Dance and Movement Workshops
Our day starts with a morning program of meditation, Chant, Yoga, Native American dance of life and Heartsong.
Very early morning meditation
Silent Sitting meditation. A simple Breath awareness meditation practice to settle and bring the mind home, followed by a Loving Kindness meditation practice. This is a Gentle Buddhist meditation practice where we cultivate the feeling of Love and deep care for ourselves and then extend it out to our family, friends, the whole of the Camp, our communities, our country, the whole World, all plants, animals and all sentient beings! Its is essentially a compassion practice for ourselves firstly and then including all Beings.
Early Morning Kirtan
"When I'm chanting, I'm just chanting. That's all I know. I'm moving into a quieter, more spacious moment, and sometimes I move into the presence of love" Krishna Das - Chants of a lifetime.
Yoga
Early morning yoga sessions, based loosely on Vanda Scaravelli's approach. We will also look at practice as a reflection of our relationship and involvement with life. A gentle yet energizing connection with ourselves through postures, breath and sitting.
Dance of life
Welcome the day with a beautiful song and simple dance in celebration of the sun and the earth. Inspired by Native American traditions of connecting to the elements and becoming part of the wheel of life.
Heart song
The conscious creation of a deeply sacred and healing space, working with beautiful chants inspired by many spiritual paths and traditions. Time is taken to lead us to a prayerful and meditative place, where tears may flow and healing may come.
Each morning we will gather in the Big Top to sing a heart song. With our voices and our intention we will work to create a powerful magical space where we can explore the healing potential of harmonic chant.
Each evening the Big Top will host a variety of big drumming, singing or dancing sessions.
Bellydance with Bella Hancock
Bellydance is a modern name for an ancient dance, contemporary forms coming in many guises, arising from the roots of women's traditional dances of the Middle East and North Africa. The movements are strong, earthy, sensual and deeply feminine, sometimes playful and light and sometimes with an intensity of emotion and depth.
Bella will be offering four different workshops during this year's Earthsong camp:
"The Red Tent" - This will be a workshop for women only- a safe, healing space where women come together exploring the sacred sensual movements of Bellydance, in an atmosphere of joy and sharing, women dancing together for themselves, for each other.
"Saidi" - Saidi is an Egyptian dance from Upper Egypt. There is a male form and a female form. The male dance has its roots in Egyptian martial art called Tahtib, and echoes the movements of horse's steps, also a lot of work with sticks. The female dance is a more playful version, with strong earthy hip movements, shimmies, simple arms and echoes of the male dance. Women and men are both welcome to this workshop!
"Oriental Duende-Bellydance" - this is an approach to Middle Eastern dance, from the perspective of Danza Duende. creative improvisation and awareness of space, feminine energy, rigor (technique) and virtue (the intrinsic goodness of ourselves as humans) using bellydance techniques as support.
Bella Hancock has been bellydancing for 10 years and teaching for 6. She began learning Tribal Bellydance and was a founder member of Akasha Tribal Troupe for 3 years. She has studied traditional folkloric styles from Egypt, Morocco, Turkey and Gypsy dances of the middle east. She is a long time student of Danza Duende, an international network of teachers and students dedicated to dancing ones life!
5 Rhythms with Helen Bohan
Movement is life and life is movement. This can be movement of your physical bodies, feet, hips, heads, hands; it can be thoughts moving across your minds or it can be the movement of feelings in and out of your hearts.
The 5 Rhythms® Movement Meditation Practice (MMP) offers you the opportunity to make all movement mindful, to bring it into your awareness where you can learn to appreciate the uniqueness of your movement whether it is physical, emotional or mental.
The rhythms teach us how to move through our insecurity, self-consciousness, and fear into fascinating, unpredictable, spontaneous, authentic beings. They demand that we be original. So get down and find out what your hands, your shoulders, your elbows, knees and, most importantly, your hips and feet have to say about it.
Helen became an accredited 5Rhythms teacher in 2011. She is also a qualified humanistic psychotherapist and a member of I.A.C.P. She runs weekly 5Rhythms classes in Cork and co facilitates monthly movement and personal development workshops.
Authentic Movement with Joan Davis
The name "Maya Lila" is taken from the Sanskrit words for illusion and play. It explores the illusory nature of our perceptions within the play of life, relationship and nature. Maya Lila combines Body Mind Centering, Developmental Movement Patterns and Authentic Movement to explore its body based approach to therapy, the arts, performance and spiritual practice..
Joan Davis has been exploring the nature of creativity most particularly from a body based perspective for over 30 years. She pioneered Contemporary Dance in Ireland in the 70's & 80's and has consistently experimented with collaborative art as a professional artist and therapist.
