Spring has arrived!

And we have been busy!
Moving from cozied up winter mode into the full burst of Spring and Summer planning!

So far we are planning to bring our community-creating body-based playshops to Under the Spinfluence, Luminate, the Nelson Lakes Contact Improv retreat, Biophilia, and more!

In the meantime, we've been busy moving to Motueka and starting to create community here, and Jen has been busy organizing workshops and gigs for the Motueka Arts Council, face painting, and teaching silks.
Here's a glimpse of the fun we've been having:

                                                                      Oamaru stone carving
                          
 
                                                                                      Mask Making
                 

                                                Maori Sacred Stance Workshop with Matiu te Huki 
                                      and evening concert with Matiu, Alice Williams, and Dan Antell
   

                                                            Face painting!
                 
             
                                                                                   and Aerial Silks!  
         

     

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Motueka Arts Council's Winter Arts Workshops

Lots of change has been in the air these last few months and the dust is finally beginning to settle.  And with that, we are emerging with more goodness in store!

We will both be facilitating workshops through the Motueka Arts Council's Winter Workshop program.  The Arts Council strives to find innovative artists to lead workshops that are affordable to the wider community and we are honored to be a part of it!

Jen will be leading a Stencil Making workshop (check out the monkey below!) in the tradition of cheap art and street art, and Andy and Jen will be co-facilitationg a Labour Day Theater of Liberation workshop.  There are lots more awesome artistic opportunities happening through the workshop including Mask Making (Commedia d'el Arte style), Maori Sacred Stance (with Matiu te Huki), Steampunk jewelry, Oamaru Stone Carving, plus a concert involving local violin virtuosos!  Come join in!!

Voices of Sacred Earth post festival Glow

Thank you everyone who played, who sang, who danced
reached out, created connections, created relationships
who chose to think and feel and move
who spent their days under the sky, in the rain and mud and grass and sun

Thank you to those who trusted me to guide you through a process of ego abandonment
of ridiculousness
of weirdness and awkward
of trusting and touch
of compassion and softening
of perspective and introspection
of power and freedom

Thank you thank you thank you
for reminding why I do this work, this play

May you carry the gifts with you <3

Nelson Fringe Festival

We are so excited to be offering a workshop at the Nelson Fringe Festival!!

So many fun acts plus a fantastic slew of workshops, 

from a spontaneous storytelling, creative writing & movement workshop 

to oriental fusion bellydance drills, 

we'll be finishing off the week long extravaganza with 

Theater of Liberation!

Saturday, 5 May

1pm-4pm

Venue 2 - Ghost Light Theatre.

COME PLAY!!

Voices of Sacred Earth

While Andy holds down the fort teaching performing arts at the high school in Takaka, Jen will be bringing Theater of Liberation and Clowning to the Voices of Sacred Earth festival, a beautiful festival held at Kawai Purapura, in North Auckland, from the 23rd-25th of March, just a few weeks away!

The Voices of Sacred Earth Festival is an Eco-Festival, gathering hundreds of people together for a weekend of seminars, transformational workshops and performances focusing on indigenous cultures, Earth wisdom, sacred ceremony, well-being and social change.

Indigenous cultures throughout the world have maintained a reciprocal relationship with the Earth; they have protected the sacred sites and are wisdom keepers for the modern world. This wisdom and knowledge is being shared and remembered within many people. The foundations of a new consciousness is now birthed to a new awareness from these ancestral wisdom to evolve new solutions, to embody a more sustainable and harmonious world for the entire community, our Global Family.

It’s all about re-connection with the self, others and Mother Earth!

Tickets are on sale now.  See you there!

New Beginner's Aerial Silks classes

Aerial Silks classes have begun again!! We're back in Pohara hall, same day, same times... Wednesdays at 1:30, 3:30 and 5pm.
Come play with us!!

 

Story Bridge Workshop and Performance

Wow.
I'm feeling really Juiced.
Alive. Excited and Exciting.  My skin buzzing with possibilities and the tender ecstatic Joy of Connection.
Last night we had 12 people gather together to tell stories.  To listen to stories.  To watch their stories unfold and find new shapes.  and another 15-20 bear witness to them.
It's hard to put into words how a Story Bridge process really works to turn near strangers into a deeply bonded group... clan... community.

Through the process of story sharing and translating those stories through our bodies, we tapped into the archetypes of what it's like to be human on this planet.
The feeling we have when we don't get an award that we think we deserve...
When we're lost and just want to find something familiar...
When we're scared to share our gifts, but find the courage to do so (and it's enthusiastically received!)...
The moment we realize we are going to be a parent and our life will never again be the same...

It's empowering.
And deeply humbling.
And would you believe that the feeling of recognition that we shared, the connection that we felt to each other and to the people who have come before us, who walk with us, and who will come after us, was so palpable, that after the performance the audience not only engaged us in conversation, but jumped up to join us in a bit of improvisational play!!

I'm feeling so much gratitude to all the people who made the Story Bridge Workshop come alive yesterday.
Thank you to Richard Geer at https://www.storybridge.space for developing this form and his intent focus on using stories to create meaningful change in the world.  To Creative Communities Tasman for their financial support of this project. To Andy for his enthusiastic persistance that we bring Story Bridge to Takaka and his tautoko the whole way through.  For the courageous cast for sharing their stories, their tenderness, their grief and laughter with each other, and turning it all into a celebration.  And to the audience who came curious and willing and excited, for the listeners are half of what gives a story meaning.

Thank you.
And may we continue to fall more in love with each other through our stories.