Join us, dear community, for a Cocréa day long event!
*This is a two part, same day event*
As we emerge from the chrysalis of frozen time and held breath, immerse and play with the current Cocréa cohort of facilitators-in-training as they celebrate the culmiation of the 2022 Facilitator Training. Supported by Cocréa co-founder, Wren LaFeet, and Cocréa facilitator, Brenée Roussel, spend the day in learning techniques and practices for deepening intimacy and freeing expression. Spend the night in somatic dialogue and sensuous revelry with community.
Workshops throughout the day will be around connection, presence and attunement, as well as specific skill building for reliably generating flow and fluid partnered movement.
After a delicious dinner provided for workshop participants by Connection Cafe from 5:30pm-7pm, return for a cacao fueled evening of luscious music from Momentology, Mikaya, Purrrreistess and Wren LaFeet,
In true Cocréa fashion we invite you to an experience of synthesis, connection and communion. Bringing the worlds of Fusion partner dance, ecstatic and juicy, saucy bass together for a night of exploratory delight, we’re excited to share presence with you in all its iterations.
DATE & TIME
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8th
11am-12am
LOCATION
The Landing, address provided upon registration
Asheville, NC
EVENT DETAILS AND SCHEDULE
11:00-5:30
We will dive in to exploration within:
~Form and structure
~Lead/ follow
~Spacial awareness
~Awareness of Music
~Attunement to our innate belonging
~Impeccable attunement to one another
CLASS SCHEDULE
11am Alaris – Curiosity in Flow: Grooving from Attunement
12:10 Jackie – Connective Play: Let’s Get Physical!
1:40 Heidi – ConnectYum: Dancing into Deeper Intimacy
2:50 Ethyl – Wildcrafting Dance: Growing Community Organically
4:00 Pk aka: Dance Temple – Contemplative Contiuum: Integrative Movement Journey
5:30-7:00:
Dinner break, dinner for workshop participants provided by Connection Cafe
DANCE!
7:00-7:30
Collective Cacao Deliciousness to open the Heart
7:30-8:30
Guided Cocréa Dance with Wren LaFeet
8:30-9:30
DJ Mikaya
9:30-11:00
Momentology
11:00-12:00
DJ Purrrriestess
What you will gain by coming to class:
You will enhance your ability to create a safe container for you and your dance partner, by finding more confidence within the container you hold as a lead, thus discovering creative and inspirational ways to offer invitations of expression to your follow.
As you follow, you will deepen your ability to listen, surrender, respond, and relax – creating a more fluid conversation with your lead.
One of the phrases we’ll play with embodying is “intimacy with sovereignty”.
You will walk away with a more fine tuned ability to “read the room”, and open up your spidey senses as to what is happening not just in your own personal dance, but what is happening around you. This will offer safety for you, your dance partner, and others on the floor, as well as create an opportunity for confidence in moving around the dance floor even more.
You will also deepen your ability to “hear” music by learning how to understand the expressions of “voices”’ within a song, generating more awareness to instruments, singers, beats, etc. to be able to choose which sound you want to groove to within a song.
INVITATIONS
We invite clear eyes and auric fields!
Come sober. Cocréa is about practicing authentic relating and holds consent as central to its teachings. It’s challenging (or impossible) to obtain consent when altered. As fun as it is, this is not that party. Let’s get high on endorphins, eye contact, breath, movement, touch, grimey beats and soaring melody.
We invite evolution and growth!
Come to the workshops. We love to dance and we love to be together in community, and we’ll be the first to acknowledge there is no better place to learn than on the dance floor in the moment. Except MAYBE in a space designed specifically to support you upleveling your Jedi bad-assery. Join the Cocréa facilitators in training, Wren, and Brenée for a day of psycillium activating, community soil amending somatic inquiry into epic presence and attunement.
We invite ecstatic play and bliss!
Come to get the funk down. Cocréa is a practice space for the dance of life. We welcome all expressions of your being, of your freedom, of your intimacy. We welcome you getting into your pleasure, we welcome you getting into your grief, we welcome you releasing deeply into your joy. We create an agreement field that we’re all going to show up all the way and play full out.
