Festival Dança Viva

Special Features

The method behind the madness

Why the focus on affinity groups?

As a life coach I am interested in creating a festival that is not just a retreat from our daily lives, but a training for us to go back into our lives with more power, effectiveness and joy.  I wish to create a festival that will allow people to step back into their lives and make changes that will transform their lives and the lives of others around them.  But I think that these skills can be learned through joy and self expression in the right environment.

I have found in my work that people who can find their centre (the focal point in their bodies, and the attitude to life that is effective) make profound transformation in their lives, so I want to encourage people to find that, and the easiest way to strengthen that is by the support we get from being around other people like ourselves.

Do you ever feel you wish you could be among people who truly understand you?  This is what affinity groups feel like.

Of course this is not the only way to learn these life skills, and even without formally creating affinity groups if given the chance eventually people will find themselves, but this is one process that can speed up the process and truly make a difference in people’s lives, while at the same time remaining focused on the joy and festive experiences of life.

The method behind the madness

Why the importance on Connection?

There are various styles and approaches to our relationship with the world.  Many spiritual retreats will focus on contentment and compassion - loving all and remaining in inner peace, and creating a peaceful energy.  Some festivals focus on freedom and expressing yourself in whatever way suits you - letting out the wild part of yourself.  Many yogic and tantric retreats will focus on eros - the intimate deep connection with yourself, your partner and the divine, but building true community of joy and love, in harmony with nature and the universe requires deep Connection - the connectedness with all things.  This is the joy that we experience sometimes in connecting with nature, or in wonderful dance experiences.  It is this that draws people to cultural traditions, and traditional dance in particular.

I am not talking about the Earnest Focused connection that many people trying to practise yoga and meditation express, though this has its value as a step towards the experience.  I am talking about the effortless connection that the music draws out of us - where life is joy.  

I don’t think it is much use talking about these concepts - the churches do that all the time, but rarely actually achieve them, let us instead imbue the whole festival with that experience, and by the time people leave it will have soaked into their skin and their hearts and their minds.  

Neither this nor the affinity groups need to be so strongly advertised - because people do not in general understand Deep Connection, or Centring, but it needs to be a feeling that is the foundation of everything we do.  In the area of traditional culture and art and music this will not restrict us very much because all traditional culture that has stood the test of time is an expression of deepest connection.  But it gives us a focus and a direction to aim for to create a festival that is truly uplifting and transformative.