity, sensuality & ritual. Murry has facilitated several intensives and labs at Touch & Play Mexico & US, exploring the ecosensual & archetypal somatics of intimate explorations. Both a contact dancer & vocal improviser, the union of movement and sound is at the core of their practice of somatic instrumentation. In reverence & revelry- they are so delighted to play and pray with you all. May the muses muse!
IG @maythemuses
Daniel J. Hayes
Touch&Play Founder
Medical Doctor, public health scientist and practical idealist.
He’s been playing, dancing, meditating and conversing CI for over 20 years.
He is the founder of the Touch&Play Movement and the Vidàlia eco-village outside Barcelona. He is the current Executive Director of the Earthdance Creative Living Project, an arts & cultural community and institute in Western Massachusetts. He’s been exploring the intricacies of the Relational Body for over 10 years and is committed to building a more equitive and authentic culture through his social entrepreneurial and creative endeavours.
Leslie Heydon
Peace Council Lead
Leslie Heydon (she/they) was raised by amateur, yet dedicated dancers. She studied Psychology, Fine Arts, and trained in Expressive Arts Therapy and outdoor leadership and provided individual and group therapy in specialized Addictions programs for women and for Black youth.
Over twenty years ago, Leslie started dancing 5 Rhythms. In 2016, she began practicing Contact Improvisation then facilitated a monthly BIPOC dance Jam for several years. She also served on the Toronto Sunday Contact Jam Safety Committee for over 5 years.
Leslie is committed to weaving equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging out of the various strands of gender, race, ability and other dimensions of identity, power and consent.
Leslie recently became a trained relationship coach and is excited to bring these skills, compassion and understanding into all her relations.
Her passion is to explore, in the outdoor wilderness, on the dance floor and within the internal wilderness of the soul.
Skins
Work Exchange Coordinator
Skins (he/they) is devoted to his own explorations & encourages others, to embrace our embodied intelligence, embodied wholeness, embodied lovability as our unique experiences of being who we are!
They’re in a constant wonder of bodies’ vast potentials to experience sensations & emotions. Skins delights 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 abolish oppressive systems that aim to keep us separate from the power of what we hold in these bodies & separate from each other. He believes that being in sex & kink positive spaces that are centered in a trauma-informed structure, where a container is intentionally co-created {centering each person as important, valued, and celebrated} meaningful connections of intimacy can happen.
With ~*~trust and play~*~ healing and integration of our physical~emotional~erotic~kinky selves is possible (and has happened in their experience)! Acts of care and pleasure are vital pathways to mutual liberation: where we build skills, resources, and support to be our truest most loving selves.
Skins is a is a human multidimensional creature, ritualistic drag & burlesque performer, pleasure activist, bodyworker, dancer of & between worlds, somatic nerd ((to name a few)) who just wants to play and enjoy in the sweetness of life with people (and wishes the same for you)! 🙂
Photo by Drum Fernandez // Instagram: @fernandezdrumphotography
Chantelle
Inclusivity Liaison
@solunamedicines
solunamedicines.com
Sunshine
Musician in Residency
@thesunshinegroup
Paul Vidich
offers the Lab
Behold, the enigmatic Paul Vidich: arboreal dweller, master of nothing, and connoisseur of circular arts. As a visionary with aspirations as vast as the cosmos, Paul has honed the art of procrastination to perfection. Every endeavor he pursues, an exquisite jewel of wasted time. Amidst the swirling chaos of existence, Paul finds solace and enlightenment in the curiosity of movement. He also really enjoys growing apple trees and is starting a new religion that aims to weave threads of meaning into the frumpy quilt of modernity.
Caelum (aka Captain Kale)
Lead Chef
Caelum loves to nourish people! He applies his background in cooking from his family, in restaurants, hotels, co-op’s, and his Masters in Human Nutrition to empower guests to deepen their connection with healthy and sustainable food.
Kale is passionate about meeting everyone’s needs with organic, traditional and seasonal foods. He loves your special diet and wants to know every detail! He cooks at many intentional community gatherings in the area and has formerly been the kitchen manager at Earthdance.
“Food is love! How we source and prepare our food can help nourish our connection to the Earth, each other and our selves. I’m really looking forward to being back with our touch and play family!”
