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 toward growth. It’s a mind set and a life practice.
Sometimes, when Deb and Ana are in town, The Alt Feminine becomes 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.
Offerings
Retreats
Retreats are the ideal way to experience what the Alt Feminine can bring forth in your life. The immersive experience of leaving home and getting away from the rhythms of “normal” reality create the best conditions for remarkable lasting transformation. Spending a full weekend in community with other students, dancing, sweating, learning and growing yourself is a gift we hope all women can give themselves one day. When you take care of others, you must also take care of yourself to stay balanced. We have deliberately created these retreats to be the instigators of self care and soulful re-connection that we often don’t have time for in daily life.
One Day Workshops
Don’t have time for a full weekend getaway? Fear not, much can be accomplished in one day. Our one day workshops are packed to the gills with body invigorating movement and play. Prepare to learn an entirely new dance vocabulary that is both simple and endlessly inventive. Your body will feel the change in every way.
Class Series
We teach a 5 week class series seasonally in our home tribe of the Bay area. Through a continuous and cumulative class curriculum, students gather once a week to learn and refine their movement vocabulary. We often incorporate and focusing theme. Details about up coming class series will be posted on our blog and online. These are unique and rare opportunities to work with Deb and Ana in a class setting.
What is sensual movement? And how can it change my life?
Sensual movement is a dance form that is meant for ALL women, at ANY age and ANY fitness level. It is an incredibly effective tool for reconnecting to your body, sensuality power and purpose . Since our bodies tell our greatest truths – if we can learn to listen and trust, the potential for growth is unlimited. Sensual movement slows us down and opens us to this deep knowledge that we all process- but sometimes can’t access. When we begin to move and connect to our bodies we also unlock “stuck” parts of our lives ,heal old wounds and feel more health and joy!
Why Pole Dance?
Whatever is rejected, forgotten or suppressed in us is exactly what we have the chance to encounter and make friends with as we Pole dance.
It is precisely because of its complicated and disavowed status that the Pole holds so much potential for women to investigate their own unique feminine nature. In a way, the Pole has much in common with how female sexuality has been treated our culture. It has often been relegated to the realm of the hidden and shameful, and yet it's true beauty and depth of soul shine through.
The Pole is a strange and wonderful dance partner. It has much to help us communicate both to ourselves and to the world.
Master movement educator and mom, Ana has been teaching pole dance and sensual movement to women since 2004. With her warmth and imagination, along with a vocabulary that would put Websters Dictionary to shame, she has the ability to allow her students to let go and be led down a delicious sensual path of movement in her classes and workshops.
I first met Ana while working in our friend’s clothing store in 2001. I was doing displays there and she was the manager. There’s a lot of down time in a clothing store, so there was plenty of time to chat. We found we had a shared love of dance, rock and roll, weird eating habits, teen book series’s, dumb funny movies, and are both Pisces! We both also left that store to do a pole dance teacher training and to help open and be the first instructors at S Factor San Francisco.
Deb is a ballet dancer, Afro Samba dancer, black belt in Brazilian Jujitsu, visual artist, bow hunter, the world’s reigning pillow fighting champion, and a loving mom of one incredible daughter.
I met Deb in my mid 20’s as I fumbled through the awkward transition from kid to adult. Deb walked into my retail world – a tan, tall and muscular Goddess of a woman. She had equal parts confidence, compassion and a hilarious sense of humor! She struck this balance of lightness and depth with an effortless grace. I immediately wanted to learn more about her. Of course, she was a Pisces! We became fast friends and I have been grateful for her positive presence in my life ever since.
