What is The Alt Feminine?
The Alt Feminine is the intersection of the individual and the collective. It’s a way of seeing women in the world and a pathway to your own growth. It’s a mind set and a life practice.
Sometimes, when Deb and Ana are in town, it is a physical space where women may gather, move, create, dance and connect in meaningful ways.
Our work promotes the sacred initiation of embodiment. Our primary method for bringing women together is always through the body and the senses. Our approach is simple and sophisticated. Dance is our medium, but we don’t view dance as something exclusive that only trained dancers should be doing. We want to expose all women to its transformative power.
Language and discourse are important tools that we use to teach and share, but our work is housed within the alchemy of body awareness and the mysteries of sensuality.
The Alt Feminine is a platform for body listening, healing and celebration by way of poetic movement and sensual dance. We teach all kinds of women to do this. As dancers, we are deeply acquainted with the power of expression thru our bodies. And as women, we are well aware of the insult, injury, commodification and policing that has historically been endured by the female body. Our passion and expertise has always been to forge a path for women to connect to that expressive power within themselves. We believe with reverent awareness, women can heal themselves and all the other women they know through dance and movement.
We believe embodiment and sensuality to be innate to human life and a wellspring from which personal growth and higher truth may emerge.
We also know that when this healing work of embodiment is witnessed and validated by other women in a group, growth and truth are amplified. The more true we are to ourselves, the more we can allow for others to do the same, and the more we do that together the greater our power grows. Our bodies are our most immediate, intimate and powerful conduits toward creating fulfilling lives and since our bodies do not lie, we can use the information they reveal to us for the betterment of our mental and physical health. By learning to pay attention to and hold sacred the vessel that carries us thru our life’s experiences — we can become whole, heal trauma, effect change and feel inspired. The dis-connection many of us feel from our creative spirit can be directly re-linked by engaging our sensuality with purpose and safety.
We can spend whole lifetimes disconnected from our sensuality and lost in our mind chattering stories.
However, the somatic realm holds onto our deepest truth for safe keeping. It is vital, rich, emotional, sometimes painful and often traumatic territory to explore. But that’s where the healing lives — right there in the middle of the pain and the joy. It’s hard work to do alone. And we need each other to affirm that its worth doing. The power of belonging and group consciousness is undeniable. It can be unruly and dogmatic if not invoked with the intention of acceptance and diversity. We seek to dip from that well of togetherness and community with the intention of radical acceptance. We ask that women who are drawn to our project come as they are, and add their voice to the blend. We do not claim to speak for all women but we seek to make room for all women to speak for themselves. We reject the socially contrived parameters of feminine identity that are too often thrust upon us, created for us, or creative by us. We take responsibility for how we see and treat ourselves and other women. All narratives of femininity are worth while and worth celebrating. This is our alternative path and one we invite all willing women to walk with us.