Join Zhenevere Sophia Dao, with vocalist Willa Roberts, for a 5-day SOMA & CIVILIZATION workshop in Costa Rica.
The experience will incorporate Zhenevere Sophia Dao’s cultural and philosophical theories. Each day will focus on one of the following meta-themes:
ORIGIN & ESSENCE
POWER & EMOTION
FRAGILITY & SENSATION
EROS & TRANSFORMATION
PARADOX & MYSTICISM
This intensive represents the first in-person experience of the comprehensive teachings of the Soma & Civilization program.
Curriculum
My Post-Daoist and Neo-Romantic cultural and philosophical theories in lecture and discussion format. The 5 days of the intensive will follow the 5 themes of Soma & Civilization: Origin & Essence; Power & Emotion; Beauty, Fragility & Sensitivity; Eros & Transformation; Paradox & Mysticism.
Teaching and practice of choice selections from the Hieratic Mythosomatic Forms (corresponding to the themes) and choice sections or phrases of the 5 Mythosomatic Dances (each dance corresponds to one of the 5 Soma & Civilization themes).
Somatic Sensibility Training. This training combines dynamic interpersonal exercises exploring otherness and sympatia (Latin for "same feeling"). The focus on power as sensitivity and sensibility, rather than leverage, represents the physical/sacred theatrical component of my philosophies of Emotional Negative Capability and belonging as mutual tenderness and sympathy. This work in partners derives from attunement training in my theater company and my deeply spiritualized perspective on martial arts, with the intention of palpably subverting normative notions of power as meanness, evil, or coercion.
Voice & Voice, with vocalist Willa Roberts. Willa is my girlfriend, my singing teacher, and the musical director of my theater company, SACRa Theater. Each day of the intensive, we will bring together our specialties in voice and body respectively to explore all of the themes of Soma & Civilization in relation to sound and singing.
Signification: Creative Writing and the Meaning of Experience. Every year—perhaps every hour, perhaps every minute—language is ever more severed from meaning. This severance of the integrity between the signifier (the person doing the naming in words) and the signified (that which they would name) is clearly paving the way for the automatonization of humanity in the form of Artificial Intelligence, where accumulation of algorithmical information already masks for knowledge, communication, and—we are inexorably headed this way—even love and Eros. I believe that there is, taken on the whole, nearly no remedy for this trend—but the extremely conscious and rigorous exercise of the imagination in writing might begin to honor the human uniqueness of our lives.
Likewise with gesture. I will bring to this intensive some basic principles and exercises of SACRa Theater, with a like intention (to that described above with regard to creative writing). Namely, the body has become all but commodified by hyper-communication and self-commodification, to the point were gesture and sensation are experienced for their effects, not their instinctual purity. We'll use these trainings to begin to try and ascertain the distinction essentially between selling and being, in the magnificence of the human sensorium.
Brave earth
Brave Earth, Center for Applied Cultural Transition, is a living laboratory rooted in principles of regeneration, resiliency and reciprocity. We provide immersive experiences in Nature that share alternative ways of living and being that are suitable for modernity and contextually relevant for the rapidly changing world we live in. We operate as a co-operatively run, not-for-profit education center.
Brave Earth is located between San Ramon and La Fortuna, nestled in between Arenal Volcano and the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, the largest reserve of protected wildlife in Costa Rica.
As a living lab, we have experimented with different building modalities and natural materials sourced on the land including bamboo and adobe. We have implemented biophilic design, closed-loop systems and permaculture design principles. Ornamental, food, and medicinal gardens surround the center as well as hiking trials to a nearby river, and a natural swimming pond.
Registration includes five day Soma & Civilization workshop, accommodation and three daily meals.
There are different accommodation options available:
Domes (4 units available)
Private room with Private Shower
$1385 pp (shared occupancy), $1820 (single occupancy)
Garden Cabina (2 units available)
Private room with Private Bathroom and Air Conditioning
$1385 pp (shared occupancy), $1820 (single occupancy)
Jungle Hut (4 units available)
Private room king size bed / or Shared room with 2 single beds.
$1385 pp (shared occupancy) $1740 (single occupancy)
Earth Tambo (2 units available)
Private room
$1345 pp (shared occupancy), $1740 (single occupancy)
*Transport to and from the center or airfare are not included.