The Dancers' Village Vision

This initiative bases on a group of people who wish to facilitate and create a new example and quality of life communities.

We organize ourselves as an association, which runs and administers the site(s). We co-organize crowd-funding to buy the land together with established charitable foundations. The idea is in simple words to get the land out of private (and speculation) cycles, and give it back to the earth whose guests we are. The village(s) shall clearly serve the balance of humans and nature, and create as per our vision an example of how we may live a new, healthy and conscious life, and thereby fulfill our true own needs, dreams and happiness.

Our Vision

With a background of decades of Contact Improvisation, Dance and Bodywork, Therapies and Coachings, Community and Group work, we wish to create a place to live and to visit, where the wisdom of the body and of well-being joins a new balance in living with and from nature.

We wish to create places where we can experience healing and personal growth in a supportive community, grow into our own love for ourselves and the world, and enjoy life while serving a new world, which reaches a new and conscious equilibrium of the needs of us human beings and all other species on this earth. And not as a side effect, fulfill thereby our own needs, dreams and happiness.

The Dancer’s village is inspired by many ideas:

Physische Aspekte
Spirituelle Aspekte

Physical aspects

We aim to create a place of bliss and pleasure, a space in nature which we enjoy and take care of, a place where we live, love, dance, work, and just can be. A lot of what we may want to realize is inspired by other places and experiences, which may be best shown in pictures (which we may not show here). However, we want to name the following main aspects as physical realities in the Dancers’ Village:

Living ‘Paradise’ in garden and nature

The first Dancers’ Village shall be an area of 10-50 hectars, with spaces for private living, guest housing, dance floors, trees or forest, water as in lake or river, open gardens, and lots of structures outside. The connection to nature shall be present all over the place, finding not only hamacs, sauna, tree cabins and nice terraces outside, but also the kitchen, a bathtub, waterslide, and open dancefloors under the sky. The area will have clear privacy.
Solar power may ensure irrigation of gardens and agricultural land, private and guest houses may be simple wooden jurts or complete houses.
There will be suitable spaces for community life, open space, big tents, a lake to swim, a café.
The Dancers’ Village is intended to be embedded in a bigger nature landscape of quality.
Our current two projects fulfill so far some of these aspirations, the project Sommerecke in the Black Forest, Germany, is more a dancers' house, but situated in the middle of strong nature, while our project Vale Bacias in Alentejo, Portugal, is closer to the original vision, but currently still in a very eary build-up phase.
Before the foundation of the association, we have been piloting in Western Algarve near Aljezur, a landscape with very large beaches and cliffs at the atlantic ocean, big sand dune landscapes which inspire a sand desert, forests and meadows, hills and valleys. Our nature journeys starting in Vale Bacias still go visit that region.

15-20 Human Treasures

The people living on a permanent in the Dancers’ Village are dedicated to this life, all of them have years’ of experience in contact improvisation, consciousness work, and living in amidst the nature. They are each a treasure, peaceful and loving creatures, supporting community life and each other’s personal development, and offering their specific skills to guests.
Several villagers make their living out of activities outside of the village.

Guests welcome

We wish to welcome and accommodate guests at all times and in various forms.
We strive for a basic structure, where ~15 people can come and live here for a retreat time, e.g. of 4 weeks or 3 months, and participate in most parts of community life. They would live in simple structures such as guest rooms, wooden yurts, or a Bali house.
When we organize larger events such as major Jams or Festivals, more guests can come on a camping basis, roughly 100 people.
For shorter term guests, again the camping structure can be used. If you are a private guest of permanent villager in their housing, that’s possible anyways.
While some permanent villagers may make their living out of supporting the guest structures, the Dancers’ Village does not depend on guests to come, this is an offering.

Contact Improvisation and community rhythm

Contact Improvisation, and meditation, dance parties, sports, and many other sources of fun and body wisdom are always possible in the Dancers’ Village, and the major basis of community life. Contact Improvisation is a base vocabulary and focus of our presence here.
In the base rhythm of retreat life, in the mornings there will be Yoga or meditation session, followed by a lab or joint exploration in dance. The afternoon will be explicitly free for private life, your work, going to the beach or do whatever you may intend to do. In the evening we may have a Contact Jam, or a dance party, or another activity of choice. All community activities are an offering, you may stay private as you wish.
Festivals or other specific events will have their own agenda.