Joan is a Body mind Centering practitioner, has studied authentic movement with Janet Adler and voice work with Chloe Goodchild and Rajeswar Bhattacharya. She has studied process-oriented psychology (Mindell) and is a Hakomi Sensorimotor trauma Psychotherapist.
Circle Dance with Tony Wrench and Faith
Circle Dancing draws from an ancient tradition. We dance simple dances from many folk cultures, including Greek, Romanian, Armenian, French and Russian. Some dances are energetic, some gentle. We teach each dance before dancing it. The chief aim is enjoyment, rather than technique, and the experience of moving together as a circle. The music will be live. Click here for a short video clip taken at Unicorn camps England with Tony joined by other musicians and singers.
West African Dance with Kim Mc Cafferty and Drummers
Your body is the harp of your soul, and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it, or confused sounds. Set your bum free and pound the earth to rocking rhythms of West Africa. Following her travels exploring West Africa's music and dance, Kim will share steps learned from the people of Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso where everyone remembers that everyone on Earth is a dancer. Live drummers will keep our feet and hips harmonious. Energetic wild and freeing, this is your chance to express all through your body and reach joyous freedom within it!
"To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak"
Flamenco with Fatima Lucia
Flamenco is a dance of passion, pain and longing; of the soul laid bare. To the ringing sound of guitar strings
and the raw, impassioned wail of the cantaor (singer), the flamenco dancer pours emotion from their body as rhythm bursts forth from their feet - beautiful, fierce and possessed.
In these workshops I will introduce you to the basic technique and various elements of Flamenco dance movement: body awareness, posture, arms and hands, hips, torso, footwork and clapping. This will be done through basic steps to 'Tangos' (a 4 beat rhythm).
Fatima Lucia was the first Flamenco dancer to teach in Ireland. She started teaching in Galway in 1993, when she arrived from Cadiz, her hometown in Andalusia. She has taught many workshops in Dance Centers and Universities around Ireland, including the Master of Arts in Ethno choreology and the Master of Arts in Dance Performance at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. She also teaches at her home studio in the Burrren, Co.Clare. flamencogalway.com
Sasa with Chrys Blanchard
Sasa is a highly energetic clapping and movement form, hilarious and challenging at the same time. Based on Polynesian clapping Sasa is great fun to watch as well as to participate in.
Open Dance with Adrienne Brown
Little Dance, based on practices of contemporary dance techniques and improvisation, will work towards bodily integration by encompassing gentle stretch, strength and co-ordination exercises, and simple improvisations; addressing each person to their own body towards confidence and power. The aim would be to allow participants, through simple but fun movement games, to start to move freely, and to interact with each other.
Big Dance will be an open evening of personal dance, based on principles that allow people to access movement that is instinctive and authentic in its relationship to the body. It will take the form of a guided movement journey on a theme such as nature/the elements, chakras, or some other transformational material. The purpose would be to allow people to enter a deeper physical/emotional/spiritual connection with themselves through the body.
Adrienne Brown was born in Dublin, began her dance education with ballet classes and later at LONDON CONTEMPORARY DANCE SCHOOL where she studied for three years. She founded NEW BALANCE DANCE COMPANY in 1987, with which she danced and choreographed for extensively. From 1991 - 1998 she attended the MARTHA GRAHAM CENTER OF DANCE in New York. Adrienne is a founding member and current chair of Dance Ireland.
Movement through Neutral with Sam Viana
"There are three masks:
The one we think we are,
The one we really are,
And the one we have in common" (Jacques Le Coq).
As human beings, we are not neutral. But through the search for neutrality we can discover the story of our own bodies. The neutral mask allows us to explore a state of pure presence, one without memory or projects, past or future. It allows the wearer to explore the very essence of his or her movement.
Developed to give actors a balanced and focused inner core on stage, we use it here to gently explore the feeling of wholeness and silence it can leave us with.
"With the neutral mask, we reach the silence before the beginning of the storytelling"
(Giovanni Fussetti)
Sam gives workshops regularly in Ireland, England and Portugal. He teaches in the Espaco Evoe, Theatre and Dance School, in Lisbon Portugal (where he is currently based). His workshops at Earthsong come from a variety of sources, a blend of "formal" theatre training, meditation retreats, co-counselling, and the natural world around him.
The True You Creates
The True You Creates; an exploration and expression of art and movement from the inside out. Starting from a place of stillness we invite the body to reveal it's painting and dance.
