Wren LaFeet
Co-Founder, Director and Lead Facilitator
Wren is celebrating his 24th year dancing in partnership and loves serving humanity as a somatic permissionary. Teaching partner dance internationally as a practice for mindful, authentic living, and enlivening communities by facilitating his signature modality, Cocréa, is his joyful service now for over a decade. Using this potent synthesis, Wren provides navigational assistance to humans nurturing a curiosity in gaining more access to the power and potential of their bodies. Using movement as a vehicle, he guides people towards right-relationship through listening and responding to, as well as inviting, allowing and embracing change. He is a celebrated TEDx speaker, featured author in “ReInhabiting the Village” and ardent proponent of pioneering a new renaissance through authentic connection and consensual touch.
Wren is a cis-gender, able bodied white male residing and working on the traditional ancestral lands of the Muwekma Ohlone people (Los Gatos, CA). As a non-binary identified, 11th generation American descended most recently from artist and blue collar working class parents, Wren is in a deep reckoning with the numerous and nuanced aspects of self that influence how we navigate interpersonal relationships and cultural identity on the journey into right-relationship.
As a Danyasa trained facilitator, former Awake at Work program facilitator, certified Attunement Therapy practitioner, Do Good Things with Power program graduate, Trauma-Sensitive HeartMath course graduate and holder of a BA in Drama and Dance from the University of Washington, Wren promotes collaborative, mindful movement as an embodied approach to spirituality and medicinal salve for our modern ailments of disconnection and dislocation. He serves as an addiction recovery counselor at the Los Gatos based recovery clinic, Embodied Recovery and is available for private embodied movement sessions.
Antje Martina Schaefer
Co-Founder
Antje Schaefer is a master facilitator of connection, embodiment and inclusive communities and culture. As the co-creator of Cocréa Mindful Partner Dance, she shares deep wisdom and facilitates connection through partner dance and embodiment as a path to self-discovery and relational healing. Her appetite for lifelong learning has led her to seek certifications in mindfulness, Integral Circling and Authentic Relating practices, Realization Process embodiment meditation and Hakomi somatic therapy. Antje synthesizes these skills to deepen her clients understanding of the mind-body connection and helps them create a holistic, relational approach to their transformation, grounded in presence and truth-seeking. She coaches and consults with individuals, teams, organizations and communities. One of her greatest joys is to create inclusive spaces that foster growth, vibrant community and creative expression as a practice ground for learning about self and relationship. She currently produces Nectar Fusion, a community dance event in Portland Oregon which she founded in 2014. www.antjeschaefer.com
Certified Cocréa Facilitators
Brenée Roussel
Facilitator
Brenée is a birth doula, trained CPM (Certified Professional Midwife), and is a developing preconception coach assisting people in intentionally conceiving babies. She has studied how to hold this sacred container of ushering in new expansions of the human experience since 2013. Learning the wisdom of being a gatekeeper of life has created a nuance on “midwifing” people within their personal processes from birth and beyond, knowing it is all interconnected.
Dance always came naturally to Brenee, even as a child. As a young teen she attended dance classes to deepen her connection to movement, but found herself uninspired by choreography, or a dance regime. In time, she began exploring her “Yes!” through authentic movement on whatever dance floor she could. Eventually majoring in concert dance floor sessions, as well as fire dance performance, she outgrew her roots in Maine. Drawn to travel the states, she eventually landed on the west coast.
She first journeyed with 5 Rhythms in 2012, and that catapulted her into the world of the human genius within ecstatic dance, dancing freedom, contact dance and then into the world of transformational festivals. Her teachers became those whom she danced with, knowing every person had their own story and gem to be offered within that shared moment of movement. She learned to deeply listen to what someone’s body was saying in the smallest of nuances by deeply attuning to their flow, allowing a transmission of invitation, permissioning and surrender. She gained insight into how to move like water with most people at any level of dance, informing how she grew as a dance partner.
She discovered Cocréa at Beloved 2018 finding a home within its practice that was innate in her personal practice. She began her training to become a Cocréa Mindful Partner Dance instructor in the fall of 2019. After the long pause COVID inflicted on the training, Brenée is excited to be sharing this body wisdom once again as the first graduate of Cocréa‘s facilitator training.
Myriem Corteville
Facilitator
Dancer, mentor & facilitator of sacred spaces, Myriem’s mission is to support the process of transformation both on an individual and collective level through human design and embodiement practices.
Myriem grew up with a strong contrast between modern city life and the ancestral Berber wisdom passed down by her mother. Two worlds that she brings together today in her events & coachings, facilitating intentional and transformative spaces connected to the heart and indigenous wisdom of the world.
