Wild Soma is cultivating...
time and space for embodied research practices
that centre inquiry and process.
Languaging invitations into EMBODIED PRACTICE for many kinds of PEOPLE and COMMUNITIES.
Growing a community of interested HUMANS who want to connect to embodied practice as a WAY of BEING in the world.
Designing intentional GUIDED EXPERIENCES that centre embodied ways of knowing, being and doing.
Developing a NETWORK of PRACTITIONERS
who cultivate embodied worldmaking practices.
Designing a series of SELF-DIRECTED EXPERIENCES that animate embodied connection to self, others and world.
About Wild Soma
Wild Soma was formed in 2021 to support the research and practice of embodiment as a world making process. Core members Julia Aplin, Shannon Litzenberger, Andrea Nann and Roula Said are established dance artists, performance makers, movement facilitators and community mobilizers. Their shared interest in embodiment practice as a world-making proposal is the basis of their collaboration. Interested in animating the self-in-the-world relationship, Wild Soma is a platform to research, design, prototype and experiment with interventions that centre new ways of being through aesthetic embodied participatory experience. Concerned with the state of climate emergency and inspired by this time of important social change and growing interconnection, Wild Soma aims to recast the body as self, in specific relationships to the social, cultural, temporal and planetary ecosystems we live within. By illuminating a sense of interconnectedness within the living world, Wild Soma transforms aesthetic processes into a collective world-making practice. Wild Soma’s advisory circle includes Philip Davis, Danielle Denichaud, and Michelle Silagy.
JULIA APLIN
Julia’s work centres kinship as a relational process among humans and other species. She integrates decades of professional movement experiences with tools and techniques gathered from her work in education, healing and environmental studies, to enquire into collective collaboration as a means to shift away from prescribed paradigms and reach towards communal flourishing.
An award-winning choreographer, Julia has created dances for theatres, rivers, boxing rings, wading pools, forests, cyberspace and neuroscience labs with organizations such as Canadian Opera Company, Urbanvessel, Moonhorse Dance Theatre, Dancemakers, Double Pendulum, Dusk Dances and The Grove Collective.
Julia works with a wide range of people from elite performers to beginners and has led classes, courses, outdoor performances, workshops and retreats through a variety of organizations such as universities, community groups and art festivals. Julia is dedicated to promoting paradigms that are inclusive, joyful and uplifting. www.upwardspiral.me
B.A., B.Ed., Master of Environmental Studies
SHANNON
LITZENBERGER
Shannon Litzenberger (she/her, Tkaronto) is an award-winning choreographer, director and embodiment facilitator. Inspired by the borderless landscapes of her prairie homeland, she creates sensory-rich multi-disciplinary performance experiences that animate our relationship to land, community and the forgotten wisdom of the body. Her imaginative collaborations connect art forms and communities, centring participatory experiences in artistic processes. Throughout her 25+ year career, her work has been presented across Canada and the US, in collaboration with many of Canada’s leading artists across disciplines.
The creative principles and embodied practices she works with regularly in the studio are also central to her work in leadership development, organizational culture development and systems change. Her approach to personal and collective transformation focuses on recovering our capacity to feel and sense ourselves and the world around us as a way of knowing, being and co-creating. She works frequently across corporate, academic and non-profit spaces in support of creating a healthier, more interconnected, equitable and resilient society. www.shannonlitzenberger.com
ANDREA NANN
Andrea Nann (she/her, Tkaronto) is a contemporary dance artist, arts educator, founding artistic director of Dreamwalker Dance Company, and founder/co-creator of Conscious Bodies Methodology, an embodied community practice. Andrea dances to reach across distance and to experience herself and others in celebration of possibility, plurality, imagination, originality, and belonging. A graduate of York University’s Department of Fine Arts, Andrea was a member of the Danny Grossman Dance Company for 15 years and she has contributed to the creation of new works by over 70 dance and theatre creators from across Turtle Island. Andrea has been recognized with awards for choreography, performance, contributions to the performing arts sector and for her work in community actioning. Andrea believes that dance and embodiment can shift attitudes and ways of being, tuning us into what makes each of us distinct, to what we share, and ultimately how we can live together in wonderment and peace. www.dreamwalkerdance.com
ROULA SAID
Roula Said is a multi-faceted artist of Palestinian heritage based in Toronto. Roula has been studying, teaching and performing Arabic music and dance for over 25 years. From within her tradition as practised in the west, where she has also explored many other worlds of body-wisdom, theatre, poetry and music, Roula has created Seven Waves Movement as an invitation to “Embody the Beloved”. As a community connector, Roula has shared her gifts as part of Diasporic Genius, a cross-cultural creativity project in Toronto’s Thorncliffe Park, bringing citizens together across boundaries of race, religion, ethnicity and age to create music, art, feasts and festivals. Deeply interested in meaningful transitions, Roula now weaves her artistry and devotion to the Beloved into creating ceremonies as a wedding officiant, and into loving support for individuals and families as a death doula. www.roulasaid.com
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