Event Phone: 415-377-6239

Dance as Medicine presents: Spring Synergy

We are really excited to present to you a delightful evening of “Spring Synergy” to enliven your spirit, connect deeply with others, dance your booty off, have fun and PLAY!

We have several INCREDIBLE class facilitators in the first part of the night – Michael McDonald and Keith Hennessy, who will drop you into your body, mind & spirit and connect you to your highest self.

Then we’ll have an Ecstatic dance with THE BEST – DJ Dragonfly – in the latter part of the night. Dragonfly is known for his incredibly synergistic sets that range from ‘Ecstatic-Liquid-Groove’ to ‘Transglobal-Ghetto-Whomp’. Be prepared to “get down with your bad self!”

There will be a beautiful chill lounge plush with couches, mood lighting and ambient music + delicious food & clothing vendors available for the duration of the evening.

The layout of the evening:

7-7:30pm – arrival
7:30-9pm – Contact Improv/Healing Play class w/Keith Hennessy
or Radical Intimacy (Authentic Relating) class w/Michael
McDonald
9-10:45pm – Dance journey w/DJ Dragonfly
10:45-11pm – Sound healing and integration

Come for all of it or just the parts you desire. You are welcome to choose, though we encourage you to get the full experience.

Tickets are on sale NOW for $43 here.  They will increase to $45 day of.
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Our presenters for the evening:

Michael McDonald – Radical Intimacy (http://authenticintegrity.com)

Radical Intimacy is the art of creating an unusual amount of intimacy with people, an evolution of personal growth into relational growth. (By ‘intimacy’ I mean *all* human-to-human intimacy, even those micro-connections with strangers, not just romantic or community relations.) The flow of this experience, refined over the last 10+yrs, is a relational reset – a journey from the body and the personal into the intimate, keeping connection primary underneath your everyday interactions. We will be exploring falling in love, deepening our listening and vulnerability, profoundly seeing and being seen, and having fun!

Michael McDonald is a transformational coach for entrepreneurs and executives, helping them flourish with more ease, authenticity, and inspiration. He is the creator of Relational Alchemy and has been leading events in the Bay Area, at Burning Man and other festivals, and for teams since 2011.

Keith Hennessy – Healing Play (https://circozero.org/)

A contact improvisation (CI) class for all levels of experience that integrates deep somatic attention with playfully curious movement. The basic practice is a duet dance in which mutual touch and shared weight is non-verbally negotiated in real time – a dance of improvised connection.

Prioritizing improvisation and collaboration we will play in the forests of dancing and healing. There are ancient grandmother trees there. There are baby sprouts of new life growing. There is death and transformation, fire and wind. The class will engage, both in our experimental play and in our embodied “conversations,” with land, ancestors, power, consent, pleasure, belonging, justice, and community. Healing Play centers consent (mutual agreement) and empathy (feeling together) towards a goal of solidarity (caring for Others). Dancing together in ever-shifting physical and energetic contact can inspire states of expansive embodied awareness, playful curiosity, awkward intimacy, magical flow, energetic attunement, and feeling at home in a body in this world.

Keith Hennessy, MFA, PhD, is a frolicker, imperfectionist, and witch, playing in the fields of improvised dance, queer performance, affordable housing, and erotic healing. Keith started dancing CI in 1979 and has been studying and troubling the practice ever since. Raised in Canada, living in Ramaytush Ohlone territory/San Francisco since 1982, he tours widely. Using improvisation, ritual, collaboration, and protest, Keith instigates queer embodied experiences that respond to political crises. Hennessy directs Circo Zero, co-founded the performance/culture spaces 848 and CounterPulse, and was a member of Sara Mann’s Contraband, 1985-1994. He is broadly recognized for his teaching and contributions to CI, contemporary dance, political healing, queer and politically-engaged performance

DJ Dragonfly

“My sets are like an intimate conversation; a dialogue, not a monologue. I never plan in advance what I am going to spin as my motivation is ‘the moment’, that place in time where the party, the people, the vibe, the soundsystem, the hour, the venue all conjoin as the unique ingredients alchemized by the music”.

“Breaking the DJ mold of the single tempo experience, I drop an amalgamation of bass culture’s most embraced genres with a fearless twist on tempo.Trap, Drum n Bass, House (tech/funky), Breaks, Dub, Downtempo, UK Funky Dubstep and Glitch Hop are all fused to an urban/indigenous Third World vibe where his signatory dancefloor grip ranges from “Ecstatic-Liquid-Groove” to “Transglobal-Ghetto-Whomp”.

Two decades on the circuit Dragonfly has performed with many of the dance scene’s most pioneering and resilient producers: Bassnectar, Ott, Krafty Kuts, Opiuo, PhuturePrimitive, Gaudi, Vibesquad, Freq Nasty, Adam Freeland, Cheb I Sabbah, Bluetech, Tipper, Karsh Kale, David Starfire, Random Rab, Nickodemus, Dunkelbunt, and many more!