We encourage you to cultivate authentic embodied connections with yourself and others.
GET TO KNOW US
Since 2010, we’ve been dedicated to create safer spaces for self-discovery and growth.
Who’s Behind It?
Daniel Joseph Hayes
Touch&Play Founder
A medical doctor (M.D.) and epidemiologist (Ph.D.), professional mediator, Contact Improvisation teacher, and social entrepreneur.
Dr. Daniel J. Hayes is a medical doctor with a Ph.D. from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Back in the days he collaborated with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where he led malaria research projects.
He is the founder of Vidàlia, an eco-village an hour outside of Barcelona. Currently, he serves as the Executive Director of Earthdance Creative Living Project Inc., an artistic and cultural centre, and the world’s oldest Contact Improvisation community, based in Massachusetts, USA. He is also a partner in Camp, a beautiful retreat centre located on the Pacific Coast of Oaxaca in Zipolite, Mexico.
Touch&Play sprouted from Daniel’s deep immersion into and questioning of the form and culture of Contact Improvisation and its global community.
Contact Improvisation is a post modern dance form that started in the 1970’s in the US and was born from an exploration of what happens when two bodies meet in space. Daniel began wondering about what was truly happening in Contact Improvisation spaces, where he observed an incongruence between what people said should be happening and what he personally experienced and observed happening, both on and off the dance floor.
He noticed how, often, individuals with more skills and perhaps less awareness could subtly assert their will, disregarding the needs of others with less experience. He saw this dynamic repeatedly, where experienced men would take newcomers and seduce them into sensual and sexual connections.
He started questioning: What would happen if we began discussing attraction, sexuality, power… in our dances and in our community? What would happen if we would, rather than to ignore or hide these parts of our human nature, we actually welcome the exploration of these deep motivations that drive each individual to want to come and dance?
Our needs are beautiful. The strategies we employ aren’t always equally so. And what if they could be? What if heart, reason, and instinct converged and integrated into the same duet?
With these questions in mind and after many conversations, in 2010 German Choreographer and conceptual artist Felix Ruckert offered Daniel his dance space in Berlin to create a space where desires could be explored honestly and communicated effectively, fostering deeper connections in an environment where play and possibilities abounded.
This is how Touch&Play was born, Since that first memorable event many have followed and currently smaller and larger Touch&Play retreats are taking place in many different countries, in Europe, North and South America and Australia.
At that point, consent wasn’t addressed on the dance floor, and the event sparked debate and strong feelings in the global community, with some accusing Touch&Play of perverting Contact Improvisation and making the dance floor an unsafe space. However, Touch&Play was pioneering in bringing consent into our dances, and what we’ve observed is the opposite effect: engaging in conversations about power, desires, and needs has brought a more robust and deeper framework to explore our relational dynamics.
Queralt Jorba
A psychologist and psychotherapist with expertise in human relationships, trauma work, and personal growth. She holds a master in Dance Movement Psychotherapy and in Somatic Experiencing.
Queralt boasts over a decade of experience in the fields of Psychology and Dance. She has cultivated a specialisation in assisting couples who feel they tread an unconventional path.
One of her superpowers lies in helping individuals identify the patterns that hold them back and together, finding a direction in which they flourish.
She has been living in intentional communities for years gaining deep knowledge about group dynamic and organisations culture. Currently, she splits her time between Catalonia, where her roots lie, and Western Massachusetts.
Her daily choices, the way she raises her kids, and her livelihood represent her means of contributing to making the world a better place.
Queralt has dedicated herself to nurturing and sustaining the Touch&Play organisation since its inception. She enjoys accompanying people who want to join this inspiring community.
TOGETHER
Daniel and Queralt have co-created their own family, finding balance between personal space and shared life.
They are the parents of three children. They have lived together in intentional communities and today move between their two homes in Catalonia and Western Massachusetts.
As founders of Touch&Play, they lead the various editions held in different countries around the world and work in collaboration with local production teams of professionals in Contact Improvisation, personal growth, relationships, and erotic intelligence.
