Workshops
ARCOS has held a series of 18 workshops since 2012. In recent years, ARCOS has invited guest artists to introduce alternative movement and creative modalities to workshop participants, such as Sidra Bell’s MODULE and Practice Progress’ UNtensive. These workshop curricula are designed to inspire a radical reimagining of the practice and role of movement artists in contemporary society, whose sensitivity toward embodied labor is essential in awakening everyone to the value of our bodies, at a time when technologies and social systems consistently work to devalue them. If no current workshop information is listed below, please return here, sign up for our email newsletter, or follow us on social media for information on future workshops.
Practice Progress in partnership with ARCOS Dance and Garden
Five years into the pandemic, and five years since the 2020 Uprising for Black Lives, the UNtensive marks five years of resistance.
This year’s 3 day virtual gathering for artists and educators is organized around the theme of Making T I M E: an invitation to refuse urgent reactivity, and turn towards the brilliance of ancestors and contemporaries whose resistance work has already mapped the course.
* * *Offered in the midst of defunding DEI by a violent federal administration, UNtensive organizers are unshaken. We’ve BEEN here, moving bodies into anti-racist practice, finding creativity in the virtual world to gather safely, slowing down, and dreaming collectively towards a healing future. We already have everything we need to meet this moment.
This year’s UNtensive will meet within the online meeting platform GatherTown, in a beautiful digital playground designed and created by UNtensive partner Garden, a virtual community center for BIPOC folks practicing pandemic safety. We continue to double down on virtual gathering. We see institutions demanding a return to in-person “normal,” but the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disproportionately harm the most marginalized, and the accessibility called for by generations of Disabled people still matters.
Each day of the UNtensive is broken into two parts. The first half of the day includes the UNtensive mainstay, Embodied Anti-Racisting, which takes place in race-based affinity groups. Kai Hazelwood facilitates the BIPOC Circle, a radical creative gathering for purging, dreaming, and care. Sarah Ashkin facilitates the White Working Group, which uses nervous system practice to disrupt our embodied white supremacy.
The second half of the day celebrates the contributions of renowned guest artists who have guided the UNtensive over the last five years. Participants can explore audio, video and written materials from these artists embedded throughout the virtual space. UNtensive participants are invited to engage with the content however they choose, while Making T I M E together.
This year’s UNtensive will meet within the online meeting platform GatherTown, in a beautiful digital playground designed and created by UNtensive partner Garden, a virtual community center for BIPOC folks practicing pandemic safety. We continue to double down on virtual gathering. We see institutions demanding a return to in-person “normal,” but the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disproportionately harm the most marginalized, and the accessibility called for by generations of Disabled people still matters.
Each day of the UNtensive is broken into two parts. The first half of the day includes the UNtensive mainstay, Embodied Anti-Racisting, which takes place in race-based affinity groups. Kai Hazelwood facilitates the BIPOC Circle, a radical creative gathering for purging, dreaming, and care. Sarah Ashkin facilitates the White Working Group, which uses nervous system practice to disrupt our embodied white supremacy.
The second half of the day celebrates the contributions of renowned guest artists who have guided the UNtensive over the last five years. Participants can explore audio, video and written materials from these artists embedded throughout the virtual space. UNtensive participants are invited to engage with the content however they choose, while Making T I M E together.
This series uses creative embodied practice to build transformative anti-racist skills and takes place in two race-based affinity zoom spaces. Registration is required for the full 3-day workshop.
Sessions + facilitator information:
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Inspired by the perpetual transformation of snakes and creatures who shed their skin, Shedding Playgroup is an adventure for your inner child. Shedding reminds us to lower the stakes, to play rather than try to control how to develop techniques for liberation, inspired by our Snakecestors. Shedding Playgroup weaves curiosity and play, rest, pleasure, and community into learning how to survive an apocalypse, be it personal, societal, or global.
Drawing on the wisdom of authors like Resmaa Menakem (My Grandmother’s Hands) and adrienne marie brown (Pleasure Activism), participants will be guided through rest experiences, play with ways to care for their nervous systems, and slow dancing with snakes: a lesson in slowing down from our Snakecestors.
