Hawai'i Dance Camp

Hawai'i Dance Camp

Dance deeply. Play wildly. Connect fully.

Seven days of movement, connection, and play on the wild Puna coast of Hawaiʻi Island.

Imagine waking up to tropical birds and sensual warm breezes.

Moving in an open-air dance floor full of curious, playful humans.

Learning something that changes the way you move your body.

Floating in a warm pool with a pod of dolphin-like humans.

Getting lost in a jam.

Laughing over dinner.

Soaking in a hot tub beneath the glorious Milky Way.

Feeling your nervous system soften.

Then dancing again.

This is Hawaiʻi Dance Camp.

An intimate gathering of dozens, not hundreds, of people who want more than a dance festival and more than a vacation. For one week, we gather at Sundari Gardens, an ocean-view sanctuary on Hawaiʻi Island, to dance, rest, and remember what it feels like to be fully in our bodies.

We believe that humans are more joyful, more healthy, and more emotionally resilient when we have deeper opportunities for movement and connection in our lives.

How we hold the space

Every invitation here is an invitation, not an expectation. You can say no, step out, or simply watch, anytime. Consent and care come first, so everyone can play freely.

SCHEDULE

This is our schedule, subject to change slightly.

All participants will be invited into a WhatsApp to be informed of any changes.

LOGISTICS

Arrive anytime Dec 10. We start early Dec 11.

Dec 11–17 · 7 days, 7 nights.

Shuttles will grab people at 3PM from Kona and 5PM from Hilo on Dec 10.

Private pickup cars available. Once you get tickets you'll be added to a WhatsApp group to support carpooling.

Early arrival and late departure available.

THERE’S NOWHERE QUITE LIKE SUNDARI.

There are plenty of places to take great dance workshops. There are very few where you can spend a whole week immersed in dance, surrounded by tropical gardens, dark starry skies, and warm December nights.

Our home for the week is a 10-acre sanctuary overlooking the Pacific, with an open-air dance floor, a warm-water pool, and an extraordinary spa. You might spend the morning in a deep movement practice, the afternoon napping under a Monkeypod tree, and the evening dancing or soaking under the stars. The island isn’t just our backdrop, it’s an essential part of the experience.

HIGHLIGHTS

Dolphin Dance

A contact jam in a body-temperature pool with nose clips, underwater music, and the water holding you. You move above and below the surface with a “human pod" led by Lilia Cangemi, creator of Dolphin Dance and a certified Watsu instructor.

Spa Ecstatic Dance Party

What happens when a dance party meets a tropical spa? Dance. Sweat. Soak. Plunge. Laugh. Repeat. A celebration of movement and pleasure that could only happen at Sundari.

Black Sand Beach Oceanic Contact Jam

We take Contact Improvisation out of the studio and onto Kehena beach. Do your solo floorwork with the black sand, partner with large driftwood trees who know exactly how to hold weight, and practice your spirals in the frothy waves.

Stargazing & Sound

When the music quiets, look up. Far from city lights, we gather under the stars for sound healing, stories, and stillness. A chance to slow down and hear what your body has been trying to tell you. The Milky Way is truly on grand display here without light pollution.

WORKSHOPS

• Movement Medicine: Openfloor work

• Slow & Subtle: Listening Through the Fascia in Partnered Movement (Cocréa Partner Dance)

• Deeply Listening in Partner Dance

• Make Me Fly

• Feeling the Energies of Leading & Following

• Let's Get Weird Playshop

• Zouk Movements for all Dancers

• Poetry of Movement with Rumi and Hafiz

• Dolphin Dance (warm water contact jam)

• Restorative Contact Improv

• Dips and Lifts for More Advanced & Adventurous Movers

• Kalani Ecstatic Dance Field Trip

• Dragon Flow

• Wake&Shake

• Embodied Checkins

• Kehena Beach Field Trip

• Spa Ecstatic Dance Party

• Stargazing & Cuddle Party

• Daily Afternoon Spa Access (3:30-9:30 PM)

PRICING

We have changed our pricing structure to be sliding scale based on income.

Our Dance Camp Pass includes BYO camping on site, access to all classes, and daily access to spa during open hours or for HDC programming. Meals and lodging purchased separately. If you have specific needs around lodging email reservations@sundarigardens.com, for support.

Low income full week pass for $700.

Reduced rate is $800

Base Rate is $900

Higher Income Folks and Supporters pay $1000-$1200 to help support artists and teachers.

3 Day and Single Day Passes Available for $111-$400.

Immedietaly after Hawaii Dance Camp, we are partnering with Wren to host his CoCrea Foundations from 12/17-20. all on-site guests with receive 50% off for extended stays. More details here. https://dancecocrea.com/foundationsbigisland/

FACILITATORS

Wren LaFeet

For 26 years, Wren has pioneered partner dance as a metaphor for life, love and as medicine.

