An experience of community coming together for the purpose of deeper connection, creativity, and expression of Self in the realm of artistic movement, meditation, and personal empowerment. An ideal, rhythmic movement community possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system.
Why create a dance utopia? Although the real answer lies in the brains behind the project, the lovely Brooke Yates, my experience is as follows.
In the space of a dance utopia, there is room for everyone. In this space, there is the gift of creative expression. In this space there is a healing that goes beyond anything traditional, clinical, or individual in nature. It is a collective collaboration on all counts.
When I arrived at Dance Utopia, my immediate experience was one of gratitude and joy. The space was in the process of being created with all the elements for a weekend retreat from set-up to registration to coordinating meals, workshops, trainers, and sleeping arrangements. This included welcoming the 50 some odd guests coming together for the soul purpose of unity and connection in community.
But something was different here. Although I only knew a couple people, I felt like I’d walked into a loving family home that I’d left long ago. I felt like I’d come to celebrate with people I loved who I hadn’t seen in a very long time. My heart welled up with joy and exuberance at knowing what was to come.
What drew me to this Dance Utopia? I never even looked at the schedule or the description. The title alone told me I needed to be there. I chuckled when my friend Katie asked me to print the directions on Friday as we planned our leave time. I didn’t’ even know we were headed to Snow Mountain Ranch in Granby, Colorado.
As the weekend unfolded, all my trust in the Universe from a not-needing-to-know basis paid off. Our first community meal Friday evening, a simple soup and salad, nourished us and set the stage for a profound simplicity. I sat at a table with new friends soon to become family. We shared our meal, ourselves, and our love. Each additional meal throughout the weekend would call on nine of us to assist the chef and assistant chefs through preparation, serving, and clean-up. We built, nourished, and loved community through each meal.
In our opening ceremony, we set intentions, I Am statements, and moved into song, brining everyone immediately into an awareness of each person’s power and presence.
Intention: What did we want to manifest? What did we want to release?
I Am: What power word called to us?
The weekend created the avenue to realize the answer to them all.
Friday night’s dance with DJ Sun Dagon charged the space with an energy of love, acceptance, and limitless boundaries. I slept restlessly in this winter wonderland of sacred connection. The full moon and eclipse that happened during the wee hours of the morning accentuated the energy to an even higher vibration.
At Saturday morning’s yoga class, my judge showed up to tarnish my experience. Fortunately, it was short lived. I realized the presence of this judge is what inhibits my ability to move forward with my soul’s creative expression by judging imperfections as wrong. I shifted that through each yoga asana into a joy and respect for the courage to pursue a dream no matter how awkward or clumsy. My judge faded into the ethers for the weekend.
In the Past Life Regression & Time Travel Class, I reclaimed and reunited those aspects of me that I’d left behind – power, wisdom, sacred union. The vision I’d set for myself back in June felt charged in this remembering. To live the qualities of the Divine Feminine in service to humanity’s wholeness.
Contact Improv provided juicy, fun movement in union with one another. This rhythmic form infused our connectivity. It’s something I realized I’ve been doing for several years; I just didn’t know it had a name.
Other classes included wild dance, pramassage, inner child workshops… so many opportunities to connect with self, with others, to heal, to raise the vibration of our soul. The fullness of this weekend danced us into a Utopian experience of Oneness.
While leading the closing ceremony, my heart filled with so much love for my new family. We shared our journeys of manifestation and release set at the beginning of the weekend. Through Pure Awareness meditation, we moved our intentions out into the world, infusing our billions of brothers and sisters across the globe with love, joy, and gratitude. Perhaps you felt a dusting of these amazing, juicy, heart-filled intentions, igniting something deeper in you to shine.
As we sang “You Are the Face of God” to one another, each placed their manifestation/release cards into the charged holy water of the signing crystal bowl. This signified the washing away of what was released and putting into flow what was manifested. Each of these cards sits on my alter, dried now by the sacredness of air, the words blurred by the sacred water.
On the solstice, I will use sacred fire to burn the cards to ash. The ash will be mixed with earth to plant a gift for the next Dance Utopia. And, according to the Queen Bee herself, that is scheduled to take place in May. More to come on that, but stay tuned. You do not want to miss it.
Thank you Brook Yates for your courage, vision, and determination to bring a touch of heaven to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and to our lives. You are such a phenomenal light.
photo credits: Brooke Yates, Brooke Null
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