EMBODIED IMAGINATION
DEEP PLAY WORKSHOPS INTO RITUAL PERFORMANCE
Asheville, NC
Saturday December 6 & 7th, 2025
$100-200
Our time together will explore how imagination moves through the body and how movement, in turn, shapes the imagination. On Saturday we will offer three workshops that each approach this question from a different angle: the shadow and its expression, the strange as a path to joy, and the subtle body as a field of sensation and dream. We see the weekend as a study in transformation—how form gives way to feeling, how inner experience takes shape in gesture and relation. On Sunday we will weave the strands of these workshops together into a performance ritual for a wider audience.
Saturdays Workshops:
Dancing our Edges (Aaron Finbloom)
For this workshop block we will use techniques drawn from processwork, psychodrama, butoh and clowning to dance the more shadowy side of our psyche. Some of the activities at this workshop may include: a) warmups that involve exaggerated emotional gestures, laughing, crying and extreme gesticulations b) a here-and-now practice whereby a single participant stands up in front of the group, names emotions, and then is encouraged to express one of those emotions through a march or dance c) psychologically challenging scenes devised by the facilitator that present a singular image for participants to dance simultaneously in the room d) participants creating their own singular, clear image from some challenging content within their psyche to attempt to dance.
The Joy of Being Weird (Aurora Kaï Sunrise)
This playful, heart-centered workshop is a celebration of our wild, tender humanity. Through movement, voice, and group connection, we explore awkwardness and weirdness as a bridge between shame and joy. Participants are guided to bring their hidden, “too much/not enough” parts into expression—first by embodying the shapes and sounds of shame, then transforming them through humor, absurdity, and authentic play. As individual weirdness merges into a shared sound–movement field, what once felt heavy becomes light. Together we remember that our strangeness is sacred, our joy is medicine, and freedom begins when nothing needs to be hidden.
Dancing the Subtle Body: Color, Dream, Shimmer, Shake! (Ben Korta)
This workshop will explore a spectrum of states of embodied consciousness, ranging from liminal dream to ecstatic tremors, quivers, and shakes of rapture. Guided by curiosity and care, and via a number of somatic and artistic tools, we’ll engage the images, sensations, metaphors, and narratives that appear when we move toward the subtle depths of our embodied imagination. These tools will include yoga nidra, color/drawing, authentic movement, parts work practices, somatic divination, extended shaking, and club-worthy beats. At the workshop's end, we’ll move, dance, and release these energies in a “somatic dance party” inspired by everything we discovered.
Sunday Preparations for Ritual Performance:
On Sunday we will present the group with a score for our evening ritual performance. This score will be an amalgam of the techniques and practices from the Saturday workshops. Sunday will be devoted to learning this score, and then performing it together in front a small audience at 4pm.
–🌾— PRACTICALS DETAILS —🌾–
Structure: Saturday Dec 6th 10am-4pm | Sunday Dec 7th 10am-6pm, with a performance from 4:30-6pm. Participants should bring a light lunch with them for both Saturday and Sunday as we will be taking a short 30-45 minute lunch break on both days which cannot accommodate going out to eat in the area.
Price: Tuition price is tiered based on an sliding scales of income/subsistence. Financially Abundant $200 / Financially Secure $150 / Financially Strained $100
Sliding Scale: Please try to reasonably and honestly select the price that reflects your economic situation. If you are unable to find a price that is suitable for you, please get in touch [[email protected]]. We are committed to covering our basic costs, while also making this possible for everyone who needs it.
Venue: The workshop will be held at 2 different venues. Our Saturday workshop will be held at Haw Creek Commons. And the Sunday workshop ill be at the Wortham Center in downtown Asheville.
Maximum Participants: 15
Cancellation Policy: Refunds are available up to 30 days before the event - minus a $20 processing fee. After this time we are unable to provide a refund for the event. Refunds might be given if a cancellation takes place under extenuating circumstances (e.g. a death of a 1st or 2nd degree family member, serious non-preventable illness or accident requiring hospitalization). Refunds in such cases remain at the discretion of the local organizers and will be decided on a case to case basis according to the timing of the cancellation and other factors.
