Join us
Come for this unique experience.
We're preparing a special event for you
From a Brazilian Zouk dancer to Brazilian Zouk dancers
Join us for this special Tuning In Weekender on May 31 and June 1!
This special event for Brazilian zouk dancers will enhance your sensitivity and creativity by exploring a combination of Thai Massage, Contact Improv & Brazilian Zouk.
The Premise
The more we learn about the different modalities of movement and healing arts that connect two or more people, the more we notice how much they converge in their technical and philosophical elements. As we learn and practice, we can observe how such elements help to find a true, easy, and comfortable connection through the mindful observation of one's body and the effect on the other person's. We start to see:
how tension brings tension and can convey discomfort,
how relaxation brings relaxation and can convey calm, and
that there is a relationship between using only the necessary amount of effort and creating comfort.
Brazilian Zouk is a movement art form and partner dance that incorporates a wide range of movements and sensations by engaging the entire body. While learning and practicing Brazilian Zouk, at times it's easy to get caught up in patterns and forget important elements that can create a joyful dance experience using less to its maximum.
What It Is
We bring you the ‘Tuning In Weekender’ with the everlasting goal to bring to Brazilian Zouk dancers diverse tools to find out more about their bodies and movement, spark creativity, connect with themselves and their partners in subtle ways, and - hopefully - increase sensitivity.
Designed by Gui Prada with the support of District Zouk, this event integrates Thai Massage and Contact Improv principles to bring about the goals laid out above. Each presents teachings and practices that can enhance your Brazilian Zouk dance experience by creating a powerful integration of technique, attunement, sensitivity, patience, and flow.
Benefits for Brazilian Zouk Dancers
Enhanced partner connection and sensitivity: Learn to perceive and respond to subtle cues from your partner.
Improved body awareness, flexibility, and movement quality: Move with greater ease, grace, and control.
Expanded movement vocabulary and creative expression: Break out of habitual patterns and explore new possibilities.
Deeper understanding of non-verbal communication: Connect with your partner on a more intuitive level.
The Structure
The Tuning in Weekender will be a different kind of intensive. Although we'll be together for many hours, there will be ample time for rest, and the classes will follow a calmer pace.
Each day will have the following schedule:
11:00 am to 1:00 pm - Thai Massage
1:00 pm to 2:00 pm - Break
2:00 pm to 3:30 pm - Contact Improv
3:00 pm to 3:45 pm - Break
3:45 pm to 5:15 pm - Brazilian Zouk
5:15 pm to 6:45 pm - Practica
This weekender is designed to be taken as a whole and progressively. Therefore, there will be no day passes.
The Classes
Thai Massage
Our Thai Massage classes will be guided by Elise Foster. She will walk us through the foundational principles of Thai Massage, opening the doors to this beautiful healing art form of compassionate touch, receptivity, and communication. Connecting breath with movement, givers use their own body weight, gravity, and leverage to stretch or release muscles, making this modality of massage simple and accessible to everyone. Both giving and receiving Thai massage can be cathartic and restorative, and often becomes like a meditation for the giver—prompting a greater exploration of intuition as to what their receiver needs and metta (loving kindness).
Given the time it takes to explain, embody, and drop in, our Thai Massage classes will have no partner rotations. Our goal is for participants to have time to practice, find their flow with their partners, and get the chance to observe the interconnections between Thai Massage and Brazilian Zouk. During the classes, each person will have the opportunity to give and receive Thai massage.
We're excited to offer this opportunity for people to connect through caring for the other's body by using their own in a mindful, attentive way. As you soften into the practice, as a giver or a receiver, you will cultivate trust, sensitivity, and metta (loving kindness) within yourself and within others.
Contact Improv
Our Contact Improv classes will be guided by Ken Manheimer. Similarly to Thai massage, he'll guide us through Contact Improv's guiding principles and exercises to help us get in touch with the endless possibilities that this movement art form provides.
We'll have multiple partner rotations in these classes. It'll be important to experience the exercises with different people. Being organized around coordinated improvisation, Contact Improv depends on participants tuning in to their own movements and, through physical contact, the movements of their partners. Our goal is to foster tuning in to mutuality - cultivating shared presence that enables shared agency.
We're very excited to offer these classes. Contact Improv principles are closely related to Brazilian Zouk's as well as other partner dances, and we can't wait for participants to find the connections.