Eternal Silent Jam and other infrastructures

The ‘Eternal Silent jam’ is a holy space of silent dancing and meditation. It is open 24/365 to all residents and guests of the Dancers’ Village. It is a space for deep encountering yourself and others, with no judgement, with no words, but with experiencing your body.
The Eternal Silent Jam has become reality in our Vale Bacias project.
Many more infrastructures are envisaged, like warm water basins, a massage hut, a café, and physical workshops and hopefully a joint artist’s area.
We aim to have bikes to rent and a car sharing with electric cars fed by our own solar power.

Spiritual aspects

We are thankful for a rich spirituality which has developed and gained attention in large parts of our modern society, often searched for in the moments of despair of our modern life. A lot of background of our open and many-sourced spirituality comes from Buddhism, Hawaiian and American native traditions, but also modern science as ecology and consciousness research, and from huge lots of dancing contact improvisation. As main aspects of how our spiritual focus translates into our living in the Dancers’ Village, we wish to point out the following five main values and practices:

Balance with Nature

This is a very obvious urgent need for change for this world. Our current unconscious and careless economy-focused lifestyle damage our natural environment so strongly, that today more children, women and men die from environmental mis-conditions than from the still easily started horrific wars which mankind still performs as a manifestation of utter greediness and stupidity of the ego.
The ecological footprints of all ‘developed’ societies largely cover the earth and consume remaining health of all ecosystems. A remedy or re-orientation is not in sight.
In the Dancers’ Village, we will not only not spoil our environment, but contribute to heal the local existing ecosystem, re-forest grounds and foster the re-creation of healthy soil and humus, and healthy water balance. Besides perma-culture for man’s needs, we will create, respect and preserve nature areas which will be habitats for the local ‘wild’ species. Human activities will be in harmony and symbiosis with the habitat’s biodiversity. This practice of sustainability and consciousness needs to be re-learned, yet it was the tradition of indigenous european communities for centuries and e.g. from Aborigines in Australia for many thousands of years.

Re-Naturating ourselves

We will strive to not stay separate from nature, but become the daily part of nature we have always been. Many of our errors in encountering nature come from the understanding that we are separate – humans are not animals, and that our technologies are not nature themselves.
We will strive to overcome this separation in our minds, and live with the elements, experience the wind, sand, water and sun as much as we can. Most of us will for most part of the year not live in “their 4 walls”, but maybe with two, or in structures which are open to nature, in various degrees of isolation and shelter. We will dance with nature, dig our hands in earth, talk to the animals and plants, and listen, listen, …, listen. We aim to re-gain a rhythm that is healthier, more connected, more relaxed, more natural.
Together, the two above points, Balance with nature and Re-Naturating Ourselves, may one day enable gaining Unity with Nature. We know we have a far way to go.

Supportive in and for personal growth

All individuals in the Dancers’ Village acknowledge that a central goal of life is personal growth. We are here to create and gain consciousness, to overcome our doubts, traumas, and the restricted view and happiness of our egos.
Therefore, we strive for personal growth, to deploy our real being and love. We all know how much support we need in this path. We also know how joyful it is to see our beloved ones develop, unfold and grow. We are a community of people who love and support each other, with little judgement, and a lot of experience in this consciousness work and path. We create a field of healing, and invite all practices and wisdom which may help us to continue, and go beyond where we are. We believe in the existence of group souls, and aim to nourish our group and individual souls in this way.
Visitors who may have experienced some Contact Improvisation or related Festivals, like Easter Impro, Healing Heart, InTouch, FlowIntoSpring, ContactLove, may have experienced which kind of field we intent here.

Wisdom of the Body

We recognize that our body is the main integrator of all our experiences. What we may experience in Contact Improvisation goes for many of us far beyond what we experience in many other consciousness techniques or practices. No therapy, no spiritual practice, no insight or enlightenment may have effect, if it is not felt and experienced in the body itself.
Therefore, we work a lot with all techniques which may help integrate our understanding and learn body and soul, heart and mind, all integrated and connected.
Be it dance itself, somatic experiencing, body-centered therapies, or simply wellness, here is a focus for us, in our own bodies.
Most of the physical aspects support this body experience, as well as, re-naturating ourselves (see above).

Focus and openness

As any living organism, the Dancers’ Village needs clear privacy and protected spheres, as well as exchange and inspirations with, from and to the outside.
There will be clear focus times and areas, with clear limits and borders, rules and secure spaces.
There will be a clear dedication to openness, to guests, surrounding communities and neighbors, external events, inspiration of any kind and local, european and world politics. The exchange shall be a living one, the closer the connection, the stronger the openness.
Each individual living here has a private space and time, alone or in a family or living group. There is the community level, which is an offer, an opportunity and an invitation, not an obligation. Long-term guests will be part of the community.