White Working Group: “Time is Not Even, Space is not Empty”
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Sessions + facilitator information:
BIPOC Communal Rest Circle: Shedding Playgroup
Kai Hazelwood (she/her)
Kai Hazelwood is a multi award winning transdisciplinary Disabled, Black, and queer artist. She has guest lectured and facilitated at universities and art institutions across the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Kai is also the founder of Good Trouble Makers, a practice driven arts collaborative celebrating queer identities and centering disabled and chronically ill QTBIPOC. Kai and Good Trouble Makers’ collaborations have been covered by 21 media outlets including The Advocate, and have been supported by The City of Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department, California Institute of Contemporary Arts, Pieter Performance Space, The California Arts Council and DAS Graduate School.
Kai co-founded and is a lead facilitator of Practice Progress, a consultancy addressing structural, professional, and interpersonal white supremacy through body based learning institutions, and individuals including MASSMoCA, Gibney Dance, Ohio State Dance Department, University of Texas, Austin Dance Department, and CalArts.
Her first published piece titled: I’m Breaking Up With Dance, I Can’t Heal In The Same Relationship That Hurt Me was published in Issue 5 of Imagining: A Journal published by Gibney Dance and edited by Eva Yaa Asantewaa. Kai’s upcoming piece: On Grief At The End of The World is for a special issue of Performance Philosophy.
Kai is also the founder of Good Trouble Makers, a practice driven arts collaborative celebrating queer identities and centering disabled and chronically ill QTBIPOC. Kai and Good Trouble Makers’ collaborations have been covered by 21 media outlets including The Advocate, and have been supported by The City of Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs Department, California Institute of Contemporary Arts, Pieter Performance Space, The California Arts Council and DAS Graduate School.
Kai co-founded and is a lead facilitator of Practice Progress, a consultancy addressing structural, professional, and interpersonal white supremacy through body based learning institutions, and individuals including MASSMoCA, Gibney Dance, Ohio State Dance Department, University of Texas, Austin Dance Department, and CalArts.
Her first published piece titled: I’m Breaking Up With Dance, I Can’t Heal In The Same Relationship That Hurt Me was published in Issue 5 of Imagining: A Journal published by Gibney Dance and edited by Eva Yaa Asantewaa. Kai’s upcoming piece: On Grief At The End of The World is for a special issue of Performance Philosophy.
Inspired by the perpetual transformation of snakes and creatures who shed their skin, Shedding Playgroup is an adventure for your inner child. Shedding reminds us to lower the stakes, to play rather than try to control how to develop techniques for liberation, inspired by our Snakecestors. Shedding Playgroup weaves curiosity and play, rest, pleasure, and community into learning how to survive an apocalypse, be it personal, societal, or global.
Drawing on the wisdom of authors like Resmaa Menakem (My Grandmother’s Hands) and adrienne marie brown (Pleasure Activism), participants will be guided through rest experiences, play with ways to care for their nervous systems, and slow dancing with snakes: a lesson in slowing down from our Snakecestors.
White Working Group: “Time is Not Even, Space is not Empty”
Sarah Ashkin (she/her)
Sarah Ashkin’s (she/her) work tarries at the intersection of critical whiteness studies, site specific performance, and reparations pedagogies. She is the co-director of GROUND SERIES dance and social justice collective and a co-founder of Practice Progress, a body-based anti-racism facilitation platform. As a dedicated dance maker, educator, and organizer, Sarah uses dance as a multipurpose tool to dismantle and build our world for the better. Sarah holds a Masters in Dance, Politics and Sociology from the University of Roehampton, London and is a current doctoral student in Performance Studies at University of California, Davis.
This year’s White Working Group will be inspired by Eiko and Koma’s artistic and political prompt “Time is not even, Space is not Empty”. We will work with slowness and doing “less”, in order to feel into the possibilities of anti-racisting time. We will wonder: How does our relationship to time support us in building our capacity to sense white supremacy “more?” How is white accountability a time-based practice? We will use movement, mindfulness, ritual, drawing, reading, and conversation to actively and creatively practice anti-racisting together.