Brazilian Zouk
Our Brazilian Zouk classes will be guided by Gui Prada. We're going to see how the concepts, practices and exercises learned during the day with Thai Massage and Contact Improv can impact our Brazilian Zouk dance.
We'll use similar exercises - now adapted to our dance - and bring new layers of creativity, sensitivity, and connection. Our goal is to have our partner dance feel different in all the good ways, and see how the movements we already do and the ones we will learn can be permeated with general principles of attunement and presence with the body.
Recommendations
- We recommend not eating a heavy meal for an hour or two before the Thai Massage class in the morning.
- Please bring one yoga mat and blanket per person for your comfort since the receiver will be primarily lying down on the floor.
- Wear comfortable and stretchy cotton clothing. Thai Massage and Contact Improv involve being on the floor and cotton tends to provide a slight bit of traction so we don’t slide off of one another too easily when providing structural support.
Who Should Attend
This training is designed for Brazilian Zouk dancers who want to enhance their social dancing skills. The focus is on developing adaptability and sensitivity to key elements such as posture, weight transfers, axis awareness, touch, and presence. By transcending specific dance techniques, participants will learn general techniques applicable to all forms of movement involving two people.
Prior Brazilian Zouk experience is required. One must know the basics of the dance and regularly attend socials or practicas.
This is not an event for Brazilian Zouk newcomers or those seeking to learn new patterns.
Event Details
Date: May 31 - June 1
Time: 11 am to 6:45 pm both days
Location: Dance Loft on 14 (4618 14th St NW, Washington, DC 20011)
Cost: $135-180 (Tiered pricing, limited tickets available)
Register
Maximum Number of Participants: 40 (20 leaders and 20 followers)
Your Instructors
Elise Foster
In 2011, Elise "flew" for the first time and immediately fell in love with AcroYoga and its lineage of yoga, acrobatics, and Thai Massage. Like nothing else she has experienced, these practices have the ability to transform lives. As an AcroYoga and Thai Massage teacher, Elise aims to bring the joy, power, and healing energy that these practices have brought into her life to others.
Elise is a teacher of Tantra Hatha Yoga, AcroYoga, and Traditional Thai Yoga. She teaches in the DC area and is available for private, semi-private and group lessons.
Ken Manheimer
Ken have been practicing Contact Improvisation and related collaborative movement improvisation since encountering CI at an extracurricular college course in 1979. Since that time he has regularly attended CI gatherings - jams - and studied with central CI developers, including particularly Nancy Stark Smith as well as many others. Along the way, he came to love Authentic Movement (initially studying with Sue Schell), Contemplative Dance Practice, and exploration of ensemble scores. As his jam participation and studies continued he gradually migrated into centrally facilitating the local DC jam (dccontactimprov.net) and a nearby regional jam (eastcoastjam.com). He also has taken on opportunities to teach CI and organize Authentic Movement in ongoing classes, retreats, workshops, and dance festivals.
Gui Prada
Gui started his partner dance journey in 2004. In 2006 his intense training began at the Jaime Aroxa Dance Studio in Rio de Janeiro where he studied for 6 years, and since then dance has been in his life non-stop.
He trained in several partner dance modalities, including Bolero, Samba de Gafieira, Soltinho, Forró, Tango, and Brazilian Zouk, learning from remarkable teachers in Brazil who always took a multidisciplinary approach to teaching dance. Therefore, Gui developed an understanding of dance that goes beyond the specific techniques of each.
Over time, Gui focused on how to create and enhance comfort in the dance and use the basic steps to their maximum. In 2017, Gui moved to Washington DC, and started his career as a local and international Brazilian Zouk Instructor.
Over the years, Gui developed special workshops called “The Universe Behind the Hug”, Parts I and II, Finding Zouk, Embrace Zouk Weekender, Embrace Zouk Online, Partner Dancing through the Eyes of Non-Violent Communication, and the Leaders Intensive Training, which together toured 30+ cities around the US and the world. Today, Gui is based in Washington DC, US, developing the local community with regular, weekly, and progressive classes. He became a reference in the execution of clean, comfortable fundamentals and its understanding of close connection, both from a physical and mental perspective. Gui is also one of the regular instructors of Alex de Carvalho’s MAC program, where he teaches new instructors how to learn, talk about, and teach connection.