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The Social Embrace

  • Southside Preservation Hall 1519 Lipscomb Street Fort Worth, TX, 76104 United States (map)

“When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.”

-Paulo Coelho

The Social Embrace

Join us for a lively and exciting event at Southside Preservation Hall in Fort Worth, TX presented by The Barefoot Ballroom, John Kerr Smither.

Music by Gracen No-One

The Social Embrace explores a partner dance lineage inside Ecstatic Dance called Barefoot Ballroom. The mash up of Contact Improvisation and styles of Ballroom dancing turned into Yonga, a meta-modern social dance of yoga & movement.

The Social Embrace intends to return the Ecstatic Dance community to itself and to the broader social sphere. An antidote to post-modernism, joy reveals itself inside the meta modern dance of Yonga. Evolving inside the ecstatic dance movement for 25 years it blends contact improvisation with partner dance.

The Social Embrace is an expression of the Texas Ecstatic Dance journey. The purpose is to build bridges from the purely therapeutic and contemplative, to communal bonding, to the public expression of dance as art, and finally a fundemental expression, human physical freedom.

***

PURPOSE OF SOCIAL EMBRACE

🌞To reintroduce social touch and embrace through movement and partner dancing

🌞To demonstrate partner dancing as prescriptive and antidotal act for post lockdown life

🌞To engage and daylight Eros, the creative and sensual impulse.

🌞To practice how to engage and let go

🌞To create the evolution of an internal mystical dance practice into an external extra-ordinary social dance

🌞To rename the Barefoot Ballroom Dance, Yonga, a dance named for the Meta Modern Era

***

Schedule:

1p | Warm-Up; Settle in

1:15p Opening Circle, what you seek, what will be offered

1:30p | Social Embrace lead by John Smither

4:30p | Break/Warm-up; Settle in for ecstatic dance

5p | Opening Circle then to Social Embrace Ecstatic Dance; music by Gracen No-One

6:30p | Closing Circle

7p | Dinner somewhere near by

Where:

1519 Lipscomb St.

Fort Worth, TX 76104

(Parking is plentiful in lots + on the street)

Admission:

For class and dance: $40

For dance only: $20

Tickets Available Online + at the door

-or if you want to save a few $$

--venmo: @Trae-Swofford

--zelle: redrawlly@gmail.com

---if either of these, in comments insert your name and send word that you have

-will accept cash at door, but plz rsvp before coming out

What to bring/prepared:

-water bottle (water will be provided)

-comfy movement clothes (think yoga, play)

-yoga mat, blanket, etc (optional but somewhere to rest)

-snacks (we'll be here for a while, breaks somewhere in there. Or come well fed)

We ask of you:

-plz come sober. Give a chance to experience and explore total self

-phone and video free. take a break

-barefoot or socks. No shoes. Feel solid ground

***

About workshop instructor:

John Kerr Smither

BIOGRAPHY and Chronology of getting to idea of Yonga and Social Embrace

1961-2023

Born in Austin, Texas

60’ - 1st Dance with American Indian Chief, Camp Stewart, Kerrville, Texas

70’ - Ballroom Dance (as Assistant) / Dynamic Meditation workshop, Frank Natalie, Esalen, Big Sur, California / Human Potential Movement, Houston / Keewaydin Temagami Camp, Canada

80’ - Johnson Atelier Technical Inst. of Sculpture, Princeton, NJ / Sculptor Studio, Deep Ellum, Founded World War Theater / Humaniversity, Holland/ Trance Dance, Wilbur Alex, Texas / University St.Thomas / Classell Shool of Art

90’ - 5Rythms / Houston - Gabrielle Roth (9 years) , The MET, Houston / Soul Motion, Vin Marti / Sufi Foundation, Dunya/ Dance Camp - Adnan Serhan / Body Choir, Austin / Philosophy Maj. SHSU / Buffalo Moon Lodge (8 years)

2000 - Ecstatic Dance Houston, Planet Fund (9years) / Founded The Barefoot Ballroom and Crazywood Gallery / Host C.I. 36 / Dance Retreats, Huntsville, Texas / NCDC Dance Camp / NEDC Dance Camp, Brietenbush, Oregon / Hollyhock, Canada, Interchange, Houston/ The Social Embrace

2023 - Introduction Yonga by The Social Embrace series of workshop events

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