Installed throughout the UNtensive GatherTown world, you will find videos, recordings, readings, playlists created over the last four years by UNtensive artists. This time is meant to be your time, to make T I M E to follow your nose, your curiosities, listen to your needs, the past, the future. It is also a wonderful time to meet up with other UNtensivers in the GatherTown spaces designed by the Garden, and talk about your experiences with the artist content, share recipes and feelings, gossip, and rest together.
Asynchronous sessions + facilitator information:
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Journey with Miss Barbie-Q to weave together the power of performance, activism, and self-discovery. This session invites you to ground yourself in your own radical potential, moving through the echoes of past struggles and present resilience, all while holding space for the transformative power of creative expression.
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This session is a series of writing exercises to awaken feelings of desire, creativity, and the cosmic that lives within each of us. Together, they serve as an invitation to get to know yourself on a deeper level.
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The title of this session is a quote from UK-based artist and healer Omikemi. Rajni invites participants to spend time in deep listening, tuning in to witness and offer gratitude to what might already be within. You are encouraged to be exactly as you are. The pace will be slow.
Read or listen to Rajni in slow conversation with Omikemi and encounter the quote in its original setting here.
![Image of Keegan James Sarmiento Kloer, a man wearing a green hoodie and blue ball cap, smiles in front of a log cabin.]()
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This session explores the way we relate; make and remake meaning; lose and gain language; and love at the end of the world. Keegan and Miles have produced a listening experience, part meditation, part score that encourages diving into the aforementioned themes in any space you choose. This offering is our love letter to you for the end of the world.
Asynchronous sessions + facilitator information:
Grounding artivisim
Sydney Rogers (Miss Barbie-Q) (she/her)
Sydney Rogers, widely known by her drag persona Miss Barbie-Q, is a multi-talented drag artist and fearless advocate whose career spans over two decades of defying boundaries in art and activism. She has lit up stages from underground clubs to world-renowned museums, infusing every performance with unapologetic energy and a message of empowerment. Offstage, Sydney amplifies her impact as a consultant and community leader—training major organizations in LGBTQ+ inclusion and holding high-profile leadership roles to drive systemic change. Her bold voice and dynamic presence have cemented her status as a trailblazing icon—one who inspires audiences and institutions alike to embrace authenticity and create lasting change.
Journey with Miss Barbie-Q to weave together the power of performance, activism, and self-discovery. This session invites you to ground yourself in your own radical potential, moving through the echoes of past struggles and present resilience, all while holding space for the transformative power of creative expression.
A writing ritual // waking desire & the cosmic within
Haruna Lee (they/them)
Haruna Lee is an award-winning non binary Taiwanese-Japanese-American theater maker, screenwriter, educator, and community steward whose work is rooted in liberation and healing. Their plays are often portals into personal and collective stories navigating transcultural experiences and memories, and the conflicts that arise when dealing with the simultaneity, contradictions and pluralities of self. Through their teaching, they promote arts activism and emergent strategies for the theater through ethical and process-based collaborations, while inviting the fullness of marginalized bodies and the complexity of that lived experience to their practice.
This session is a series of writing exercises to awaken feelings of desire, creativity, and the cosmic that lives within each of us. Together, they serve as an invitation to get to know yourself on a deeper level.
What would this body be if I let it dream?
Rajni Shah (they/them)
Rajni Shah’s practice is focused on listening and gathering as creative and political acts. In 2021, they published their first monograph, Experiments in Listening, as a book and series of free print-at-home zines (available at rajnishah.com). They are currently Researcher and Head-Heart of the THIRD programme at the Academy of Theatre and Dance, University of the Arts Amsterdam (AHK). They write songs, and hold space for grief.
The title of this session is a quote from UK-based artist and healer Omikemi. Rajni invites participants to spend time in deep listening, tuning in to witness and offer gratitude to what might already be within. You are encouraged to be exactly as you are. The pace will be slow.
Read or listen to Rajni in slow conversation with Omikemi and encounter the quote in its original setting here.
Love letters at the end of the world
Keegan James Sarmiento Kloer (he/him)
Keegan James Sarmiento Kloer stands firmly with the Palestinian people as they resist apartheid, land theft, and genocide, and in their struggle for national liberation and self determination. Keegan is a farmer @farmofsong, a student of history and change @redantcollective, a communist, a musician, and a proud Burqueño. He is giddy and honored to work, dance, and play with Miles Tokunow once again. He loves soccer, flowers, Albuquerque, glimmers, pulling turnips from the ground, and the smell of winter.
