Cocréa: Mindful Partner Dance with Special Guest Odessa Avianna Perez

Very excited to announce my collaborator, Odessa Avianna Perez will be in town and joining me for this workshop! Come explore connection in motion. Partner Dance, Contact Improv and Embodied Relationship This day-long workshop is all about learning how to dance in partnership. Wren and Odessa bring their decades-deep experience in contact improv and partner dance to this connection-based learning space. Deep listening, relational intelligence building and energetic attunement skills will be emphasized. We’ll use techniques from an array of dance styles as a vehicle for exploring subtle energies, and having a blissfully good time moving together. Cocréa was originally imagined as a bridging modality for dancers from social partner dance circles and ecstatic/”conscious” dance circles to meet on any dance floor and experience nourishing connection. It has grown into an intentional, holistic modality that empowers the individual to grow resilient within community and society and liberate expression within relationship, nurturing authentic connection and right relationship, and honor and relate well with our environment. It is about exploring our connection to that inexplicable sense that we are part of a much bigger whole through this miraculous vessel of our bodies. Wren LaFeet brings 23+ years of physical exploration and experience in the performing and somatic arts to his facilitation. Tools he envisions offering into this space include Suzuki physical theater, Viewpoints, Contact Improvisation, Blues Fusion, mindful movement practices for generating collective intelligence and a new emergent synthesis he is calling, Ecstatic Access. Odessa weaves wisdom streams of 3+ decades of dance and movement, 10 years of energy healing and bodywork experience, and a masters-level education in somatic psychology. Her tool box includes polyvagal theory, attachment theory, nervous system regulation, somatic resourcing, contact improvisation, modern dance (release technique, bartenieff), and trauma- informed and inclusive facilitation practices. No partner necessary. All experience levels welcome. DATE AND TIME Sunday, Sept. 15th Workshop: 2pm - 6pm Doors close at 2:00. Please arrive on time! EXCHANGE $77 Early Bird $99 Day Of LOCATION The Center SF 548 Fillmore St. SF Cocréa social: https://linktr.ee/cocrea.dance.official **no refunds or exchanges are available for this event - you can sell or gift your ticket to a friend** FACILITATORS WREN LAFEET Wren is an embodiment guide intent on learning how to be in right-relationship as a 21st century human so he can best serve life. A trained dancer and theater worker, Wren shares body-based practices synthesized from social partner dance, mindfulness, Taoism, the Gene Keys, watersheds, neuroscience and psychology that support interpersonal connection and positive change. In 2013, Wren co-founded Cocréa with Antje Schäfer as a vehicle for exploring mindful, consent based relational practice through movement and dance. Channeling this intelligence, he creates brave spaces for humans struggling with disconnection and longing for a deeper sense of belonging to come home to themselves through the body. Wren’s own many years of seeking have led him through theater and filmmaking, circus, nomadism, psychedelic-informed music culture, consent culture, decolonization work, permaculture and most presently, addiction recovery counseling. Along his path, nature, community, relationship, humor, movement and a sense of belonging to something far larger and more unknowable than this seemingly separate self are the consistent threads with which Wren braids meaning and purpose into life. He is a TEDx speaker, featured author in "ReInhabiting the Village", certified Attunement Therapy practitioner and HeartMath certified trauma sensitive educator. Wren is currently in transition from living on the unceded lands of the Awaswas and Amun Mutsen peoples (Santa Cruz, CA) to the traditional unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations (Vancouver, BC). He has been dancing since 1998 and began performing on stage when he was 6 years old. He recently completed working with Embodied Recovery as a substance use disorder counselor in Los Gatos, CA. ODESSA AVIANNA PEREZ Odessa Avianna Perez, MA, LMFT, is a trauma-informed somatic psychotherapist, embodiment and social justice educator who helps individuals and groups heal from fragmentation and remember agency, magic, and belonging. She holds a masters in Somatic Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies and triple bachelor degrees in Dance, Theater Arts, and Sociology from Rutgers University. Odessa has been guiding movement-based groups into deeper self-knowing and embodiment for over 20 years, starting first as a choreographer and director of an interdisciplinary dance company dedicated to emergent, improvisational, and self-revelatory performance. Coming from a dance performance background, Odessa’s interest started to shift towards mindful, authentic and explorative movement methodology when she stumbled into her first Contact Improv dance at a jam in New York City. She has been practicing and teaching Contact Improvisation as a form of self inquiry and relationship alchemy since 2010. Odessa is deeply curious about the intersection of personal and collective trauma, collective nervous system states and expression, and how we can use somatics and dance to integrate our trauma for better relationship, community and planet. She has facilitated workshops at dozens of retreats and festivals throughout California and internationally, using somatics, movement, and contact improvisation as the platform through which to explore safety, relationship, building capacity for discomfort, interdependence and inclusion. In her psychotherapeutic private practice, she weaves somatics, movement, interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory, attachment work, and social and racial justice frameworks into her work with individuals and couples. She is the Inclusion and Belonging lead for SoulPlay festivals and currently resides in Tongva/Kizh territory – aka Los Angeles, CA.