Product Description

‘The body doesn’t tell a story, the body is a story’ – Tetsuro Fukuhara

You are invited to retreat into the deeper realms and experiences of the imaginal body, immersed in the animate forests of Sedgefield, on the Garden Route. Your interest or background in Consent Practice, Contact Improvisation, psychological process, and the ways that Eros moves through body and shapes soul, will be enriched with this six day embodiment experience.

No previous experience necessary.

“Any force that is powerful enough to influence and shape my life, without my having a say in whether I want this affect or not, we call that ‘God’ or ‘the gods’.” M. Brodie, paraphrasing CG Jung

Rupture and Eros come hand in hand. Our desire and loves are marked by the experience of being broken into by forces much larger than us. Intimacy, shame, grief, desire, longing, loss, betrayal, and moments of deep awkwardness arrive unannounced. Moments where we have all but lost the script and stand utterly bewildered. These ruptures bring us closer to the fluxing multitudes of animate forces and impulses with whom we share our bodies and the Earth. How do we understand consent within the context of these perceived violations, to meet life as it is?

What is Contact Improvisation?


Through deep listening and responding to the impulses and queues of movement in the present moment, a dialogue of dance emerges with the other. Working with foundational skills, we explore gravity and the sharing of weight; momentum, resistance and surrender; and the nature of the creative. Our fundamental patterns are revealed, presenting the possibility of recognising the archetypal structures embedded within them as new pathways to move, respond, repose, and dream.

What is Consent Practice?


Beginning with Dr Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent, we clarify the differences between Giving and Taking, Allowing and Receiving, and our Yes and No. Our true ‘no’ and ‘yes’ so often violate our unconscious social contracts and identity. Tracking into these more primal instincts, we touch the wily contents and impulses of the ecological body. Somatic strategies from contact improvisation to embodied imagery develop our ethical eye beyond moralised notions of who we think we are or should be. While Jung calls this process individuation, Japanese butoh dancers refer to this dance with the forces of fate as the personal flower unfurling.

What is the Imaginal Body in Archetypal Psychology?


The images that possess us or bowl us over, and from which we move, arise from the unconscious and echo the ambivalent desires of the soul. James Hillman calls the continuum of uncertainty that precedes and gives rise to reality the imaginal realm. Speaking of the archetypal and animating forces of the imaginal that rupture our sense of control, he follows the ancients, by referring to them as the gods. Turning with love towards the images of soul that emerge with the body through rupture, our human suffering and confusion is bound in an electric and erotic dance with the divine.

FACILITATOR

Nico Athene’s knowledge and approach to the negotiated space of the ‘between’ and the embodied imaginal has woven and deepened with involvement in ritual performance, contact improvisation, butoh dance, and consent-through-touch. With a BA in Social Anthropology (University of Cape Town), Athene began her exploration into consent and embodiment research, developing it through her work in the sex industry, as well as achieving a Masters Degree with distinction in Fine Art (University of Witwatersrand). Her thesis, Approximating Unknowns as an Ethics Towards Encountering Difference, explored archetypes of the ecological body and included improvised scenes of dialogue and enmeshment with (in)animate landscapes, as a means to deconstruct colonial strategies of subject/object relations.

She now works as a performer, visual artist, and facilitator. Athene has performed as a dancer in multiple ritual productions (including several Brett Bailey productions and a collaboration with Tossie Van Tonder), and has exhibited her work in a number of galleries. She has taught privately, at Wits University under a grant from the Centre for the Humanities and Arts, Baard University, and for the Centre for Applied Jungian Studies. Her on-going study of Butoh and post-Jungian theory continues to invigorate her research into the possibilities of the imagining body as a place for relationship with the mysteries of soul and the animist cosmos.

GUEST LECTURER


For most of the first half of her life, Nan McAughey directed her love of intensity and altered states through drama and physical theatre, working for years with the Market Theatre Laboratory and Moving into Dance Company in Johannesburg. This culminated in a Masters with distinction in Site-specific Living Heritage and Ritual Drama that challenged patriarchal and apartheid constructs of identity. Her final production before she left the public stage, was a techno-ritual opera called earthdiving, that she wrote and co-directed with BBC director Nancy Duiguid, for the Spier New Opera Season in 2002.

With an eye for multiplicity and madness just below the surface, her work then developed into the hands-on practice of Imaginalbody Therapy. This practice combines the living wisdom of an energy medicine called Jin Shin Jyutsu, with alchemic and mythic reflection. An ever deepening fascination with the theatre of psyche and its mythic roots informs the rituals and practical tools she offers clients. Learning to dialogue with imaginal forces within their afflictions, and holding the tensions between who they think they are and what is making itself known, they learn to live into the intensity of their entanglements, and dance with the mysterious workings of the creative spirit forever in search of soul. Imagination becomes medicine. Nan’s work extends into creative processes, dance, ritual and excursion into wild nature, to rediscover a sense of ethical belonging to the indigenous mysteries of wild soul.

WHAT TO EXPECT

• Deep diving into somatic patterns of desire, touch, intimacy, and the power dynamics that bind you.
• Exploration of consent work, and limit consent.
• Understanding the story of rupture and its value for deepening psyche.
• Techniques for moving with other bodies to enhance lovemaking, as a way of soul-making, with others and with the animate world.
• Uncovering soul stories and reflective weaving of the imaginal.
• Practicing noble silence where we live without dialogue.

Our dance floor overlooks beautiful nature. Imagine wood fires, clean spaces, and spacious time at our venue in Sedgefield, on the Garden Route. It is a 6 hour car drive from Cape Town; 30 min from Knysna or George. The nearest airport is George airport.

Accommodation in luxury canvas tents with two people sharing. A limited number of cabins are available at a small extra cost. These are larger spaces if that is your preference. Single occupancy is also possible at additional rates. Please enquire if you would like more information about these alternative spaces and costs. The early bird gets the worm.

Invigorating Food: We are also delighted to announce that gourmet chef Megan Swan will be catering for our time together. A classically trained private chef, she is renowned for crafting delectable dishes from beautiful, local ingredients. Her culinary adventures have taken her to stunning destinations worldwide, where she shares her passion for food and travel with the families who hire her. From sourcing the perfect tomato in the Hamptons to exploring the vibrant flavours of South Africa, Megan’s journey blends discovery with the art of cooking.

COSTS & PAYMENT PLANS

FULL PRICE: R13,000 before 11 May.
INTERNATIONAL: $750

A deposit of R5000 secures spot.

Additional costs for requested accommodation.

Spaces limited, so book soon.