Partial Attendance: Given the intimacy, trust building and shared creative practice inherent to this intensive, we highly recommend that all participants plan to stay for the entire weekend. We may be able to make accommodations for participants to end early, or miss a section of one day; however, late arrivals cannot be accommodated.
NOTE ON EMOTIONAL REGULATION: This intensive may explore the emotional landscapes that unfold within a group, and is not well designed for majorly flooded emotion from outside the group. If at this moment in your life you find you are highly activated by something you cannot set down, it may be best not to participate at this time. We understand that therapy can be very expensive and trusted therapists are hard to find, and there might be some temptation to come to this group for that kind of care, but it is not designed for that kind of individual attention, and the ask is that you have some settledness and calm available to you so we can play deeply together.
Many of the practices we will explore are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and its hardships. The practices can surface conflict and hurt that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is common to experience triggers of past psychological wounds within this practice, and this should be accounted for as a possibility. The intimacy of these practices might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. The facilitators will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. The invitation is to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive.
About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.
About the Facilitators: Aaron, Ben and Kai met in Montreal in 2014 being silly goons on a dance floor. Henceforth they played, collaborated and galavanted around city, forest, and virtual cracks and corners for many years, and then parted ways to different parts of the world. At this critical point in time, they are returning into collaboration to offer their wisdom harvests since their departure.
Saturdays Workshops:
Dancing our Edges (Aaron Finbloom)
For this workshop block we will use techniques drawn from processwork, psychodrama, butoh and clowning to dance the more shadowy side of our psyche. Some of the activities at this workshop may include: a) warmups that involve exaggerated emotional gestures, laughing, crying and extreme gesticulations b) a here-and-now practice whereby a single participant stands up in front of the group, names emotions, and then is encouraged to express one of those emotions through a march or dance c) psychologically challenging scenes devised by the facilitator that present a singular image for participants to dance simultaneously in the room d) participants creating their own singular, clear image from some challenging content within their psyche to attempt to dance.
The Joy of Being Weird (Aurora Kaï Sunrise)
This playful, heart-centered workshop is a celebration of our wild, tender humanity. Through movement, voice, and group connection, we explore awkwardness and weirdness as a bridge between shame and joy. Participants are guided to bring their hidden, “too much/not enough” parts into expression—first by embodying the shapes and sounds of shame, then transforming them through humor, absurdity, and authentic play. As individual weirdness merges into a shared sound–movement field, what once felt heavy becomes light. Together we remember that our strangeness is sacred, our joy is medicine, and freedom begins when nothing needs to be hidden.
Dancing the Subtle Body: Color, Dream, Shimmer, Shake! (Ben Korta)
This workshop will explore a spectrum of states of embodied consciousness, ranging from liminal dream to ecstatic tremors, quivers, and shakes of rapture. Guided by curiosity and care, and via a number of somatic and artistic tools, we’ll engage the images, sensations, metaphors, and narratives that appear when we move toward the subtle depths of our embodied imagination. These tools will include yoga nidra, color/drawing, authentic movement, parts work practices, somatic divination, extended shaking, and club-worthy beats. At the workshop's end, we’ll move, dance, and release these energies in a “somatic dance party” inspired by everything we discovered.
Sunday Preparations for Ritual Performance:
On Sunday we will present the group with a score for our evening ritual performance. This score will be an amalgam of the techniques and practices from the Saturday workshops. Sunday will be devoted to learning this score, and then performing it together in front a small audience at 4pm.
–🌾— PRACTICALS DETAILS —🌾–
Structure: Saturday Dec 6th 10am-4pm | Sunday Dec 7th 10am-6pm, with a performance from 4:30-6pm. Participants should bring a light lunch with them for both Saturday and Sunday as we will be taking a short 30-45 minute lunch break on both days which cannot accommodate going out to eat in the area.
Price: Tuition price is tiered based on an sliding scales of income/subsistence. Financially Abundant $200 / Financially Secure $150 / Financially Strained $100
Sliding Scale: Please try to reasonably and honestly select the price that reflects your economic situation. If you are unable to find a price that is suitable for you, please get in touch [[email protected]]. We are committed to covering our basic costs, while also making this possible for everyone who needs it.
