eMELT at the MRC Returns for our 2nd year, 4th Saturdays of the Month

Our March line up will bring us back to last summer's Sunday night at Unifier Festival, with a set by the wonderful Voxmana,

featuring Natalia Clavier of Thievery Corporation and Andrei Matorin from Argentina

with a closing set by the tremendously magical James Bird.

The event will open with a biodanza somatic dance ritual experience led by Clara Rubin-Smith McKie.

Live Music, Yoga, Cacao Ceremonies, workshops, Ecstatic Dance, Sound Healing, Live Painting, Elixirs, and heart centered inclusive community exploration and celebration,in a barefoot sacred setting.

w/ Kaitlyn Cronin offering the cacao ceremony.

Doors 6pm

Biodanza 6:30-8pm

Opening Circle 8:15pm

Cacao: 8:30pm

Voxmana: 9-10:30pm

James Bird: 10:45pm-11:45pm

Closing Circle: 11:50-midnight

More on Voxmana:

After connecting in New York City’s underground music scene, Natalia Clavier and Andrei Matorin joined forces to birth VOXMANA. Together, they produce what they like to call “Intentional Dance Music” or IDM, electronic dance music that creates a context for healing. Fusing their multi-cultural backgrounds Clavier and Matorin mix everything from electronic, world music, jazz and blues to Argentine folklore and Brazilian MPB in a unique cocktail, brewing sonic medicine for all types of audiences. Their music is a call to celebrate life on the dance floor and awaken through deep embodied journeys with infectious grooves.

Andrei and Natalia have entertained large audiences all over the world with their immersive, genre-bending sonic experiences rooted in classical and jazz traditions with a modern twist. Clavier is an Argentinian singer, songwriter, DJ, keeper of medicine songs. She has three solo albums under her belt and has performed live and written songs as lead singer for internationally acclaimed electronic world music duo Thievery Corporation.  Brazilian born Matorin is a virtuoso violinist, composer and producer featured as a soloist at such prestigious institutions as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, MoMA, and TEDx. He also received the great honor of graduating Summa Cum Laude from Berklee College of Music.

James Bird: James Bird is a facilitator, poet and multi-instrumentalist musician hailing from Shelburne Falls, MA. James aims to invite the magic out of seemingly ordinary moments, using improvisation or one of his many mythic songs, weaving atmospheres that invite us to feel and to remember. Bird is a threshold bard, playing for those journeying through life's many thresholds, including marriage, birth and death. He also teaches "Bardic Embodiment", for those wishing to expand their experience as songwriters and song carriers from the vantage point of the old bards.

B I O D A N Z A : life in movement
(Session 6:30-8pm. Doors will open at 6pm and close at 6:30, to co-create a sacred container for this part of the evening.)

Biodanza is a gentle and powerful integrative system promoting human development both personal and collective. Originally developed in Chile during the 1960's, it is now a global movement bringing people together for culture change and the embodied nervous system learning that helps make those changes possible. Each session offers a series of simple, life-affirming exercises that take the form of dances and other accessible, everyday movements, paired with inspiring music from around the world and building upon each other. Each is an invitation into vivencia, an experience of feeling completely alive in the present moment, that opens up new ways of relating with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Biodanza develops authentic expression, and dance in its widest sense as movements full of meaning, a birthright available to all of us. When we dance with life as it is, with our specific and shared gifts and challenges, these embodied, moving experiences have deep and lasting impact. Awaken your inner strength and innate creativity, move to heal your emotional and physical body, grow your resilience and capacity for being in the present moment. Come for an hour and a half of restorative play and community care, of vividly lived present moments that will return you to your most essential self and ripple far beyond our time together.

Clara is a lifelong dancer, artist and song carrier, physical communication and somatic movement teacher, and mama now making home in western MA after many years living in San Francisco. She has a degree in Anthropology, Modern Languages and Dance, and has worked across diverse fields from pregnancy and early childhood to end of life, focused on building individual, community and organizational wellbeing at the intersections of health and the arts. Clara is the creator of Lullabies for Grownups, a course bringing forward singing to ourselves and with each other as a centering and regenerative practice, and pathway for evolving how we use our voices in relationship and out in the world. As a MotherCircle and longtime Biodanza facilitator, she leads in English and Spanish, creating circles and sanctuary spaces that help people who hold space for others – especially caregivers, healers, teachers and other leaders – to tap into the wisdom of their bodies, find and use their voices, and step into greater creativity, connection, healing and transformation for themselves and this world we live in together.