THE EROS ANNUAL:
POWER, NEED, SACRIFICE, SYMPATHY, GENEROSITY, SEX, DEATH, LOVE, ETERNITY
with Zhenevere Sophia Dao and Willa Roberts
In a world of commodified experience, we have to ask, What is a workshop for? A workshop cannot purpose itself to entertain. A workshop can be entertaining only to the degree that it becomes a gauntlet of profundity. Profundity is based on learning. But learning is less an accrual of information than an exposure of essence—often hidden essence. Learning, then, is the rich sensation of uncertainty. With that understanding, we have a reason for a workshop: to find hidden stabilities through the experience of profound uncertainty.
To the question that Zhenevere constantly poses—“What was the human for?”—the answer might be, “Eros.” But in a world of nearly total distraction, crass and non-devotional sexuality, marketed desire, competitive personalities, and ceaseless self-promotion and the branding of ambition, where is eros to be found? Eros is that which is essentially inviolable; it is the matter of eternity. But the inviolable and the eternal are tragically scarce in our time. Nevertheless, they can be sought for, we believe, through our engagement with need, sacrifice, sympathy, generosity, sex, death, love, and eternity.
Through Mythosomatic Movement and Mythosomatic Dance; through music—sound exploration, singing, and vocalization; through theater exercises and spiritualized martial arts training (suitable for all bodies); through language and poetics; and through philosophical inquiry into all of the ontologies of Eros, Zhenevere Sophia Dao and Willa Roberts will conduct atmospheres of profound uncertainty, beauty, and intensity, in search of the signs of endurable meaning.
Zhenevere Sophia Dao and Willa Roberts conduct atmospheres of artistic and somatic intensity. Their movement, philosophy, dance, theater, poetry, voice, and spiritualized martial arts workshops are experiences rather than colloquiums of theory. Their work is perhaps best conceived as the inner chamber of a somatic and spiritualized theater company, with body and voice as the instrumentations. As such, students participating in their work should be prepared to transcend paradigms of information in favor of a mature conception of vitality based on phases of orientation and disorientation.
ZHENEVERE SOPHIA DAO
Zhenevere Sophia Dao, a transgender woman, is a poet, novelist, playwright, and existential and cultural philosopher. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in Poetry and Literature, before leaving academia for the equestrian professions and to become an independent scholar. She is the founder of Mythosomatics, an original body of mythopoetic movement art, and the philosophies of Post-Daoism and Neo-Romanticism. She teaches workshops in INTEGRITAS: Inversions of Power Through Spiritualized Martial Arts, as well as VOICE & VOICE: Profound Experimental Theaters of Body & Song, with her partner, vocalist Willa Roberts. She makes the better part of her living as a blacksmith, farrier (horse shoer), and horse trainer
WILLA ROBERTS
Willa Roberts is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, arranger/composer, choir director and teacher specializing in music from Eastern Europe, the Black Sea region, Turkey and beyond. She is known for her evocative, rich, and versatile voice, as well as her precision, authenticity, musicality, and passionate engagement with community through music. Willa is featured with her vocal trio, Black Sea Hotel, on the Grammy Award-winning Yo-Yo Ma/The Silk Road Ensemble’s album, Sing Me Home. Other projects of note include the soundtrack for the film Don’t Worry Darling, a collaboration/performance with Kronos Quartet and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Chornobyl Songs Project: Living Culture from a Lost World on Smithsonian Folkways. Willa teaches singing both privately and in groups, as well as workshops in VOICE & VOICE: Profound Experimental Theaters of Body & Song with her partner Zhenevere Sophia Dao. She is the musical director and a principal player in SACRa Theater.
BRAVE EARTH
Brave Earth, Center for Applied Cultural Transition, is a living laboratory rooted in principles of regeneration, resiliency and reciprocity. We provide immersive experiences in Nature that share alternative ways of living and being that are suitable for modernity and contextually relevant for the rapidly changing world we live in.
Immerse yourself in the majesty and mystery of the rainforest. Brave Earth is located between San Ramon and La Fortuna, nestled in between Arenal Volcano and the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, the largest reserve of protected wildlife in Costa Rica.
As a living lab, we have experimented with different building modalities using AirCrete and materials sourced on the land including bamboo and adobe. We have implemented biophilic design, closed-loop systems and permaculture design principles. Ornamental, food, and medicinal gardens surround the center as well as hiking trials to a nearby river, and a natural swimming pond.