THE TEAM
CORE TEAM
Manuela Bosch
Production Lead
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.”
Daniel J. Hayes
Production Lead Support, Ritual Facilitator
Offering: LIquid Love
Medical Doctor, public health scientist and practical idealist.
He’s been playing, dancing, meditating and conversing CI for over 20 years.
He is the founder of the Touch&Play Movement and the Vidàlia eco-village outside Barcelona. He is the current Executive Director of the Earthdance Creative Living Project, an arts & cultural community and institute in Western Massachusetts. He’s been exploring the intricacies of the Relational Body for over 10 yers and is committed to building a more equitive and authentic culture through his social entrepreneurial and creative endeavours.
Beata Absalon
Participant Coordinator, Intensive Teacher
Offering: Too Hot to Handle
Beata’s workshops are experiments in staying with complexity – not resolving it, but considering it as an invitation: to find solace and deep joy in witnessing each other in our banality and clutter, understanding it as a creative, erotic, powerful source to relax and re-invent how we wish to live with each other. As a cultural theorist who received training in various somatic fields she brings an attention for social contexts, ambiguities and aesthetic qualities of intimacy. Being skeptical about promises of transformation she is currently recognizing non-cathartic feeling (like awkward-, shy-, lazy-, prudeness,…) as worthwhile.
Ulli Wittemann
Onsite Coordinator, Workshop Teacher
Offering: SENSING THE WE IN US
Ulli was a full-time actor in theater before becoming a teacher for embodiment, movement and communication in 2010. Being part of T&P from the very beginning, he co-created ten editions in Germany, England, Bali and Thailand. He is also an organizer of the TanzTageTempelhof, the annual retreat BEING HUMAN and the ACHTSAME SINNLICHKEIT/conscious sensuality retreat with his partner Isabelle Pyttel since 2019. So far he taught CI, his own PLAYFIGHT system, Acting and awareness in communication in 30 countries and loves to create spaces for growth, learning and enjoying. He’s on the quest of being not only a father but a dad for their two kids and believes in a good balance between structure and chaos while growing into our hearts.
Benji Lee Martin
Communications & Media, Ritual Facilitator
Offering: Pleasure Please Play Ground
Embodied Artist, Play & Pleasure Activist, Amateur Clown Shaman, Benji explores how to creatively connect people through art & play. Weaving his background in Relational esthetiques, Humanistic Psychology & Neurobiology with varied embodied practices, and influences from non-duality tantra with a large serving of imagination, he remix and create games that invite bodies into silly somatic play.
Pauline Drewfs
Peace Council
Pauline is a mediator, coach, trainer and facilitator in the field of human-to-human relating. With boldness and great care, she lovingly supports groups, couples and individuals transform conflict into deeper connection. Her work draws from various relational and cultural practices such as Authentic Relating, Non-Violent Communication, Internal Family Systems, as well as her own lifelong somatic research, mostly through dance and other forms of movement. As Peace Council Lead, Pauline supports participants, teachers and staff navigate the friction that can arise in a deep exploratory field such as Touch&Play.
Fenja Elisa
Helpers Coordinator
I am a filmmaker and photographer, currently exploring creative ways to combine these beloved mediums with my work as a death doula and sexological bodyworker-in-training.
I am dedicated to stumbling between the worlds of Art and somatics , always trying to find play- and pleasurefull ways to do so.
Christian Landgraf
Soothe & Care Lead
My personal learning process on how to really get in touch started as a shy guy 15 years ago. Joining conscious formats such as Touch & Play I learned – step by step – to express my feelings and desires. My heart still beats like hell while I approach a person attractive to me. But now I can apply tools to handle my fears. This year as head of the Soothe & Care team I will offer my experience to the team members and support their service to the festival as a whole. My aim is to help in creating a decent, humble and playful atmosphere.
FACILITATORS
Roisin Green
Intensive Teacher
Offering: The Intimate Nature of Attention
Jamus Wood
Intensive Teacher
Offering: The Intimate Nature of Attention
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.
Dino Spiri
Intensive Teacher
Offering: Balance – Approaching a moving target
Dino has been teaching Contact Improvisation for over a decade. His knowledge of the moving body and his teaching are strongly influenced by the Alexander Technique (Dino is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique), Klein TechniqueTM, his meditation practice and BMC®, and by his intensive work and collaborations with many wonderful beings, such as Dan Armon, Eva Karczag, Friederike Tröscher, Hanna Hegenscheidt, Jens Johannsen, Joerg Hassmann, Susanne Middendorf and Yoyo van der Kooi.