Claire Ni Grianna who lives in County Clare has a passion for all things creative. She is a sensitive and empowering facilitator with over 11 years experience working with groups. She is a teacher of Dancing The Rainbow, a process of exploring the energy systems in the body using colour, movement, art, the chakras, sound, voice, ritual, meditation and relaxation. In 1999 through the course of her 'Job' in Dublin Claire experienced the devastation and paralyzing nature of having a fear of speaking in public. This led her to source a way of finding and expressing her authentic voice.
Claire is also a Life Coach and founder of her business The True You. www.thetrueyou.ie
Laughter Yoga, Circus skills and Games with Donal Gannon
Laughter Yoga
"Laugh as much as you breath and love as long as you live" - Mark Twain. Laughter Yoga reminds us that anyone can laugh for no reason, without relying on external stimulus or even a sense of humour. Laughter is invoked using games and exercises in a group; with eye contact and childlike playfulness, it soon turns into hearty and contagious laughter.
Laughter Yoga combines unconditional laughter with yogic breathing, which brings multiple health benefits, making one feel fresh and energetic. "Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face" Victor Hugo
Circus skills Ever dreamt of running away to join the circus? Well, now is your chance.
Juggling; we will be approaching, from many different angles, the challenge of keeping 3 objects in continuous motion with 2 hands. Whether it's buddy juggling, partner passing or another of our methods, there will be something for everyone. Poi is a performance art in which balls, ribbons, lights or flames suspended from lengths of flexible material are held and swung in circular patterns. Also, we can learn Staff Spinning, Contact Juggling and/or Devil Sticks.
Group Games for (not so) Grown ups
"Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play" - Heraclitus
Playing together in a safe and open space gives us permission to reunite with our inner child, one of careless enjoyment and free spirit. We are starting to see that this part of us is still alive and hungry to break free from responsibility and play. At these workshops, we bring a mix of old favorites, as well as lots of new ones. Who knows what we might be playing this summer! "Life must be lived as play" - Plato
Donal Gannon has trained in a wide variety of disciplines, including Circus skills, Team building, Group Games, Music, Dance, Yoga, and the Alexander Technique among others. And during the last 2 years, training in India to become a Certified Laughter Yoga Leader and later to qualify as a Teacher Trainer (CLYT).
The Feldenkrais Method,
A gentle, precise and graceful approach to movement and expression. This method addresses how we learn through movement giving us a direct experience of our own learning process.
Anet Moore is a qualified practitioner in the Feldenkrais method of Awareness through Movement. "a gifted and experienced facilitator"
Double Yoga
Double Yoga: Waking up gently and finding peaceful places whilst being in contact with another using Movement and Yogic Techniques of Posture, Breathing and Awareness.
Conor Graham is interested in Heart work, Movement and Rhythm and the Sacred Traditions of the World's Cultures. He has ten years experience of teaching including Yoga, Qi Gong, Drama, Drumming, and Music. He holds an MA in Drama and Theatre Studies and has also practiced as a massage therapist.
Dancing the Rainbow
"Our aim in Dancing the Rainbow is not to be beautiful or expert but truthful in our expression of ourselves through movement." (Lani O'Hanlon, co-founder of Dancing the Rainbow)
All are welcome to join in this dance though the chakras. No previous experience is required; movement is organic and inspiration comes from within, from one another, and from the natural world around us. Through dance and art work, voice and meditation, together we will explore, create, and play.
Aisling has been exploring healing work, spirituality and the creative process for over ten years. She is deeply inspired by the natural world, by somatic studies and authentic movement, and the work of Contemporary Yoga and Dancing the Rainbow, both of which she is qualified to teach. She lives in Co.Clare and is currently doing an M.A to research an embodied approach to healing, creativity, and spirituality.
Dances of Universal Peace with Angie Pinson
From the beginning of time, sacred movement, song and story have brought people together, at times of seasonal ceremony and celebration, as part of everyday life and life passages, in daily renewal and meditation. D.U.P is part of this timeless tradition of Sacred Dance.
The Dances use simple music, lyrics, and movements to touch the spiritual essence within ourselves and others. No musical or dance experience of any kind is required and everyone is welcomed to join in. Participation, not presentation, is the focus. The movements and songs include themes of peace (both inner and outer), healing (the Earth, individuals, and the global family), and the celebration of life's great mystery. Dancers focus on peace and harmony creating a sense of solidarity and community while celebrating the underlying unity of all the spiritual traditions of the Earth.
Tama-Do with Angie Pinson
Tama-Do, meaning 'way of the soul' involves the use of movement, colour and sound to stimulate the meridians. Angie will be focussing on Tao-yin-fa which is the movement aspect.
Dance & Movement Camp - more info:
Adult Workshop Program
- Dance and Movement Workshops
- Drumming and Singing Workshops
- Healing Arts and Creativity
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