Miles Tokunow (all pronouns)
Miles Tokunow is a multimedia storyteller. He is an artist, organizer, and educator. He is a dancer, musician, writer, zine maker and film editor. He is a proud member of the Ground Series Dance and Social Justice Collective. Miles’ art practice is about exploring, searching (yearning) for new meanings and stories by deconstructing the ones that already exist, informed by his life as a transracial adoptee. He often explores the Black radical tradition through movement and theory. He is an Afro-Futurist and interrogates the historical, spiritual and tangible relationship of body to land. Miles believes in magic, laughter, constellations, socialism and beauty in small things. Miles also is the executive director of the Santa Fe Dreamers Project and knows immigration justice to be a critical creative practice.
This session explores the way we relate; make and remake meaning; lose and gain language; and love at the end of the world. Keegan and Miles have produced a listening experience, part meditation, part score that encourages diving into the aforementioned themes in any space you choose. This offering is our love letter to you for the end of the world.
Kai and Sarah welcome us to gather together to reflect on: what are you discovering about time, self, community, embodied anti-oppression practice?
Registration
Registration includes required attendance at all three gatherings of Embodied Anti-Racisting (offered in race-based affinity spaces), and full access to the UNtensive virtual world of videos, libraries, playlists, and community, offered in the second half of each day.
When we spend money, it is always an opportunity to practice our values. We invite you to do so when paying for the UNtensive! Please select the payment tier that best aligns with your financial and structural reality:
Solidarity: $500 Commit your resources to materially support the UNtensive, and to increase accessibility to the experience by funding those in need of supported and pay-what-you-can registration.
Sustaining: $350 Invest in the experience an amount that reflects the minimum cost per participant to the partner organizations offering the UNtensive.
Supported: Pay-What-You-Can We are offering a limited number of pay-what-you-can registrations, because you are of value and we want you to join us whether you can afford to contribute financially or not. There is no application. If you’re asking for one of these, we trust and believe that you need it, and we will distribute them on a first-come, first-served basis.
NOTE: Some things to consider when choosing an option: Are you or are you not housing secure? Are you or are you not Disabled? Are you or are you not a citizen or have another status regarding immigration? Do you or do you not benefit from intergenerational wealth? Do you or do you not walk through the world with white privilege?
After completing the application, including indicating your registration option and payment tier and method, you will receive a payment request at the email address that you list. If you would like, you may follow these links to make your donation before you receive the message:
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Application
Please complete and submit the form below to register for the UNtensive:
Registration
Registration includes required attendance at all three gatherings of Embodied Anti-Racisting (offered in race-based affinity spaces), and full access to the UNtensive virtual world of videos, libraries, playlists, and community, offered in the second half of each day.
When we spend money, it is always an opportunity to practice our values. We invite you to do so when paying for the UNtensive! Please select the payment tier that best aligns with your financial and structural reality:
Solidarity: $500 Commit your resources to materially support the UNtensive, and to increase accessibility to the experience by funding those in need of supported and pay-what-you-can registration.
Sustaining: $350 Invest in the experience an amount that reflects the minimum cost per participant to the partner organizations offering the UNtensive.
Supported: Pay-What-You-Can We are offering a limited number of pay-what-you-can registrations, because you are of value and we want you to join us whether you can afford to contribute financially or not. There is no application. If you’re asking for one of these, we trust and believe that you need it, and we will distribute them on a first-come, first-served basis.
NOTE: Some things to consider when choosing an option: Are you or are you not housing secure? Are you or are you not Disabled? Are you or are you not a citizen or have another status regarding immigration? Do you or do you not benefit from intergenerational wealth? Do you or do you not walk through the world with white privilege?
After completing the application, including indicating your registration option and payment tier and method, you will receive a payment request at the email address that you list. If you would like, you may follow these links to make your donation before you receive the message:
Application
Please complete and submit the form below to register for the UNtensive: PRACTICE PROGRESS