At the age of 30, Myriem has already experienced many transformations herself, both personal and professional: whether traveling alone around the world, abandoning her Parisian life to live in the jungle of Costa Rica, going from trainer at L’Oréal Luxe to a committed life of an entrepreneur, losing her mother then her father or even becoming a mother by giving birth naturally to her daughter in the jungle. These profound changes and initiations experienced over the last 7 years have opened the path to her personal healing. She knew how to navigate her transitions by finding the tools and resources necessary to develop her resilience transforming her wounds into gold, her sadness into beauty, thereby manifesting an orgasmic and aligned life based on the guidance of her body and her knowledge of herself.
Today Myriem knows that behind every challenge hides a gift and a better version of ourselves. She passes on this wisdom acquired through her business Madre Sana, which in Spanish means “the mother who heals”. Care experiences that accompany mothers, women and the world in the process of transformation and healing, channeling feminine and maternal energy. She uses massage, aromatherapy, plants, liberating dance and Human Design as “medicines”.
Her main intention? Contribute to a more connected, more authentic and more loving world. “A more loving humanity is a more loved humanity…”
Jackie Wiegand
Facilitator
Jackie loves to play, dance, sing, laugh, cry, smile, and share deep connections with herself, others, and nature!
Her embodiment journey started while working as an accountant when she realized she needed to radically change her life and leave her desk job to explore how she could share and deepen the joy she feels while dancing! This led to a profound inquiry into body wisdom, lots of new learning experiences, expressive arts therapy schooling at Tamalpa Institute, and Laughter Yoga Leader certification!
Along her journey Cocréa was patiently waiting for her and when she finally got to experience a Cocréa workshop it changed her life and opened up a new world of possibilities and opportunities! A few years later after soaking up as much Cocréa as she could, Jackie joined the Cocréa facilitator training and greatly enjoyed all she learned from these rich and empowering teachings!
She is so excited to continue her Cocréa journey as a facilitator and looks forward to sharing this playful magic with the world!
Heidi Light
Facilitator
Heidi Light is all about creating transformational spaces for people to discover their Juicy Embodiment and their Free and Authentic expression.
In her own need for healing she was driven to explore many disciplines, focusing on healing the conflict between Spirituality, Sexuality, and the Inner Child.
Through her extensive studies in Essence Work, Tantric Arts, Expressive Arts Therapy, Body-Mind Centering, and Sexological Bodywork she developed herself as a Tantra and Intimacy Coach, and has had a thriving practice for 10 years.
Today she is thrilled to be merging her Intimacy and Relationship Work with Partner Dance, helping people feel the safety and permission to be in their vulnerability and feel the sweetness of connection.
Facilitator Training Program Graduates
Ember Bethany
Facilitator Training Program Graduate
Early on Bethany fell in love with the grace of dancers but was unable to afford classes. Self taught for the most part, she explored what dynamic motion and acrobatics were available to her. Now she has a Passion for teaching those very things, as well as injury prevention and Giving a firm and early foundation to Young Dancers.
Feeling the real healing effects of dance lead her to study further into Psychosomatics for therapeutic movement which opened up her practice and many opportunities to help others like her. With the skills and experience coming from being self taught and the later learning of Fundamentals, She has Not only A deep Intuition but also a Passion for Dispensing Knowledge and technique To children and people of all ages.
Dance Temple
Facilitator Training Program Graduate
I have always been in awe of the Body’s magical capacities. As a “neurodiverse” individual in a culture stressing conformity, I was called to live into all my magic in order to flourish.
A Seer and Body Intuitive, over 3.5 decades I became viscerally well-versed in consciousness, brain science, energy, body awareness and movement. My daily practices have included Nia, Mindfulness, Hatha, Ecstatic Dance, Contact Improv, club and years of nightly West Coast Swing. I am most happy and integrated in the midst of improvised partner dance.
As a performer and writer, I studied and learned to embody expressive ways of Being that allowed me to flourish mentally, creatively and emotionally. I have shared these ways through these arts and also through bodywork, as a trainer, teacher, event creator, healer, consciousness facilitator (Extreme Paradigm Shift) and through offering counsel.
Over a 5-year period, using intuition and gifts developed over this lifetime in “mind-body” realms, I was able to rehabilitate my mother from a massive stroke. Moving through Space in Joyful Embodiment is a glorious gift. Come play!
Alaris Todar
Facilitator Training Program Graduate
Alaris discovered the vast joy of partner dancing when she learned to swing dance at 12 years old, the first of many partner dance styles she would fall in love with. Since then, she’s been on a deep journey of uncovering her sense of belonging, safety in her own body, and in relation to others. She sees social dancing as much more than a fun hobby; it is a means to be in a conscious and co-creative relationship, a non-verbal container for healing, transformation, expression and discovery.