Peter
Intensive Teacher
Offering: Too Hot to Handle
Peter is an unconventional psychologist working with body- and experiencing oriented methods as well as synergetics – theory of complex system dynamics. His work oscillates between entering direct experience and developing a clear understanding of one’s own psychodynamics in order to be able to intervene with our consciousness in efficient places with sustainable effect. He is qualified in Person-centered therapy, Behavioral therapy, Systemic therapy, Mindfulness-based approaches, Trauma therapy, Focusing and Synergetic process management.
Mx. Gili
Workshop Teacher
Offering: 50 Shades of No
Mx. Gili is an intimacy educator and pleasure activist who curates, facilitates and hosts inclusive and trauma informed experiences, which are body, sex, kink and spirituality positive. As an aspirant of devotional Tantra, Gili’s aligned with an approach founded in love, presence, polarity, ritual and expansion. These practices are further informed by a Queer understanding of life, gender and sexuality as abundant spectrums and a commitment to challenging power structures and paradigms which act to indoctrinate and dissociate body from spirit.
Imraan Ismail
Workshop Teacher
Offerings: Finding Gold in Hidden Places & Feral Play
Raised in Zululand in South Africa, connected to the heartbeat of Zulu African drums. Dancing to my Sufi traditions since I could walk. A Londoner who has now made Brussels his home. I am trained in Open Floor practice, a resource based movement practice.. I am also trained in trauma release and have practiced tantra and bdsm for over 10 years. Grounded in consent, I also follow the path of healing trauma through sacred sexuality. and exploring how we as men can take our responsibility to heal the trauma caused by patriarchy.
So-Sein Sascha
Daily Morning Facilitator
Offering: Early Morning in your very Middle
So-Sein Sascha is a passionate Yoga Teacher and One-to-One Coach since 2006. For many years he has organised Retreats in Austria, Croatia and India. Being a father of two kids, he dedicates his life to the Inner Path of Liberation, living fully within Society. So-Sein Sascha has experienced all kinds of Yogas, Meditations since 1993. He now teaches So-Sein Yoga: An intuitive organised Movement Practice which expresses the range between holding and letting, inspired by “Focusing” (by Gendelin) and Hatha Yoga.
Bilal Nasim
Ritual Facilitator
Offering: The Deep River: Dancing with Grief and Eros
Bilal is a facilitator, trainer and artist exploring what it means to be alive and our relationship with death. Bilal is an experienced grief tender and has been holding grief spaces since 2018. He is the founder of Embracing Grief along with Sarah and Tony Pletts, offering grief support circles, workshops and rituals – online and in-person in London and Devon, UK, including workshops aimed specifically for POC and those identifying as men. Bilal is also a senior leader at Tough Cookie, delivering award winning programmes on personal resilience, inclusive leadership and workplace culture. Bilal has attended the 2021 & 2022 T&P UK festivals.
Lûmenia
Musician
Offering: Violin & Voice Support
Lûmenia is a French violinist and singer doing “Transformative Performances”, developing new concepts combining music and performance with healing and nature. Her work led her to perform e.g. on top of volcanoes or in the rainforest of Guatemala, creating unique experiences for the people around her. The award-winning artist has been passionately working as a chamber musician and soloist on national and international stages since studying violin at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin and has played in numerous renowned orchestras.
Her deepest inspiration is connecting and igniting ones inner desires through sound. Lûmenia will therefore use this inspiration with the help of the violin and her voice to enchant the jams and other occasions on “Touch&Play”. Her intention with her music is to broaden the spectrum of experience of the festival, always trying to lead her listeners to a place of deeper contact with themselves, which can then create a contact in truth and harmony with all other fellow human beings.
Aquila Sunrise
Musician, Singing Circle Lead
Offering: Soulful and Groovy Circle Singing
A seeker of Lightenment (yes), Aquila has a deep passion for authentic communication, especially using the language of music. Receptive, adaptive and heartfelt approach is a common thread running through the multitude of his instruments and styles, from ambient soundscapes, through groovy beats to soulful circle-singing.
Using guitar, bass, didjeridoo, flute, percussion, loopstation and the tools of listening and sensitivity, an interactive and versatile ambience gets co-created, supporting the exploration of movement & touch&play.
Jörg Eisfeld
Singing Circle and Jam Support
Jörg was born in 1969. In the first 30 years, Jörg’s focus was on mathematics, so that the primary source of income is still in the IT area.
For 30 years, Jörg has been active in various styles of dancing (Rock’n’Roll, Flamenco, Tango Argentino, Ballroom, Contact Improvisation), has been part of BDSM communities, and has been making music (covers, own songs, mantras). Since 2021, Jörg has been musically accompanying Contact Jams (loving the mutual resonance between dance and music), and leading singing circles. Currently, Jörg is in education as “Life Trust Coach”. Jörg is identifying as neurodiverse and nonbinary.