FACILITATION TEAM
WREN LAFEET
Wren has been dancing in partnership for 23 years and loves serving humanity to become more embodied as a somatic permissionary. Teaching partner dance internationally as a practice for mindful, authentic living, and enlivening communities by facilitating his signature modality, Cocréa, has been his joy for a decade. Wren guides humans towards right relationship with themselves, the Earth, Music, Others, Communities and the Whole through movement; listening and responding in service to the highest good for all life. He is a celebrated TEDx speaker, featured author in “ReInhabiting the Village” and ardent proponent of pioneering a new renaissance through authentic connection and consensual touch.
As a Danyasa trained facilitator, former Awake at Work program facilitator, certified Attunement Therapy practitioner, and BA in Drama and Dance from the University of Washington, Wren promotes dance as an embodied approach to exploring consciousness and medicinal salve for our modern ailments of disconnection and dislocation.
BRENÉE ROUSSEL
Brenée is a birth doula, trained CPM (Certified Professional Midwife), and is a developing preconception coach assisting people in intentionally conceiving babies. She has studied how to hold this sacred container of ushering in new expansions of the human experience since 2013. Learning the wisdom of being a gatekeeper of life has created a nuance on “midwifing” people within their personal processes from birth and beyond, knowing it is all interconnected.
Dance always came naturally to Brenée, even as a child. In time, she began exploring her “Yes!” through authentic movement. Eventually majoring in concert dance floor sessions, as well as fire dance performance, she outgrew her roots in Maine and landed on the west coast of North America.
She discovered Cocréa at Beloved Festival in 2018, finding a home within its practice that was innate in her personal practice. She began her training to become a Cocréa Mindful Partner Dance instructor in the fall of 2019 and is excited to be sharing this body wisdom as the first graduate of Cocréa‘s facilitator training.
FACILITATORS IN TRAINING
Alaris Todar
Alaris discovered the vast joy of partner dancing when she learned to swing dance at 12 years old, the first of many partner dance styles she would fall in love with. Since then, she’s been on a deep journey of uncovering her sense of belonging, safety in her own body, and in relation to others. She sees social dancing as much more than a fun hobby; it is a means to be in a conscious and co-creative relationship, a non-verbal container for healing, transformation, expression and discovery.
When she encountered Cocréa, she had explored a wide range of somatic, mindful, healing, movement, spiritual and relational practices, in a range of therapeutic to festive environments. Cocréa is the first umbrella she’s encountered that reflects all of her core values, and also supports her gift of being a permissionary for people’s full expression. She wishes to offer spaces where people can realize the profound medicine and magic that exists where we hold the most resistance or fear, and to deeply dive into the experience of being in bodies with one another.
Ethyl Ruehman (She/Ki/Her)
Ethyl is a mover and shaker from the midwest, that lives deeply within the seasons. Kin’s heart thrives best in a community of Earth love, dance and song
Ki believes that embodying our expressive selves and reconnecting with other humans from that embodied place is absolutely PROFOUND.
Ethyl is exuberantly excited to continue kins journey of spreading the philosophy and dance of CoCrea in the microcosm of the collective.
Ethyl also has a budding interest in circus movement arts such as aerial silks, acro yoga, dancing with an apparatus and slacklining; as well as a quirky fashion style! Ki helps steward the land at Lost in the Woods Farm and Winery in Gosport, Indiana.
Heidi Light
Heidi Light is all about creating transformational spaces for people to discover their Juicy Embodiment and their Free and Authentic expression.
In her own need for healing she was driven to explore many disciplines, focusing on healing the conflict between Spirituality, Sexuality, and the Inner Child.
Through her extensive studies in Essence Work, Tantric Arts, Expressive Arts Therapy, Body-Mind Centering, and Sexological Bodywork she developed herself as a Tantra and Intimacy Coach, and has had a thriving practice for 10 years.
Today she is thrilled to be merging her Intimacy and Relationship Work with Partner Dance, helping people feel the safety and permission to be in their vulnerability and feel the sweetness of connection.
Jackie Wiegand
Jackie loves to play, dance, sing, laugh, cry, smile, and share deep connections with herself, others, and nature!
Her embodiment journey started while working as an accountant when she realized she needed to radically change her life and leave her desk job to explore how she could share and deepen the joy she feels while dancing!
