Play with Power & Gender through Dance
a 3 month spiritual kinky dance immersion
Intros: Jan 6, 3 - 6 pm & Feb 17, 3 - 6 pm ❤️ Spring 2024 Immersion: Feb 24 - May 25
Our last cohort was epic and had a long waitlist. We have space for 16 new dancers to join us this fall, Sept 23 - Dec 16! Meet quality folx from across the larger Bay Area.
Curious if this is for you?
Do you love connecting on the dance floor?
Are you interested in Dominance & submission as a spiritual path?
Are you seeking new sensual playful connections? Or want to go deeper with your existing loves? (You may come solo or with partner(s))
Do you love deconstructing white supremacy patriarchal monogamous culture and replacing it with a culture of love?
Do you value secure attachment & conscious relationship design?
If your heart lit up reading these... you might feel called to join us this fall!
What does it look like ?
Power dynamics are present all the time, kink is about making power dynamics exquisitely clear, creative, consensual, and passionate. We will deconstruct how being socialized as a woman or a man has shaped our desires and our beliefs about power and safety. We will explore conscious power play through danced duets. Want to adventure into desires that are at the edge of your comfort with a compassionate and present companion? Curious about embodying your dominant energy or your submissive energy in the dance?
This immersion invites us to contribute to each others’ erotic courage, vulnerability, and playful expression so we can create more meaningful intimacy. We will explore through curated dance duets, cultural deconditioning, relational attunement and desire skills. You are free to discover and ask for what you really want in a compassionate space that does not shame your wants. This is also an empowering space to say “no” to strengthen your boundaries and voice them with certainty. We will be practicing consent as we learn how to create a culture of shame resilience, attune to our own eros and healthy limits, track the nervous system of a partner, distinguish who touch is for, and explore our gender expression. Please note while we may share erotic energy we will be keeping our underwear on.
Watch this 12 min video on 5 things I wish I learned earlier as a kinky poly lover that I offer you through Play
Benefits
Create more meaningful intimacy in your life
Discover more about who you are in relationship and sex
Celebrate, explore and expand your experience of gender
Learn and practice conscious power dynamics that turn you on in your sex, your heart, and your soul
Experience a brave, compassionate, and playful community to explore your pleasure
Attune to your own eros and healthy limits
Practice communicating your desires, feedback, and appreciation
Practice receiving others’ desires, feedback, and appreciation
Distinguish who touch is for in this moment
Grow your skills as a lover to track the nervous system of a beloved and yourself simultaneously
Create a culture of shame resilience and respect around sexuality
Grow a sexually mature village together dedicated to personal & cultural liberation
Bring more clarity and ease to your relationships by building secure attachment skills
Spring 2024 cohort dates
Intros (all applicants are required to attend 1 intro if you have not already)
Sat, Jan 6, 3 - 6 pm
Sat, Feb 17, 3 - 6 pm
Immersion
Sat, Feb 24, 3 - 7 pm
Sun*, March 10, 1 - 5 pm
Sat, March 23, 3 - 7 pm
Sat, April 6, 3 - 7 pm
Sat, April 13, 1 - 7 pm
Sun*, April 14, 1 - 7 pm
Sat, April 27, 3 - 7 pm
Sat, May 11, 3 - 7 pm
Sat, May 25, 1 - 5 pm
Optional two 30 min 1:1 coaching sessions with Z
1 to 3 hours of homework assignments after each session to practice & integrate what we learn. This includes both solo & small group assignments to deepen connection with other participants.
Arc of Village Sessions
Please note this is an emergent village experience. The arc below may evolve or shift in response to what will best serve the group.
Homework: Read relational agreement handout & check in with your inner circle.
1: Welcome
Welcoming each other & orienting to where we each are on our journey
Where are you on your sexual journey?
Where are you on your relational journey?
What called you to this village exploration?
What called me to create this village (including performance ritual)
Clarify your personal intention for the immersion
What is kink?
Exploring energetic erotic consent (without touch)
The magic of the Dom & sub archetypes
Homework: Relational Mapping (option to join online Relational Mapping class)
2: When it feels really good, you’ll see me…
Share your Relational Maps
Dancing to enliven eros in the body
Observing arousal in our body
Learning to communicate what arousal looks & sounds like
Dancing our arousal with sacred group witness
Grads join (5 - 7 pm) What did you harvest? What would you have wanted to know when you first started this immersion?
Dancing kink duets all together
Homework: Social Locator
3: How have we been socialized? Reclaiming eros & who we really are
What did you discover with the social locator?
How are you both marginalized & normalized?
What has been invisible that wants to be seen?
How might we be socialized away from our eros & desires?
Homework: listen to Alok, journal on gender questions
4: Gender: expanding from the socialized self to the magical self
Where are you on your gender journey?
