4 Days of Contact Improvisation, Solo Movement and Psoas work with Carmen Serber at the beautiful Hanna Barn on Vashon Island. Exploring the co-creation of fluidity and form, grounded in care.

October 9 - 12
Hanna Barn on Vashon Island
Registration

This retreat is a deep immersion into easeful, timeless movement—into falling effortlessly through space, rising with clarity, and landing with buoyancy. It offers a space to cultivate coherence and refined spatial awareness by exploring the subtle relationships within the body and how they resonate outward into movement and beingness.

At the heart of our exploration is the return to the body’s fluid core. A reawakening of its innate intelligence and a coming home to our bones where structure, support, and belonging reside. Fluidity and Form co-creating our movement potential.

Psoas Work
Throughout the retreat, we’ll work with our deepest fluid tissue, our psoas, located at the gravitational midline behind the abdominal muscles deep within the belly core. The psoas teaches us about tenderness, about humanity, and about life as a continuous unfolding. We land and locate tuning into the world of the psoas. It shows us that depth and flow arise not from effort, but from participation. It is a pathway toward wholeness — toward power rooted in integrity, safety, agency and care.

Dance practices/(Contact) Improvisation
We will explore the spine, pelvis, and limbs in relationship to the psoas, sensing both their interconnected mobility and their restrictions. Playful micro movements and hands-on work will support those processes. Our perceptual inquiries will inform greater refinement and coordination as we dance solo, in duets, trios, and as an ensemble. Our somatic discoveries will expand the foundation from which we develop our dancing together. We will discover that physical skill and relational skills are not separate practices. They belong together and go hand in hand.

All dance explorations share one central intention: to stay connected to our core –to care about who we are and to allow ourselves to be fully ourselves, no matter what.

Questions We’ll Explore
How can we stay rooted in our core while the field expands?
How can we grow larger without leaving ourselves behind?
How can we let ourselves be moved by the whole experience, even in chaotic times?

Structure
The retreat weaves together Contact Improvisation, solo practices, hands-on bodywork, rest and jamming. Our chef, Hannah, will prepare nourishing dinners for us each evening and provide a simple breakfast to start our days.

I look forward to witnessing your individual process while supporting our collective creative unfolding. I am devoted to helping you cultivate core awareness in motion — and to noticing when you begin to move away from yourself.

What I care about
I care about the skill level of your dancing.
I care about how you touch – and the depths and responsibility behind it.
I care about your conversation with your partner and the space around you.
I care about your intention, your enthusiasm, and that care guides what you do.

The work we'll share in the Hanna Barn on Vashon Island will be non-judgmental, playful, encouraging, and deeply curious. A place to learn, to go inward, to rediscover home in your own body and in relationship to others. A space devoted to weaving art and life together.

Who Is It For?
This offering is for anyone curious about Contact Improvisation and the art of relational movement.

It’s especially suited for movers who want to:

• Expand their physical skillset
• Deepen their practice of relational attention
• Cultivate greater fluidity and responsiveness in their dance

It also welcomes dancers, therapists, bodyworkers, and athletes who wish to enrich or reimagine their movement, teaching, or healing practice — and anyone who misses the embodied, movement-based dimension often absent in massage and therapy trainings.

Studio and surrounding