This led to a profound inquiry into body wisdom, lots of new learning experiences, expressive arts therapy schooling at Tamalpa Institute, and Laughter Yoga Leader certification!
Along her journey Cocréa was patiently waiting for her and when she finally got to experience a Cocréa workshop it changed her life and opened up a new world of possibilities and opportunities!
A few years later after soaking up as much Cocréa as she could, Jackie joined the Cocréa facilitator training and is greatly enjoying all she is learning from these rich and empowering teachings!
Dance Temple
I have always been in awe of the Body’s magical capacities. As a “neurodiverse” individual in a culture stressing conformity, I was called to live into all my magic in order to flourish.
A Seer and Body Intuitive, over 3.5 decades I became viscerally well-versed in consciousness, brain science, energy, body awareness and movement. My daily practices have included Nia, Mindfulness, Hatha, Ecstatic Dance, Contact Improv, club and years of nightly West Coast Swing. I am most happy and integrated in the midst of improvised partner dance.
As a performer and writer, I studied and learned to embody expressive ways of Being that allowed me to flourish mentally, creatively and emotionally. I have shared these ways through these arts and also through bodywork, as a trainer, teacher, event creator, healer, consciousness facilitator (Extreme Paradigm Shift) and through offering counsel.
Over a 5-year period, using intuition and gifts developed over this lifetime in “mind-body” realms, I was able to rehabilitate my mother from a massive stroke. Moving through Space in Joyful Embodiment is a glorious gift. Come play!
MUSICIANS
Momentology
Guest DJ
Momentology is the multi-genre electronic music project of producer/performer Patrick Kiebzak. Blending rich layers of organic soundscapes and punchy beats, paired with live instrumentation. The Momentology experience dances in the space between an improvisational jam band and a classic DJ. Genres explored include deep house, downtempo, blissful bass, and much more.
As Momentology, Patrick has performed at festivals and events around the US, sharing stages with DJ’s and producers Random Rab, Desert Dwellers, Equanimous, Bluetech, The Human Experience, DJ Taz Rashid, and more. Momentology also accompanies Yoga and Meditation workshops, classes, and retreats, providing experience enhancing music for these practices.
https://on.soundcloud.com/cSWTJhKFuxJwqyPTA
Mikaya
Guest DJ
Micah “Mikaya” Swabb is a DJ and facilitator for the Asheville Movement Collective, and was the founder and resident DJ for Dance Church Maui from 2011-2019. He has a deep understanding of set arrangements for conscious dance events, yoga classes and ceremonies through his 8+ years of experience. Mikaya’s mixes inspire meditation through movement in ways that widen the scope of one’s self-awareness and self-expression.
His mixes use a spectrum of musical genres to deepen somatic embodiment through movement, breath and presence. Using a large bell curve progression his DJ sets begin peacefully, build momentum and contrast, and then land softly with resolution and grace. He has a gift for finding beautiful tracks that cover a broad spectrum of musical genres like global bass, tropical house, techno, glitch hop, downtempo, classical and ambient.
Mikaya has shared the stage with The Human Experience, Ean Golden, David Starfire, Nickodemus, [Clever Alias], and DJ Dragonfly to name a few. He has played at festivals like Burning Man, Beloved Festival, Source Maui, and Element 11. He’s DJ’d and facilitated at Dance Church Maui, Asheville Movement Collective, Ecstatic Dance Salt Lake City, Maui Conscious Dance Collective, Mangala Yoga Maui, and Lumeria Maui. He’s also an experienced sound healer that plays the gong, Tibetan singing bowl, Native American flute, harmonium and other sacred sound healing instruments.
If you’d like to book Mikaya, you can email him at micahswabb@pm.me. With deep gratitude may we live with love, courage and freedom.
https://on.soundcloud.com/gYRgtZhfPvPYTDkG9
Purrrriestess
Guest DJ
Meow mixes for your purrring.
Hiii, I’m Purrriestess aka Cat ~ a budding ecstatic dance facilitator and DJ from Asheville, NC inspired by a passion for music, movement and dance. I curate sensorial soundscapes of a wide variety with heartfelt intention, aiming to evoke a deeply transformative and wildly expressive dance experience.
May all be free to dance.
Much gratitude to all the music makers – because you create, I create <3