Cocréa’s roots are in Fusion and American vernacular dance (Swing, Blues, Charleston and Hip-Hop primarily), the opportunity is ripe for the inclusion and honoring of other dance styles, forms and aesthetics, and the emergence of altogether new ones including the formless to inform the dance. Typically in the landscapes of Sacred Other and Community, practitioners remain standing while within Self, Earth, Music and Whole, there is an invitation to find expressions that explore other levels down to the ground, architecture of the space and stillness in any form.

There is no fixed aesthetic. The dance flourishes when there is clarity of invitation, elasticity in the connection, and a vividness of presence detached from outcome or agenda that we commonly refer to as “juicy”.

Shannon Sahaja is a somatic educator, dance artist, and movement facilitator with more than two decades of experience exploring the body as a source of intelligence, creativity, and connection.

She holds a BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase and has studied extensively with many of the early pioneers of Contact Improvisation, including Nancy Stark Smith. Her teaching brings together a deep understanding of the mechanics of weight sharing with curiosity, play, attunement, and improvisation.Shannon is also a longtime yoga teacher and meditation practitioner. Eight years of living and teaching at Harbin Hot Springs, along with her mentorship with Angela Farmer, deeply shaped her approach to embodied practice. From 2017–2024, Shannon helped hold and cultivate the community of Ecstatic Dance Oakland while teaching Yoga and Contact Improvisation. Her work includes Experiments in Communal Play, Nesting & Resting: The Art of Togetherness, Contact Improvisation intensives, retreats, and other embodied explorations. Shannon creates spaces where technical learning and physical intelligence meet playfulness, presence, connection, and the unexpected.

Kiosh Iselin

Kiosh holds a Master’s degree in Physical Therapy and loves nothing more than geeking out on biomechanics, anatomy, and human movement science. Yet the deeper he has ventured into partner dance, the more he finds himself speaking in the languages of energy, flow, and abstract lines.

For Kiosh, dance is fundamentally about connection—not as a vague concept, but as a tangible physical experience felt deeply within the body through precise, intentional movement. While he spent a year in Brazil immersing himself in Brazilian Zouk alongside original masters of the art before teaching full-time in Mexico, Zouk is just one avenue for the embodiment he shares. In his classes, Kiosh uses Zouk concepts as a gateway to help dancers cultivate deep physical awareness, clarity of invitation, and seamless connection that elevates any partner dance form.

Lilia Cangemi

Lilia's is an Italian dynamo who loves to fly in the air and water dance. Dolphin Dance Pod Experience is an aquatic and sub-aquatic group experience inspired by many healing and movement arts, and brings them into a body-temperature pool to form a unique and original synthesis combining intuitive aquatic bodywork, dance and contact improvisation above and below the surface, accompanied by underwater music.

Developed by Lilia Cangemi, creator of Dolphin Dance, certified Watsu Therapist and Instructor, Waterdance practicioner, professional dancer and Modern Dance teacher, this group session leads the participants into a non-verbal space filled with music where they can express themselves and move from their emotions in free-form improvisation by oneself, in pairs, or group.

Decreased gravity and the embrace of water with the safety of nose-clips offer a dive into the ecstatic three-dimensionality of the dolphin universe, explored with a "human pod" in unfolding ease, joyful play, creative movement, profound stillness, heart-opening intimacy, and soulful connection.

Alex Milewski

Alex Milewski is a movement artist, educator, and community builder who has been facilitating spaces for embodied expression and exploration since 2009. Rooted in freestyle, his work draws from street Dance, contemporary, Contact Improvisation, tricking, underwater Dance, and martial arts. He approaches movement as a living language, shaped by rhythm, sensation, and the people sharing the floor.

Alex’s teaching centers on three invitations: attune, express, and play. Through guided improvisation and solo, partner, and group explorations, he invites participants to listen closely, follow their curiosity, and give movement to what they feel. His classes move between subtle gestures and full-bodied expression, individual discovery and attuned collaboration. There is room for precision, surprise, and the pleasure of finding something together that none of us could have planned alone.

A co-founder of Boulder’s Block 1750 and co-creator of the international Dance gathering The Block Party, Alex brings a longstanding love of gathering people through Dance, holding depth and playfulness in equal measure.

Learn more about his work at experimentsinrhythm.com

Hiva Sedaghat

Hiva is a Tehran-born choreographer, dance artist, and somatic practitioner currently based in the US. A graduate of the Tamalpa Institute in Somatic and Expressive Arts Therapy, she began her artistic journey in Tehran’s underground dance scene in 2017, which allowed her to bring together her personal, social, and political experiences through interdisciplinary dance pieces. Her works Through the Skin, Azi Dahaka, and The Sound Sleep Has Been Shattered have been presented at festivals across Europe and the Middle East. Her recent practice bridges somatic relational knowledge with the imaginal realms of Persian mystic poetry as an invitation to access ancestral technologies of embodiment and tap into the fullness of the human body in the age of disconnection.

