Touch as Technique

ABOUT

A four-part workshop series exploring consent through relational practice and touch-as-technique. Working through the truth of the body we will explore the art of giving and receiving, the clarity of our yeses and nos, and our attachments to various kinds of pleasure and suffering as points from which to flourish and grow. Movement practices in contact improvisation will help increase our capacity for real-time exploration and our ability to read and respond to more nuanced and complex relations.

Held at a beautiful venue in Woodstock, Cape Town, with guarded parking.

Please note that the course runs over four Wednesdays, starting on the 25th of January, and running until the 15th of February. The dates are:

25th January 7:30-9:30PM

1st, 8th, and 15th of February 7:30-9:30PM

Reviews from the previous workshops:

'Nico facilitated this important work around Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent with all the embodied clarity and insight of one who has been working actively for years with conscious movement, performance and sexuality. I really feel like I have more practical tools for my engagement with others more meaningfully in the sensual and other arenas.' - Adam Salmon

'I just finished Touch as Technique, the last weekly series that Nico hosted... It was really really really amazing to realize how much the body is able to consent to things or not consent to things that we think we are okay with. That the brain and the body can sometimes differ with its yeses and its nos. Consent is really about tuning into the body, and letting your body tell you what its yeses and nos are, and Nico gives really wonderful exercises to help you interrogate and investigate those sensations and emotions without being prescriptive of what they should and shouldn't be. It's a guided and held space to figure out your own process with these concepts surrounding embodied consent. I REALLY recommend going and seeing where it lands for you. It is deep and was very illuminating for me.' - Astrid

About Nico:

Nico Athene is a visual and performance artist, with training in various movement modalities including butoh, family constellations technology, sacred sexuality and shadow work, and contact improvisation. She has been working in the sex industry since 2016 - first as a stripper and companion and now as an embodied consent facilitator. Athene has degrees in Social Anthropology, Fine Art, and Public Health, and has exhibited and performed in various locations including the Pretoria Art Museum (Pretoria), Stevenson Gallery (Online), Kalashikovv (Johannesburg), the Institute for Creative Arts (Cape Town), and the Spier Light Art Festival (Stellenbosch). She has been Artist in Residence at Sante Fe Art Institute (NM), Vermont Studio Centre (VM), Arts Letter and Numbers (NY), Arteles (Finland), and Any Body Dance Lab in Cape Town.