Dancing with the Ancestors: Community Ritual & Ecstatic Dance

Join us for this month’s First Sunday Ecstatic Dance: Dancing with the Ancestors, a celebration of ancestral honoring and community joy.

We’ll open with a dance workshop led by Nkoula Badila, featuring Central and West African movement, rhythm, breath, and connection. These traditional movements are described as having medicinal properties that help unlock stagnant energy, improve circulation, and align the spirit. We’ll celebrate our individual selves, engaging the root chakra through the crown and mirroring the medicine of the natural world.

Then flow into a DJ set with Keena Maya that grounds us in our bodies, expands the heart, and invokes collective remembrance—connecting the self, the community, the Earth, and the Sacred. We’ll close with a sound healing ceremony with Marely and family constellation-inspired songs with Sikoya.

Ecstatic Dance is freeform movement: participants let go of inhibitions and dance to the music without structured steps or routines. It’s a way to express yourself authentically in a supportive, non-judgmental environment.

The Flow of the Evening
- 11:30 am: Doors open. Arrive, settle in, and connect with the community before we begin.
- 12:00 pm: Warm-up dance and live drumming with Nkoula Badila. Dance workshop with live drumming.
- 1:00 pm: Ecstatic Dance set with Keena Maya. An extended, curated dance journey with free movement and no steps or routines.
- 2:15 pm: Closing sound bath with Marely and Sikoya. Meditative sound healing to bring restoration after the dance.

About the Artists

Nkoula Badila is a multidisciplinary artist and creative based in the Hudson Valley. She grew up doing traditional Congolese and West African dance in her family dance troupe, Diata Diata International Folkloric Theatre. Her father, Elombé Badila, was a founding member of the Congolese National Ballet in Paris, Ballet KODIA. Nkoula continues to share the history of Congolese traditions, along with the joy, healing, connection, and celebration of moving to the rhythms of the African Diaspora.

Keena Maya is a sound artist, DJ, instrumentalist, and guide who creates intentional dance rituals for somatic awareness, heart expansion, and collective remembrance. She is a resident DJ of Ecstatic Dance NYC and shares her BASS BLISS sets at ecstatic dances around the world. She is also part of the feminine-powered Collective BAE and teaches with the Beyond Academy.

Marely has spent over 10 years leading yoga classes, medicine ceremonies, and group immersive experiences. Her offerings weave together herbs, sound healing, bodywork, archetypal stories, and art to channel healing forces for mind, body, and spirit.

Sikoya is an interdisciplinary artist, organizer, and Earth advocate based in Hudson, NY. Her work explores thresholds of life and death, grief, and belonging. She is passionate about bringing people together and creating spaces that nourish the feelers of the world.

Container Guidelines
- Honor your yes and no. You know yourself best and where your edges are. We want you to leave feeling nourished and held.
- No photography or video. This allows for full, authentic expression. A photographer will be on site taking atmospheric shots and photos of performing artists.
- Alcohol-free space. Please be present as you are.
- Consent is central. Dance with yourself first. If you choose to dance with others, do so from a place of giving, not taking. All physical contact must be consensual. Consent is freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific. If you no longer wish to dance with someone, offer prayer hands to honor the interaction and let you both move on.
- Be yourself. This is a judgment-free zone. Let your body and voice move however they need to. Joy, sorrow, and everything else—all of you is welcome.

Invitations
- Dance barefoot if it feels good; it’s a practice in ecstatic dance, connecting to the ground and to each other.
- Explore your voice. Traditionally, ecstatic dance is a no-talking space. Sound and release are welcome; conversation is not. Please hold conversations outside the dance floor.

Water is available. The tea house opens at 2 pm after the dance, with teas and snacks available for purchase.

This is a family-friendly event.