Caelum uses him/they/captain pronouns.
Raasa Leela
Onsite Coordination
Princess Michael
Princess
Wanderer, art appreciator, community lover, mischievous instigator, connection seeker. Honored to be part of the Touch&Play team co-creating containers for playful, kinky, vulnerable exploration in community
Raith Brown
Shaman & Magician
Anna Maynard
CI Techer & Photographer
As a photographer trained in dance and a dancer trained in photography, my approach to capturing images is founded in movement and seeks to explore relationships.
I love to photograph artists in their element, and during everyday exchanges. Embedded and embodied, my camera visually chronicles the path from rehearsal to final production. Or it meets you in a moment to crystallize the beginning, the end, the gorgeously messy in between.
Queralt Jorba - Lina
Production
A psychologist and psychotherapist with expertise in human relationships, trauma work, and personal growth. She holds a master in Dance Movement Psychotherapy and in Somatic Experiencing.
One of her superpowers lies in helping individuals and couples identify the patterns that hold them back and together, finding a direction in which they flourish.
She has been living in intentional communities for years gaining deep knowledge about group dynamic and organisations culture. Currently, she splits her time between Catalonia, where her roots lie, and Western Massachusetts.
Nanuq Andreu
Baby
Despite my tender age, I bring a wealth of experience to Touch&Play. Conceived at a Touch&Play event myself, I’ve already attended 5 retreats in my short life.
As a core team member, I’m fully committed to our mission and never miss a meeting. My role at the festival is simple yet profound: to help you remember.
I listen intently and express my needs clearly, while also embodying a deep connection with existence itself. In every moment, I merge with reality, reminding everyone who wants to listen the simplicity and the miracle of life.
DANCE & EMBODIMENT
EROS & SELFEXPRESSION
RELATIONSHIPS & COMMUNITY
Meet the Team
and fall in love
Welcome to the Touch&Play community, where the organizers and teachers are not just leaders but fellow journeyers. We come together with a shared commitment to expansion and collaboration, embodying the principles we teach.
We – the organizers and teachers – are coming together to expand and collaborate.
We are all participants
embracing the mind of the beginner
And we – the participants – are a group of dancers, movers, somatic learners, spiritual magic makers, embodied humans, vulnerable deep-divers, and relational explorers. With curiosity, care, and perhaps a bit of mischief, we call in this community, expanding within and expanding throughout, to gather in a new creation.
All are warmly welcome, to come as your full, unfiltered, beautiful self.
Embodied Pillars:
CREATIVITY
Come as you are- in all the fullness of the offerings you embody. Creativity can present itself in infinite ways- subtle, striking, interactive, ruminative. It is rooted in the impulse to bring vision into reality, and it is relational. How does creativity move us to act and relate in the dreamweb?
AWARENESS
The defining essence of Lucidity is the cultivation of awareness. And awareness is a conscious choice to tune into the present field through the senses of our own body in consideration & collaboration with the collective body that is alive all around us.
SENSES
What a magical gift to be born with the capacities to feel & intuitive through our various senses. We bend time and space in this container by returning to the present moment of our somatic experience of shared synesthesia. The word synesthesia comes from the Greek root of “synth” (which means “together”) and “ethesia” (which means “perception).
ABOUT TOUCH&PLAY MOVEMENT
“Leave the relationships more beautiful than you found them.”
While Classical Contact Improvisation asks what happens when two physical bodies meet in space, Touch&Play asks what happens when two alchemical human beings meet in space.
We will research, experimentially (both experimental and experiential), these questions around the nuances of our relational bodies.
The first Touch&Play gathering took place in 2010 in Berlin focussing on an exploration of The chemistry of Contact Improvisation.
The current frame is a wider one and is described as an exploration of “The relational body”. Contact Improvisation is one of the many tools we use for this exploration along side dance, kink,, somatics, tantra, authentic relating, NVC. our values center on play, authenticity, inclusion, embodied consent and community.
The first Touch&Play in the US happened in 2016 and has since been an annual retreat held at Earthdance. We seek with curiosity, play and vulnerability how to individually and collectively dismantle the systems of oppression that live in our bodies, minds and spirits to seed peace in our world. We awaken more vibrantly our emotional, somatic and erotic intelligence.