Venue: The workshop will be held at 2 different venues. Our Saturday workshop will be held at Haw Creek Commons. And the Sunday workshop ill be at the Wortham Center in downtown Asheville.
Maximum Participants: 15
Cancellation Policy: Refunds are available up to 30 days before the event - minus a $20 processing fee. After this time we are unable to provide a refund for the event. Refunds might be given if a cancellation takes place under extenuating circumstances (e.g. a death of a 1st or 2nd degree family member, serious non-preventable illness or accident requiring hospitalization). Refunds in such cases remain at the discretion of the local organizers and will be decided on a case to case basis according to the timing of the cancellation and other factors.
Partial Attendance: Given the intimacy, trust building and shared creative practice inherent to this intensive, we highly recommend that all participants plan to stay for the entire weekend. We may be able to make accommodations for participants to end early, or miss a section of one day; however, late arrivals cannot be accommodated.
NOTE ON EMOTIONAL REGULATION: This intensive may explore the emotional landscapes that unfold within a group, and is not well designed for majorly flooded emotion from outside the group. If at this moment in your life you find you are highly activated by something you cannot set down, it may be best not to participate at this time. We understand that therapy can be very expensive and trusted therapists are hard to find, and there might be some temptation to come to this group for that kind of care, but it is not designed for that kind of individual attention, and the ask is that you have some settledness and calm available to you so we can play deeply together.
Many of the practices we will explore are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and its hardships. The practices can surface conflict and hurt that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is common to experience triggers of past psychological wounds within this practice, and this should be accounted for as a possibility. The intimacy of these practices might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. The facilitators will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. The invitation is to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive.
About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.
About the Facilitators: Aaron, Ben and Kai met in Montreal in 2014 being silly goons on a dance floor. Henceforth they played, collaborated and galavanted around city, forest, and virtual cracks and corners for many years, and then parted ways to different parts of the world. At this critical point in time, they are returning into collaboration to offer their wisdom harvests since their departure.
FACILITATORS
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Aurora Kaï Sunrise is an interdisciplinary artist whose work moves through the living currents of sound, movement, and consciousness. With over two decades of experience in the improvisational realms of silence and stillness, movement and sound — explored in studios, on stage, at home, and in nature—her practice bridges the art of performance and ritual embodiment. Born in Montréal and shaped by the diverse rhythms of Massachusetts, New York, and Hawai‘i, she carries the essence of these landscapes into her creations. Kaï’s years with the land and sea of Hawai‘i were especially transformative towards re-wilding her sense of embodiment and deepening her dialogue with the unseen realms. A graduate of Contemporary Dance Choreography at Concordia University, Aurora has since woven her artistry through dance, voice, painting, and energy work, infusing each expression with her distinctive blend of mysticism and playful wisdom. Who she is today has also been deeply shaped by her spiritual teachers over the past six years, to whom she extends her boundless gratitude— Xi Earthstar, Scott Hamilton, Jennifer Ashira Ra, Ke’oni Hanalei and Swaha.
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Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist, therapist, and educator whose work aims to expand transformative inquiry through relational games, role play, performance art, and conversation scores. He co-founded The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and is the founder and director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His projects have been featured internationally at venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Gallery 151 in New York, Maschinenhaus Kulturbrauerei in Berlin, UNAM in Mexico City, Performance Works Northwest in Portland, and MainLine Theatre in Montreal. Trained in Circling, Psychodrama, Buddhist Meditation, and Processwork, Aaron holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities from Concordia University in Montreal and teaches philosophy at the City College of New York. Learn more at www.finblooming.com.
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Benjamin Korta is an interdisciplinary artist and ISMETA-registered somatic movement educator/therapist inspired by the way creativity, embodiment, and the natural world weave together in the healing of the heart-mind. He has guided workshops on somatic imagery practices for mental health professionals, contemplative dialogue for conflict resolution practitioners, and movement improvisation workshops that bridge somatics, ecology, meditation, and the arts. Deeply influenced by his experience as a visual artist and musician, his approach to somatic practices engage the transformative healing effects of sound, image, and natural movement on the body-mind.
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