Sacred Mask Work: 2nd Chakra, Angels & Pleasure

with Akil Apolo Davis

Akil Apollo Davis is a full-time Performing Artist & Theatre Professor of Mask and Art Aesthetic.
He has been a unique and influential presence in New York City’s performance, educational and cultural avant-garde for 18 years.
Akil’s performance disciples and works are:
Theatre, Dance, Spoken Word, Freestyle Poetry, Music production, Performance Art, MC’ing, Directing and Sacred Ceremony

As a seasoned Theatre Professor and educator, Akil is a master teacher of an extremely unique form of Mask (SUNY Purchase, NYU, William Esper, Bali Indonesia, Bangkok Thailand), and is one of only 3 humans in the world that teach it.

This form of Mask work plants it’s roots in the power of image and transformation. The practice alchemizes traditional theatre, practical esoteric philosophies, original meditations, and Balinese disciplines.
Akil has designed and owns over 200 Masks, almost all of which are hand-carved by a Brahman (Priest) in Bali, Indonesia.

He has trained with Monks in Thailand, Brahmans in Bali, Witches in New York, and has worked with Psychologists to bridge the gaps between esoteric knowledge and classical paradigms.

Akil’s Karmic mantra: there must be more light

Land Dance

with Pipaluk Supernova

Pipaluk is a Danish choreographer and independent producer, she directs international dance productions and art events. Her projects include site specific dance and large scale performance installations, merging dance, interactive art and audience participation.

Pipaluk embraces daring choreography, creating environments for artistic exploration, collaborating with artists from around the world. She is also a singer and composer.

LAND DANCE illuminates the atmosphere of a chosen place by means of presence, we engage with movement and contact as a way to perceive, and open up, our sense of time.
A journey into nature, a way to rediscover inner terrain and earthly landscapes through movement and music.
Inspired by the physical encounter with our surroundings and the stories of local landmarks, this intensive takes place both in the studio and outdoors.

Performing Yourself – Ensemble Creativity

with Rick Nodine

This workshop is about being an audience and having an audience. Witnessing performance and performing, hearing and being heard, seeing and being seen, being yourself and being in a group.

We will start by developing CI practice into a larger space of whole group awareness and witnessing each other dance as an expanded way of connecting. We will work on relating to multiple partners at the same time and work on how to get in and out of contact with a partner while maintaining the integrity of our own dance.

We will move on to ensemble scores for improvising together which highlight how we turn our own desires into action and how these individual expressions of creativity can coexist in a shared space with others.
We will work towards a performance for the whole T&P community that honours the spirit of costume, play and fantasy.

This course will be based in my 15 years experience of leading a course called ‘Improvisation Into Performance’ at London Contemporary Dance School in which a group of students rehearsed together to perform a totally improvised show in front of a theatre audience.

“Earth My Lover” & “Temple Evening”

with Simba Dara

Simba is passionate about embodiment, slowing down, authenticity, sex magic and cultivating a lovership with the Earth. She feels strongly connected to the global movement of remerging Temples and is humbled to be part of this growing field of high resonance.

Simba facilitates and co-facilitates Temples, which are ceremonial spaces to explore sacred sexuality and be in prayer and devotion. She also gives 1-2-1 Sacred Sexual Bodywork sessions. Her work in this field can be found under Heart of Eros. Her trainings are in various modalities of bodywork, trauma release, breathwork, shamanism and sexual shamanism. Her sessions of holistic bodywork & trauma release can be found under Earth Body Healing. All of Simba’s offerings are an ode to the beloved Earth.

“Sacred Dance” & “Healing Butoh”

with Ken Mai

Ken Mai is a Japanese International Butoh Artist, Yogi, Choreographer, and Teacher based in Helsinki, Finland now. He has been performing & teaching in more than 30 countries. He studied with Legend Butoh Founder “Kazuo Ohno and he also studied the roots of another Butoh founder “Tatsumi Hijikata” at the beginning of the `90s in Kyoto, Japan. Same time he was into Zen and practiced Zen Meditation at Zen Monastery for 16 years in Kyoto as well as practiced Ancient Hatha Yoga which studied at Patanjali International Yoga Foundation in Rishikesh, India. Since then he was studied Veda, Buddhism, Tantra, Mystic, etc. He has already created the Meditation dance, Chakra dance, and Tantra dance.

“Under the Skin”

with Kiki Creatur

A partnered/grouped ritual in nature where the body is scrubbed with coffee grounds and rubbed in coconut oil to create visceral skin-sensation experiences. It turns into something like liquid love, but with more sensory skin play leading up to all the bodies converging, and substances like honey and ice cubes. There will be an invitation to touch the bark of trees, grass and other natural textures, then returning to the softest of bodies and skin. Eventually melting into a pool of moving skin – celebrating it’s incredible texture and softness.

“Zegg Forum” & “Intro to Temple of Sexuality” & “Singer”

with Briony Greenhill

Is an improvisational musician and teacher. At Touch&Play she will be singing for the jams, holding the Zegg Forum where we will witness and support each other and where we will bring to the surface what is moving in the group. She will also be teaching a workshop on Introduction To Temple Sexuality.

Briony brings a real humanity to all her interactions.

“Tensions in Tango: Embodying the in-between” & “Traces of the Ballroom – Inviting being seen”

with Ruth Pethybridge

Dr Ruth Pethybridge is a mover, a maker, a mother, and a writer, she loves to dance with other people. She is a dance researcher and Senior Lecturer in Dance and an experienced facilitator in community settings. Ruth’s research interests centre on the politics of participation in dance – she is passionately curious about the ways in which dance practice intersects with social justice. She regularly publishes and presents on these themes internationally.
Ruth has been dancing Argentine Tango on and off since 2008 before developing the ‘barefoot’ approach with dance partner and co-parent Becalelis to shed some of the hierarchies of traditional Tango. Ruth travelled to Argentina regularly over many years to learn in some of the oldest venues for this dance, but now only dips her toe in. Ruth’s practice in participatory dance has extended to blur the borders between performance and social gatherings, drawing on club culture and festival experiences to explore how to produce experiences of liberation through dancing.

Early Morning Embodiment

with Akasha Janine

Akasha Janine lives a life in service and in response to the omnipresent life force energy. She bows in reverence to the Sacred Self and believes it not separate to the human experience. British born but a wanderer by nature, she worked on Cruise Ships before residing in Australia until 2020. A teacher’s teacher, facilitator, mentor, Somatic trauma therapist and student of the Conscious Movement arts she has facilitated students Internationally for over 25yrs.

Creative Mischief aka Team Gremlin

with Genevieve Simmons

(g/they/them) is a melder of movements, maker of music, and vessel of many generous mentors. They create long-form performance art, ambient mixes, many sonic and physical genres, and aim to sow intimacy in every plot of soil. Genevieve will be spinning their threads throughout the festival supported the jams through music, and leading a transformative psychospiritual exploration of the Self and Other through Authentic Relating.

More Artists

Photography

with Dan Farberoff

Dan is a veteran of Touch&Play. Having been the photographer for Touch&Play Germany for many years. Now he is walking with us to share his photography, dancing and enthusiasm for T&P.

Work-exchange Coordinators

with Sarah, Halina & Finlay

Lee Bolton

I have always been a kind of explorer and researcher of life. Always asking questions. Generally a little outside of convention. For the past 12 years my offering has been facilitating the exploration of movement and dance, mostly improvisation, enquiring into the nature of relationship and being here. I have a deep interest in the ‘unseen’, that which connects us all as the fabric of life.
Sometimes life is smooth and delicious and often it’s as clunky as hell. I’m constantly learning how to gracefully bring it all the table.