Organized events
People accompanied
Years of experience
The main local organisers are:
Manuela Bosch
T&P GERMANY
Manu is a facilitator and guide for transformational experiences in groups, organisations and individuals. Manu works with various unconventional techniques that include body, consciousness and nature, such as Social Presencing Theater, Dragon Dreaming and Rites of Passage. At Touch&Play Germany Manu is holding the production lead, coordinating with coordinators and teachers and is holding up with all the team the T&P purpose of exploring the Relational Body.
“All of what I have to offer emerged out of my choice of exploring my edges. On the edge, I’m touching upon the taboos – such as intimacy, money, privilege and witchcraft. As I do not want to grow in only one direction, I practice different things. And I share them. Wrapped as workshops, trainings, journeys, retreats, festivals and projects of all kind. What I share is what I love to practice. “If healing is the new
punk, my practice is my form of protest.”
Anne Maria Popanda
T&P COLOGNE
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.
https://aditibodywork.de
Insta/fb: aditibodywork
Akasha - Janine Leagh
T&P AUSTRALIA
Akasha lives a life in service and in response to the omnipresent life force energy. She bows in reverence to the Sacred Self and believes it not separate to the human experience. British born but a wanderer by nature, she worked on Cruise Ships before residing in Australia until 2020. A teacher’s teacher, facilitator, mentor, Somatic trauma therapist and student of the Conscious Movement arts she has facilitated students Internationally for over 25yrs.
Lee Bolton
T&P UK
I have always been a kind of explorer and researcher of life. Always asking questions. Generally a little outside of convention. For the past 12 years my offering has been facilitating the exploration of movement and dance, mostly improvisation, enquiring into the nature of relationship and being here. I have a deep interest in the ‘unseen’, that which connects us all as the fabric of life.
Sometimes life is smooth and delicious and often it’s as clunky as hell. I’m constantly learning how to gracefully bring it all the table.
Jamus Wood
T&P UK
I dance, I explore and I have an innate curiosity for life. Deeply influenced and rooted by the practices of Body Mind Centering, Contact Improvisation, explorations into The Land and Embodied Consciousness. Currently I am exploring the more than human relationship with Dartmoor and the question of what does the land remember.
TouchandPlay has been a rich place of learning, experiencing and play over the last ten years, so much so that I find myself as part of the organising teach for this unique and exciting experience.
Alejandro Karasik
T&P ARGENTINA
Currently, Ale (pronouns he-she) is enthusiastic about working with body awareness, emotions, creativity, and sexuality. Their intention is to bring this path to a place of service through accompanying individuals in somatic sex education, body awareness, and dance pedagogy.
Ale is a local organizer for Touch&Play Argentina and the FesTeJitO Project. They teach sexological massage techniques as part of the teaching staff at Erotiquepink, offer classes in Somatic Tantra, Feldenkrais, and Contact Improvisation (invited by various festivals), and provide massages and individual consultations on sexuality in their own studio.
More about Ale at @seksualidadysomatikas (IG), www.sexualityandsomatics.club, www.alejandrokarasik.me.
Frank Kelleter
T&P HORSEBACK JOURNEY
Frank, founder of Travel and Transformation.
Artists, Photographers & Videophotographers
Various T&P editions
Anna Maynard, Aeric Meredith-Goujon, Shay Au Lait, Natalia Osiatynska, Dan Farberoff, Blanco, Daniela Duskova, Eslerh, Len Metcalf, Gerardo Merc, Marina Tsartsara.
Delving Deeper into Touch&Play
Touch&Play integrates dance, contact Improvisation and somatics with the realms of relationships, community and consciousness.
We orchestrate experiential retreats in diverse corners of the world, all in service of personal growth, authentic expression, relational vitality, and erotic intelligence.
Always within a robust framework of consent.
Touch&Play serves as a rich tapestry, encompassing a spectrum of arts and sciences, all dedicated to the cause of human connections. Within our realm, dance is our language, and we champion a culture of consent, attentive listening, and unwavering respect.
It stands as a singular haven for embracing and expressing one’s entire self, thoughtfully and freely amalgamating societal taboos and shadows.