When she encountered Cocréa, she had explored a wide range of somatic, mindful, healing, movement, spiritual and relational practices, in a range of therapeutic to festive environments. Cocréa is the first umbrella she’s encountered that reflects all of her core values, and also supports her gift of being a permissionary for people’s full expression. She wishes to offer spaces where people can realize the profound medicine and magic that exists where we hold the most resistance or fear, and to deeply dive into the experience of being in bodies with one another.
Ethyl Ruehman (She/Ki/Her)
Facilitator Training Program Graduate
Ethyl is a mover and shaker from the midwest, that lives deeply within the seasons. Kin’s heart thrives best in a community of Earth love, dance and song 🎵♥️🌎
Ki believes that embodying our expressive selves and reconnecting with other humans from that embodied place is absolutely PROFOUND.
Ethyl is exuberantly excited to continue kins journey of spreading the philosophy and dance of CoCrea in the microcosm of the collective.
Ethyl also has a budding interest in circus movement arts such as aerial silks, acro yoga, dancing with an apparatus and slacklining; as well as a quirky fashion style! Ki helps steward the land at Lost in the Woods Farm and Winery in Gosport, Indiana.
Collaborators
Odessa Avianna Perez
Retreat Facilitator and Project Collaborator
Odessa Avianna Perez, MA, LMFT, is a trauma-informed somatic psychotherapist, embodiment and social justice educator who helps individuals and groups heal from fragmentation and remember agency, magic, and belonging. She holds a masters in Somatic Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies and triple bachelor degrees in Dance, Theater Arts, and Sociology from Rutgers University.
Odessa has been guiding movement-based groups into deeper self-knowing and embodiment for over 20 years, starting first as a choreographer and director of an interdisciplinary dance company dedicated to emergent, improvisational, and self-revelatory performance. Coming from a dance performance background, Odessa’s interest started to shift towards mindful, authentic and explorative movement methodology when she stumbled into her first Contact Improv dance at a jam in New York City. She has been practicing and teaching Contact Improvisation as a form of self inquiry and relationship alchemy since 2010.
Odessa is deeply curious about the intersection of personal and collective trauma, collective nervous system states and expression, and how we can use somatics and dance to integrate our trauma for better relationship, community and planet. She has facilitated workshops at dozens of retreats and festivals throughout California and internationally, using somatics, movement, and contact improvisation as the platform through which to explore safety, relationship, building capacity for discomfort, interdependence and inclusion.
In her psychotherapeutic private practice, she weaves somatics, movement, interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory, attachment work, and social and racial justice frameworks into her work with individuals and couples. She is the Inclusion and Belonging lead for SoulPlay festivals and currently resides in Tongva/Kizh territory – aka Los Angeles, CA.
Natasha Richards
Project Collaborator
An artist, alchemist and passionate yogi, Natasha has dedicated the last 12 years to exploring various forms of yoga, movement and other self development modalities. A creatrix by nature, Natasha is always working on or learning some new form of creative expression. Each adding a unique ingredient to her understanding of the intricate tapestry of human existence. Beginning as a way to navigate her challenges and facilitate her spiritual growth, the joy and freedom she finds continues to inspire her to lean in, learn more and peel back more layers. Natasha’s grounded approach to life, combined with her love for music and intuitive, embodied movement, create an atmosphere of safety, playfulness, exploration, and permission in the various spaces and roles she steps into.
Natasha is a cis-gender, able bodied, biracial female residing on Anishinaabe lands of the Chippewas of Georgina Island (Ontario, Canada). As a certified Yin and Goddess FlowTM student and guide with foundations in Hatha and Vinyasa modalities, Natasha thrives on supporting others as they navigate their own multifaceted selves, embracing their strengths and confronting their struggles. She fearlessly dives into the depths of challenging and unspoken emotions, gently guiding her students to explore these aspects with curiosity and compassion. Her supporting role within Cocrea and SoulPlay Festival continues to teach her how to best show up and hold this space by helping her find new ways to be in integrity, care and right relationship.
Natasha’s commitment to growth and expansion continues to extend beyond yoga and movement. In 2020, Her path led to Costa Rica, where the transformative power of Kambo found her. Inspired by profound experiences, she became a Certified Kambo Practitioner through the Rainforest Healing Center in Peru in 2022. These days she’s begun to delve into the realms of Human Design, Authentic Relating and Thai Massage. Wherever she goes, her mission is to foster a vibrant community and remind individuals of their inherent strength and wisdom.