Signa Cheney 

Signa is a lifelong dancer, movement artist, somatic facilitator, and community builder, whose work explores the body as a source of intelligence, freedom, connection and joy. Her relationship with dance deepened during college through the work of Gabrielle Roth, and has continued through decades of exploration in conscious and ecstatic dance, Contact Improvisation, yoga, somatics, and a wide range of movement forms. Since discovering Contact Improvisation in 2015, CI has become one of her deepest movement medicines, a practice she loves for its playfulness, connection, physical vitality and capacity to regulate the body and nervous system.

Signa weaves movement, somatics, breath, sound medicine, yoga and meditation into experiences that invite people to listen to the wisdom of the body, trust its voice, and discover greater freedom of expression. For ten years, she was the creator and director of Mandala Yoga in Portland, Oregon, a vibrant yoga studio loved for its skilled teachers, caring community, and unique offerings in Kundalini Yoga, Sound Healing, kirtan, special events, and yoga music concerts.

Now living in Puna, Signa is co-producer of Hawaiʻi Dance Camp alongside Katie Roper, inspired by a desire to strengthen the local dance community and create more opportunities to practice, play, build friendships and cultivate lasting dance relationships. At HDC, she will be facilitating and hosting Contact Improvisation, while helping create a space for embodied connection, playful exploration, and the joy of moving together.

Katie Roper

Katie has been in love with dance since she was a teenager, exploring Tango, Salsa, Contact Improvisation, Zouk, Fusion Partner Dance, and Ecstatic Dance along the way.

She is a lifelong community builder and experience producer, co-producer of BlessFest, co-founder of the Watsonville Film Festival, and a producer of numerous private festivals and gatherings ranging from 75–3000 people. She also co-produced for years, Family HEART Camp, a summer camp focused on healthy communication and emotional intelligence for families.

Hawaiʻi Dance Camp brings together her favorite things: dance, play, community, and creating spaces where people can connect in meaningful and unexpected ways.

For HDC, Katie will be holding down key logistics, be a liasion for Sundari Gardens, and hosting spaces for authentically relating, group play, and morning movement.

Emma Aurora Kai

Bio coming soon...

LODGING

The heart of our retreat is on 10 acres of Sundari Gardens, offering lodging options with breathtaking 180-degree ocean views. During the camp, we offer five types of accommodations. Select the option that works best for you.

• BYO Camping: Comes with Registration

• Double Occupancy Dorm Room: a twin bed in a double room in our Rainbow Shala. Our most affordable option. Bathrooms and showers are shared and downstairs from the rooms. For shared double occupancy rooms, we will fill them with like-gendered participants or with a friend, if indicated during your checkout form.

• Premium Room with Shared Bath: King or Queen Bed with desk and shared bathroom nearby with toilet and shower.

• Private Premium Room with Private Bath: King or Queen Bed with desk, private deck space and shared private kitchen. Available for single or couple occupancy.

• Private cabin: Private cabins with Queen Bed, desk, private kitchen.

Farm to Table Meals

Each day participants will be able to select up to three vegetarian meals daily with vegan and gluten-free options. People needing alternative meal choices can check in with us or purchase their own provisions to cook their own or add to meals.

Breakfast will be served as a self-serve bar that may include local fruit, yogurts, chia, toasts, and pre-cooked egg bites or hard boiled eggs.

Lunch and dinner meals will be served with majority organic ingredients, many of which coming from our community garden, local farmers, or nearby when possible.

Dietary restrictions and food preferences will be requested prior to event start to help us serve everyone's needs. If you have a very restrictive diet, there may be a kitchen available for you to cook your own food or supplement your diet here. Some private cabins have their own kitchens.

Rides & Pickups

Hilo: This is the recommended airport, we are located roughly 1 hour from the Hilo airport.

We will have 1-2 Shuttles scheduled for 12/10 from Hilo airport. We recommend arriving at Hilo International Airport (ITO) between 1:00–6:00 PM on arrival day. if you'd like to take the shuttle.

If you are flying into Hilo and would like us to coordinate a private pickup for you or your crew, there is an option for a one way pickup or drop off.

Kona: We are roughly 2.5 hours from the Kona airport.

We will have 1-2 shuttles scheduled for 12/10 for a late afternoon pickup at Kona airport so we recommend you arrive from 12-4PM, if you'd like to take the shuttle.

If you are flying into Kona at another time and would like us to coordinate pickup for you, there is an option for a one way pickup or drop off.

Folks being picked up will be brought to a grocery store for snacks and additional food needs upon pickup.