Affinity groups for folx who were “assigned & raised male” or “assigned & raised female”
Drag performance (dance for gender liberation)
How we existed before gender (innocence of the embryo)
Playing with how we embody gender (walking in different clothes with guided imagery)
5: Gender: welcoming grads to join us
Playing with how we embody gender (walking in different clothes with guided imagery)
The power of village witness to enliven our self expression (dancing our gender expression)
Exploring gender expression as a Dom
Exploring gender expression as a sub
Dancing kink duets as a different gender
Homework: listen to Audre Lorde, journal on questions
6: Energy & breath orgasm
Senses as a call to presence
Reconnect with your personal intention for this immersion
Chi machine: opening to erotic aliveness
Orienting to the river more than the rocks (focusing on desire more than “blocks”)
Demo
Group energy & breath orgasm ritual
Energetic sex (whole body queer energy exchange with clothes on)
“Heart fucking”
Negotiating & creating dance duets
Homework: sex magic practice
7: Eros for collective liberation
Playing at the pace of presence (attunement skills)
Dancing in duets for the pleasure of the sub
Dancing in duets for the pleasure of the Dom
Kink as a liberation path & attunement culture
Homework: practice negotiating & creating a dance scene
8: What you really really want will set you free… will set us free
Voicing the desires we have discovered in this series
Shame resilience & fantasy sharing
Dancing our fantasies
Grads & special guests join (5 - 7 pm) invite 1 or 2 folx you are close with
Reflections on how our group has contributed to your relationship(s)
Lightly guided dance duets
Homework: reflection questions
9: Integration & Gratitude
Harvests & celebrations
Desires for what’s next
Dancing duets with group witnessing & appreciations
Sweet ending together
Why is it 9 sessions?
The consistency and spaciousness of our rhythm offers an opportunity to build secure attachment skills and relational wisdom in a way that does not happen in a one time retreat or festival. I have been developing and touring this work since 2016. It has been a featured offering at 4 different Touch&Plays, a festival exploring the relational body through dance. It was so well received that it grew to tour Western Massachusetts, Asheville, NC, Portland, OR, New York City, Oakland, CA, Washington, DC, Berlin, and Copenhagen. After years of touring this work for a weekend or week long intensive I began to notice that some people were having a lot of fun during the week and then having a lot of challenges, harm, and disorientation trying to practice this level of intimacy in their ongoing lives. I saw people who focused on festivals and retreats (like the ones I was attending) often struggle to build the ongoing local relationships they longed for. I saw painful break ups. I saw entire communities rupture without knowing how to repair. I saw resignation and isolation in some cases where people contracted into a hyper independence. I saw others become lost, traveling constantly in search of “home.” What was happening to our beloved community between the retreats? The pandemic offered a profound opportunity for us to discover more about our relationships. I started to learn more about secure attachment, relational repair, and community resilience. I witnessed who was thriving in relationship over the years and who was in a loop of relational intensity and rupture… What awareness, skills, and practice could I weave into this body of work to better strengthen our local village and ongoing life relationships? I called in a circle of my nearest and dearest (many of whom I met through festivals) and we began an embodied book club for Jessica Fern’s Polysecure: attachment, trauma, and consensual non monogamy. It was so extraordinary we did it a second time. I met with Jessica Fern to discuss secure attachment in the sexuality and kink field! I have redesigned and evolved this work to better serve you all. This is the training and village deepening I wish we had access to earlier. It gives me indescribable joy to bring this to you.
Investment for new cohort
This group is intentionally small and not for everyone. This is an advanced training and village building experience. Investing is not just about money, it’s about choosing to focus your time and energy to grow your relationships, your sexual expression, your embodiment of pleasure, and your sense of village. Tuition ranges from $2500 to $5500 based on your financial resources. Monthly payment plans are available. If you are called and the only challenge is money, email Z to chat!
Testimonials
There is so much possibility for safety-making, discovery of desire and authenticity, and transforming our experience of these bodies in the care of community with the ritual guidance of Z, the worlds we dream of feel possible! - Bea, sex & reproductive health educator
These tools & practices awakened parts of my identity I longed to have the space to explore. - Alex Kennedy
Z’s passion for liberation through dance power and play is contagious. They bring spaces alive with their magical presence. - Joy Jaco LMFT
Z has a vastness of embodied wisdom, and a compassionate, yet clear and firm leadership style. Their awareness of systemic oppression and realities inform this playful gender-bending, work that at the core is about love, connection and liberation for all! - Julia, filmmaker & activist
Brought so much clarity, discernment, and opportunities for authentic connection. I found depth and ease exploring my own edges & the edges of our beautiful collective group in a playful boundaried and creative way. - Rebecca Studer
I discovered a new found respect through experiential learning for gender expression and the value of eros that will serve me in both personal and professional context to create more inclusion, inspiration and love in the world. - Daniel Swid, facilitator
About Z
Zahava Griss (also known as Z, pronouns they/them) has been facilitating dance and sexual empowerment since 1999. Z is the founder of Embody More Love, a spiritual kinky dance community for personal and cultural liberation. You may read my full bio here.