Dance Our Way Home

Our Blossoming Community

Dance Our Way Home is a practice and a community.

Knowing this journey could not happen on its own, nor meant to be experienced alone, we are so very grateful for all the relationships which have been birthed, and all the generous, heart-felt support and guidance we have received along the way.

Big thanks go out to EVERY WOMAN who graces the sacred space of DOWH- past, present and future- including all the beautiful women who assist/ed DOWH in the studio, and who offered their beauty to the labyrinth photo shoot and/or promo video. 

More special thanks go to:

Leslie Jennings and Catherine Raine for their beautiful poetry as well as their joyful presence. Read Leslie's poem "Essence" and Catherine's poem "Labyrinth Dancers". 

All the fabulous "Muses" of "Sundays with the Muse"- Zahra Haji, Gennie Brukner, Guiomar Campbell, Caro Cloutier, Nan Keyser, Val Moysey, Lang Liu and Michelle Tocher.

You are all a blessing to this vibrant expressive community!

Our Growing Team

 Erica Ross, Co-Creatrix, Director & Facilitator
Growing up in a home of dance and art, Erica Ross offers the wisdom of her life experience as a dancer, artist, group and workshop facilitator, certified hypnotherapist, life mentor, traveller and mother. She has been involved in the creative and healing arts for over 30 years. Read Erica's full bio.

  * Caro Cloutier, B.A., dipl.EXAT, Facilitator
Caro is a practicing expressive arts therapist, energy medicine practitioner, and past Board Member of the Ontario Society of Psychotherapists. She invokes sacredness and healing experiences by engaging participants to rekindle their sense of play, creativity and self-expression.  Caro's expressive arts therapy is inspired by drama, visual art, movement, toning or sounding, storytelling, text, symbolism, mythic mapping and ceremony.  Caro will be offering a 6-Week DOWH Series, Saturday, January 23- February 27, 2010 , plus a free Intro  to the Series on Saturday, January 16, called "Dreaming in the Dark". www.carocloutier.com  caro@carocloutier.com  

 * Nan Keyser, M.Ed, OSP, Co-Creatrix
Nan is a psychotherapist in private practice who has been a compassionate facilitator of the healing and expressive arts for over 15 years. She is a clinical member of the Ontario Society of Psychotherapists and has trained in body-centered modalities such as bioenergetics, sensorimotor psychotherapy, movement, chanting, and yoga. In her therapy practice, she has a caring, woman-centered approach to effectively help women create positive change with issues such as depression, anxiety, eating  disorders, body image, panic, blocked creativity, phobias, abuse, trauma, and relationship problems. Nan is co-founder of Dance Our Way Home and The Move Dance Collective. www.expressivehealing.com  nankeyser@gmail.com

 * Mari Rossi, Apprentice

Three years ago serendipity brought Mari Rossi to Dance Our Way Home, and in this practice she found a way to deepen her healing journey. She had been dancing different modalities, including ballet, jazz, modern and expressive, since she was a child in Brazil.  Mari completed her training as a yoga teacher at The Yoga Sanctuary in Toronto and recently  studied at Baby and Me Fitness to become a certified Pre and Post-natal fitness and yoga instructor. She is now taking a break from her studies in psychology at the University of Toronto and from ISIS’s Expressive Art Therapy program, to raise her beautiful newborn daughter. Mari’s own journey through motherhood has inspired her to bring Dance Our Way Home to pregnant women and new moms. 

 * Twyla Kowalenko, MSW, Apprentice
Twyla is a dancer, a yogini, a healer, a writer, an explorer, an advocate, a cat lover and counsellor whose journey has taken her many places.  With a background in social work, she has long been committed to social change and women’s empowerment.  She has explored the strengths of herself as well as those of communities around the world, and is presently involved in international advocacy, social research, teaching yoga and reflective writing, and offering Reiki. Twyla loves to dance (of course!) and also keeps busy with yoga, climbing, writing, gardening, biking, cooking, reading and she is now beginning to explore singing. She is very excited to become part of DOWH, continuing to follow the spiral both outwards and inwards.

 * Tabitha Kot, Writer, Website copy-editor  
Heeding the call from her distant tribe, Tabitha danced into the circle at Dance Our Way Home. At the centre of the spiral she found much needed succour, a sense of community, endless Love, and, ultimately, her Self.  A passionate student of life, Tabitha has had the great privilege to:  study Social Work and Sociology at McMaster University; receive her Second Level in Reiki under the guidance of Laurie Ward; study yoga and meditation in India, and; have her writing and poetry showcased in a variety of publications.  Tabitha’s endless hunger for learning has led her to pursue yoga teacher training at Yoga Therapy Toronto.  She is currently establishing herself as a Life Guide and a Reiki practitioner.  Wherever there is rhythm and beat, Tabitha will follow the sound and she will dance. Read Tabitha's article "Dance Our Way Home: The Divine Dance" and her poem "Awakening".  

 * Gina Silvestri, Copy-writer
Gina found Dance Our Way Home in 2005, during a period of serious illness: walking into her first class, she had 17 medical diagnoses. Each dance since has nurtured unimaginable healing and beauty that continues to bloom, a process captured in her piece "Dancing Home". Shining with vibrant health, she now writes with the fluttering leaves and dancing waves of Lake Simcoe, paying forward the inspiration she found here internationally, as The Raw Muse.  

 * Brenda Clews, Writer, Poet

Brenda Clews is a poet and painter living in Toronto, Canada. Born in Zimbabwe, and having spent a childhood in the jungles of Zambia, she embraces the dance of shamanic healing that DOWH offers. She is a developmental editor, a tutor, a certified Kundalini yoga instructor. Published in literary journals, her work shown in art shows, she is developing an aesthetic of multiplicities, of our beings as prisms, in which dance is a central metaphor for living and understanding our lives. Read Brenda's poem "Bramble Rose" and writing "Erica's Dance Our Way Home". A small videopoem she created after the Solstice Ecstatic Dance in June 2009 may be seen on her Celestial Dancers page of her website, Art & Writings. 

 Gina Catenazzo, Photographer 

Gina is soulfully passionate about creating and self-expression, be it through dance, graphic design, photography or life. www.ginacatenazzo.carbonmade.com  gina_catenazzo@hotmail.com

Lynna Landstreet, Webmistress

www.spidersilk.net  lynna@spidersilk.net

 * Tad Hargrave of Radical Business, Our Marketing Guru

Now 34, Tad is one of North America's younger (and more unusual) marketing consultants. Since 2001, Tad has been running Radical Business a mission based, socially conscious marketing consulting business for "green", locally owned, sustainable, holistic, life-affirming and otherwise conscious entrepreneurs. Early on in his career he stumbled across the notion of doing most his workshops on a pay-what-you-can basis so that they could be affordable to all. www.tadhargrave.com  tad@tadhargrave.com

* Photos not by Gina Catenazzo

Click here for more information or to enrol in a DOWH session or workshop.