Since 2017, Alf has been living and working on an organic farm with 15 other people. Five years later (in 2022), he discovered Contact Improvisation (CI). For him, CI is a great training ground for stepping out of his comfort zone and overcoming his own limits (self-imposed restrictions). And he feels it getting better and better. Time and time again he is left with amazement at how deeply we can connect without speaking ;)
André has been developing the idea of the dancers’ villages for over 20 years, and it has never let go of him — the project is also shaping him in return. He has led a rich and varied life in various European countries, having survived a serious illness at the age of 15, followed by a profound awakening. He draws on a wealth of experience from therapy, coaching and consciousness work, and as a businessman, a doctor of ecology, a father of four, and with 25 years of experience in Contact Improvisation, he radiates love and trust to those around him.
Gustav has spent nearly 50 years working in the construction industry and is now almost retired. But to him that has nothing to do with being tired, more like the beginning of wild times.
One of his greatest passions is to find a place within a community and engage in meaningful exchanges with people. Recently, he’s started taking joy in contact improvisation… he wants to live, grow and touch people…
Kati works at the intersection of creation, community and inner listening. For her, the body and dance are a language beyond words – a way of relating through movement, touch and quiet presence: to one’s own body, to other people and to the surrounding natural world.
Contact improvisation, music, rituals and collaborative creation open up spaces of experience filled with grounding and vitality. With mindfulness and reliability, Kati shapes atmospheres in which being human, both in vulnerability and strength, is equally welcome.
LiKa is the co-founder of a healing biotope in Vale Bacias, Portugal, and feels a strong connection to the spirit of the Dancers’ Village initiative. She is the guardian of the Studio for the Art of Healing, where she offers experiences of consciousness in nature through rituals, expressive painting, meditation, singing, dancing and Polarity holistic energy work, with the intention of reminding people of who they truly are. She is a lover of life and mother to three adult sons.
Linda has been performing, teaching and researching various forms of dance, movement and art for around 20 years. Her passion for curious and non-judgemental encounters is evident in her many projects with people of all ages. Linda supported the early projects of the Tänzerdorf initiative and played a key role in organising the Mai-Jam Almegg in 2022. Her activities include individual and group sessions in Contact Improvisation, Water Dance, acrobatics, Gaga and many other methods.
Madlen loves dancing and life in all its forms. She enjoys creating spaces where expression, growth and healing can take place. When it comes to getting involved and making a difference, Madlen is fully committed.
What drives her? The joy of life and the many ways in which happiness can be found within it.
She enjoys sewing clothes that make people happy to wear.
Manfred – The path of the body and of feeling is my lifelong journey of healing – all the while giving thinking its rightful place. Being able to be at peace with myself and finding a sense of belonging within a community is another fundamental area of exploration which, even after 14 years of living in a large community, remains fascinating and which I wish to explore anew on a smaller scale. My heartfelt passion is massage.
Mareike loves and explores the intensity and beauty of life, with all its light and dark sides. Her focus is on expanding the qualities of the heart and love between women and men, as well as between heaven and earth. To this end, she creates inner and outer spaces where people can be genuinely connected, touched, creative, playful and moved.
She is trained in art and dance therapy, primary school teaching, Hawaiian massage, Tantra and spiritual consciousness work. When she isn’t spending time with her two sons, she devotes every spare minute to dancing: Contact Improvisation, Wave Dance, Argentine Tango, Contango or all of them at once.
Her aim is to establish and connect a vibrant Dancers’ Village community in Freiburg.
Michael has been practising family constellations for many years, to such an extent that he is constantly expanding and refining the method. He has even published a book on extending the methodology.
He now combines family constellations, his own therapeutic experience and the many hours of training in depth psychology-based and existential psychotherapy methods with Christian Meyer in individual coaching sessions and group workshops to create a unique opportunity for deep healing, self-awareness and awakening. He meets you exactly where you are, drawing individually from a toolkit full of resources. He also loves dancing, and CI in particular. He occasionally organises CI evenings himself.
Miriam lives in the beautiful town of Ellwangen an der Jagst, where she works as a chemist. The door to her personal journey opened through her yoga practice, which she sees as a solid foundation upon which other elements are built. In 2024, she began her journey into contact improvisation and discovered the Dancers’ Village for herself. For her, it has become a place of healing, growth and free self-expression. She feels a deep connection with many dear people here, and every time she arrives at Sommerecke, it feels like coming home – familiar and yet completely new each time, dancing, touching and touched by the magic of the Dancers’ Village. She is grateful for all the nourishing, inspiring and guiding moments she has been and continues to be able to experience here.
Pete is a multidisciplinary artist, primarily a writer, performer and dancer. He is also a lecturer in speech and language therapy.
With joy, expertise and heart, he teaches Contact Improvisation (e.g. as part of the monthly konsTANZjam) and manual voice therapy.
Pete feels a heartfelt connection to the Dancers’ Village concept. At the jams, Pete particularly enjoys the high level of mutual appreciation, the warmth of heart and the genuine encounters. That is why, since summer 2022, he has been happy to contribute ideas time and again, particularly in the form of CI workshops on a wide variety of topics (technical, somatic, body painting…), including as PeMa Art (see the initiative’s network).
Sheary has been attending jams and residencies at the Dancers’ Village since the summer of 2023 and, together with Lika and André, she is holding space for the Dancers’ Village in Portugal. Here, she hosts weekly jams, organises workshops and helps develop the local infrastructure centred around the four yurts, the ruins and the land. As a psychologist, she provides therapeutic support to people and their social networks. Sheary commits hersef about her addiction to dance and her passion for CI; she has many years experience of living in community, beeing part of Community Supported Agriculture, yoga practice and singing circles; she is the mother of an adult daughter and loves to be touched and to touch – on every level. She needs wild nature, open spaces, self grown veggies, the view to the entire Milky Way, silence and sunsets more urgently than electricity.
Tiger has always called the Sommerecke his home, and since the Dancers’ Village community moved in, he’s been pampered and stroked even more than he already was.
Wolfram has been making music for over 30 years and works as a live and theatre musician, composer, performer and actor, earning widespread acclaim in the press. In the Dancers’ Village, he never fails to delight us with his musical improvisations at jam sessions and within the Sommerecke’s circle of supporters.
