28 May -2 June 2024
Your hosts
ANNE MARIA POPANDA
Anni is dedacted deeply to exploring the realms of being human. She spent the last 15 years traveling intensively, learning from inter-cultural experiences, relationships, understandings… and studying various ancient traditions such as Yoga, Tantra (Kashmiri Shivaism), Thai Yoga Bodywork, Ayurveda, Vipassana, Shamanism along with modern somatic approaches and embodiment practices. She is Gestalt Therapist and Trauma sensitive Coach (Neurosystemic Integration), facilitator of various Workshops on the topic of (Sexual-) Self-Empowerment and passionate Dancer. In 2022 she organized the first Touch&Play Cologne gathering.
DANIEL JOSEPH HAYES
Dr. Daniel J. Hayes is a medical doctor and holds a Ph.D. from the Liverpool school of Tropical medicine where he engaged in Malaria research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He is also the founder of the Touch&Play Movement (www.touchandplay.org) and the Vidàlia eco-village an hour outside of Barcelona (www.vidalia.coop). He is the current Executive Director of the Earthdance Creative Living Project, an arts & cultural centre and the oldest contact Improvisation community in the world based in Western Massachusetts, USA. He’s been dancing and conversing CI for more than 20 years and exploring the intricacies of the Relational Body through Touch&Play for over 10 years. He is committed to building a more peaceful and authentic culture through his award winning social entrepreneurial and creative endeavours.
INGE VElDSCHOLTEN
I finished a university degree in cultural anthropology and conflict studies – while teaching snowboard- ing and gymnastics for a living. My love for life, people and teaching has since then developed towards holistic practices like ayurveda, yoga, bodywork and other forms of somatic movement and dance. For the past 13 years I have studied, practiced and taught these disciplines as well as contact improvisation, butoh, tantra, Rolfing, Trager approach, and some EFT, BMC and Paula method. I make a living off massage therapy and movement classes.
IGNACIO ALEM ZABALAGA
I’m 33 years old, born and raised in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I am part of a huge family, so I grew up with a sense of community and cooperation from the beginning.
I started meditation at the age of 12 and since then developed a very profound and personal relationship with myself and the unknown.
I currently work in family constellations, crystal therapy and staff leadership and coordination of the artisanal cheese Coop I founded. I started dancing CI four years ago, and met Inge, my partner with whom I have a polyamorous relationship.
TOUCH&PLAY GLOBAL
Queralt Jorba: T&P Global Coordinator
Mara: Social Media
ABOUT TOUCH&PLAY GLOBAL
In 2010, the founder of the Touch&Play Project, Daniel Hayes, organized the first Touch&Play festival in Berlin, Germany. It aimed to explore the ‘Chemistry in Contact’ and to create a safe and inspiring space to invite our emotions, sexualities, body politics and power dynamics into the dances.Since then Touch&Play has evolved to a worlwide movement of exploring “The Relational Body“.
Touch&Play is an international movement – a sexy, adventurous, embodied and deeply heart-centered family – that has found its way to Cologne.
T&P holds spaces open to dancers and players of all genders, abilities, ages, origins and sexualities. Many of the Touch&Play teachers who’ve helped shape this body of work over the years will return to co-create a container that feels both comfortable and challenging and where we can connect through a shared classical CI vocabulary, deep consent work and through the learning of new norms and forms that can enrich our dances, our relationships and our lives.
The main contents are:
- CI, Somatics & Dance
- Nature, Conscious Sexuality & Spirituality
- Boundaries, Consent & Power
- Tribe, Inclusivity & Sustainable Living
“Leave your relationships more beautiful than you found them.”