Team

As a child I had a strong focus on meditation, Aikido, Chi Gung and yoga. After spending 10 years studying Aikido, I fell in love with Contact Improv, and have now been dancing (very often) and teaching (occasionally) CI for 25 years. I am driven to combine contact with other practices, including water dance, acro, and other forms of touch. My main job is in biofeedback (measuring and changing emotional, mental and physical states), where I founded a clinical biofeedback company, and also manage a home-use biofeedback company which combines meditation with biofeedback and AI. I’ve also studied Tantra, Non-Violent Communication, and holistic health, and have co-organized various community bodywork and dance gatherings. I often find it hard to approach new people and start a conversation, or use words to ask for things that feel vulnerable, and am more comfortable connecting through touch and movement. But also I try to rebel against my own shyness and follow quiet impulses to use words to create connection.

Hi, I’m Jukka and I feel like a housepet of Touch&Play Cologne. Building my life in Germany since 2021, I have been searching for and trying to create a space where I would feel home. Joining T&P Cologne 2024 for the first time as a teacher, I realised that I found it – a place where people speak my language, where I can be my colourful, dark, chaotic, responsible, touchy, getting easily overwhelmed, intro- and extraverted self. Serving as inclusivity lead at T&P 2025, I felt like I am contributing with what I do best – being there, listening, reaching out, bringing in, and building bridges. This year I feel incredibly honoured to be able to help in more dimensions! Touch&Play Cologne is my home and I am very happy to be there for it!

Outside of Touch&Play you can see me dancing CI in Cologne, helping create Eurix – an international rope festival, teaching rope in Germany and Spain, crafting candles for wax play, performing and doing lots of other fun things. I jump between the worlds of body practices, business and education, and doing research in neurodiversity at the workplace.

I love exploring contact between people and am very curious about group dynamics. And these are also my main spheres of vulnerability: I am often afraid to be too much, too loud, too colourful, afraid not to fit in. So afraid that I either take on leading positions in groups or exclude myself right away. From my first day there, T&P became a place for me to play around with these vulnerabilities, and I am looking forward to the next turn of this journey!

Hey, I’m Nele. I’m pretty new to the Touch&Play universe – I’ve only participated once, as part of the helpers team – but that experience really touched me. I could fully lean into it; I felt deeply connected to myself and surrounded by such a beautiful bunch of humans. It was a deeply healing space that opened up completely new perspectives for me.

I studied Sociology and Educational Science, and now I work as a social worker. My heart is in exploring what more openness, connection, and empathy can awaken in people.

When it comes to vulnerability, I have plenty of practice material. I grew up with body image issues and self-doubt that still echo through my life. I often feel like I’m too much or not enough — sometimes both at once. But I’m learning to laugh about it, to meet myself with kindness, and to remember that this messy humanness connects us all.

I rebel against a culture that tells us to hide our softness, to compete instead of care, to treat self-love as suspicious. Creating spaces where vulnerability is welcomed feels like a political act to me — because healing starts there. Gentle people make a gentler world, and that, to me, is quiet but powerful rebellion.

As a philosopher and conflict mediator, I bring a deep commitment to dialogue, understanding, and collective growth. My role within the Peace Council is to cultivate a culture of mutual respect and perspective-sharing—especially within the festival team, where diverse viewpoints can become a source of enrichment rather than tension.

During the event, I’ll also be available as a point of contact for everyone in case of interpersonal conflict and/or consent violations. My aim is to listen with care, mediate with clarity, and help restore connection where it’s needed.

I believe resolution to conflict is not found in strength, but in vulnerability, which we often confuse with weakness. Let’s be rebels and not make that mistake.  I’m looking forward to supporting that spirit throughout the gathering.

I move somewhere between contact improvisation, circus, and the sweet mess of touch and connection.

I’m pretty serious about not getting too serious.

I’m learning to soften the alpha echoes in me and practicing how to listen with my whole body (it’s louder than I thought).

Sometimes I get scared of being “too much” — or of talking to people I find attractive — and then I just dance it out.

I trust our team, the awkward moments, and the power of vulnerable exploration.

Mostly, I believe in the magic of well-structured not-knowing.

Social Entrepreneur, Community leader, Practical Idealist with an MD. and Ph.D. in Tropical Medicine. He’s been dancing, playing, meditating and conversing Contact Improvisation (CI) for over 20 years. He is the founder of the Touch&Play Movement and the Vidàlia eco-village outside Barcelona. He is the current Executive Director of Earthdance the oldest CI based Intentional Community located in Western Massachusetts and partner in CAMP an arts and cultural retreat center on the Coast of Oaxaca. He’s been exploring the intricacies of the Relational Body for over 15 years and is committed to building a more peaceful and authentic world through his social entrepreneurial and creative endeavors.