5 Days • Ecstatic Dance Retreat • Tomar, Portugal

Come retreat with us. We call it an “Immersion” because that is exactly what you’ll do: allow the outside world to fall away and become fully immersed in dance, community, and a unique group-field experience facilitated in the way only the DTM Team can.

The idea is simple: a group of people comes together with the intention to dance, focused on a central theme. We each bring our own medicine — our circumstances, desires, struggles, hopes, and curiosity — and dance with it all in relation to that theme. We dive deep into the group field created by a unique constellation of dancing humans and attuned facilitators, trusting the magic that unfolds.

Each Immersion retreat is facilitated by Bernice and other members of the DTM Team. We will dance at least twice each day to impeccably curated music that is DJed live. We will also engage in non-dance practices and processes, each shaped by the specific team, location, and theme. While the Immersion format and method remain consistent, the combination of theme, place, and practices shifts — making this a living practice dancers can return to again and again to reconnect to themselves, their dancing family, and whatever infinite source they credit with their existence.

This is a conscious free-form dance practice (often called Ecstatic Dance). There is no choreography or steps to learn. You do not need to identify as a dancer to join us. Each DTM Immersion follows a similar rhythm and includes a theme that shapes the experience; however, it is the group field — the shared creation of those who show up — that ultimately generates the transformative power of each Immersion. It will not be the same without you.

This retreat will be capped at 40 participants to keep it well-contained and intimate.

IMMERSION THEME: LINEAGE

We will gather in the mountains of central Portugal at a potent time — a moment that marks the final harvest celebration and the midpoint of autumn, just six short weeks before the darkest night of the year.

Across cultures, this season is one of honouring ancestors. It is said to be a liminal time when the veils are thin, when contact with those who have passed and those yet to join us is most active. We will work with the themes of honouring those who have gone before us and calling in those we wish to walk alongside into the future.

This immersion is for everyone, as we are all part of the great lineage of the human race. Let us come together and dance with intentionality — saying goodbye to the past and hello to the best future we can conjure.

For this retreat, we ask you to bring two talismans: one representing your past lineage, and another symbolising your hopes for the lineage of us all moving forward.

We will dance both indoors and outdoors, in the daytime and into the evening, as humans have done for millennia.