San José Province, Tinamaste, Costa Rica
July 6 - 12, 2025
About this Retreat
Davey Swinton is a versatile artist and educator, dedicated to creative expression and communication. As a performer, Davey's repertoire encompasses a wide range of disciplines: silks, trapeze, lyra, rope, invented apparatus, partnering, fire eating, fire dance, fire whips, bullwhips, stilts, roller skating, fan/prop dancing, burlesque, drag, acro balance, violin, and partner dancing, alongside costume design. They thrive in the spotlight, connecting with audiences while digging deep into their lived experiences.
As a trainer, Davey empowers students to discover their creative potential through coaching, choreography, and skill development. Their holistic approach emphasizes authentic expression, while maintaining focus on intentional form, effort, and gesture. Davey focuses on the unique story each person has, and how people can express it with authentic movement.
An ACE-certified instructor with extensive teacher training, Davey specializes in trapeze, silks, partnering, authentic movement, choreography, act development, yoga, aerial yoga, chair dance, bullwhips, queer sexuality courses, apparel design, and Thai massage. They work with diverse students, from recreational aerialists to professional performers, ages 4 to 80, across a wide range of abilities and neurotypes. Davey created the first trapeze teaching DVD, leads international retreats, fosters an LGBTQIA+ circus community, creates performance videos, and produces virtual shows. Additionally, Davey lives in and manages a home for disabled adults and leads a nonprofit.
Details of this retreat
Jungle Cirque: An LGBTQIA+ Circus Experience
Step into the lush embrace of the jungle and into a vibrant group of queer circus artists. This retreat is an invitation to explore your movement, purpose, and creative vision—whether you're a student, performer, or seeking deeper connection to your practice. What stories live within you waiting to be told? How can your movement—through aerial, acro, dance, or flow—convey exactly what you mean? And how can you cultivate a sustainable, lifelong practice that honors your unique body, with or without injury?
Playing among queer artists of all bodies, abilities, sexualities, and genders, you’ll find a true sense of belonging. Together, we will explore what it means to create and perform, and feel seen as LGBTQIA+ artists, learning how to shape our stories into movement and craft the artistic practices we desire. Through aerial, acrobatics, fire, flow, acro and dance, we will expand our skills, refine our stage presence, and co-create multidisciplinary work—infused with a spirit of play, curiosity, and joy.
Beyond training? We’ll nourish our bodies with delicious meals, hike together to breathtaking waterfalls, trade massages, ease into yoga or flexibility, and dance beneath the stars. Whether it's a playful jam, a fireside gathering, or a final-night cabaret to share our discoveries, this retreat is a one-way ticket to queer joy and circus magic.
What To Expect
This week is about connection, play, and belonging among LGBTQIA+ circus artists. Together, we will:
✨ Uncover our artistic vision and explore how to share our stories through movement
✨ Develop practices that sustain us both creatively and physically
✨ Learn and exchange skills across disciplines, including:
Aerial Arts (trapeze, rope, silks, hoop, duos)
Acrobatics & contact dance
Fire and flow props
Dancing with apparatus (e.g., chairs, props, etc.)
Thai massage & restorative practices
Flexibility, yoga, and aerial yoga
Circus games & playful improvisation
Choreography, stage skills, and performance techniques
Throughout the week, we will hold space for shared experiences—hiking, dancing, jamming, and culminating in a celebratory cabaret showcase where we can witness each other's growth and artistic revelations.
Come as you are. Move as you feel. Leave with a deeper connection to yourself, your craft, and your queer circus family.
Who Is This For?
Anyone LGBTQIA+ (that means the whole alphabet!)
All bodies, genders, abilities
Circus people, dancers, acrobalancers, fire spinners and flow artists, clowns, aerialists, creative movers
Amateur/ performer, intermediate/ advanced in any skill (and maybe beginner in another)
Interests - aerial, fire, acro dance, partner acrobatics, contact dance, object manipulation, fire spinning, fans, etc.
18+
This retreat is for the amateur who loves circus arts, the semi pro who wants to leap forth, the pro who wants to redirect to a more authentic path, and anyone who wants to learn something new or to add another discipline to their craft. For those of us who enjoy brave spaces, as well as all of us who need time out to recharge among other LGBTQIA collaborators. It’s for movers who want to tell their stories, for those that feel left out at the studio, or alone in their town, and any of us that love to be on stage or just love to play and feel reciprocation while being themselves.
Seriously… fun, joy, growth, and belonging will be the main takeaways other than the mad skills that the teachers and other attendees will impart during this week of play, practice, and study.
Beginner, Intermediate, and advanced people of all ages, races, genders, bodies, and abilities who are LGBTQIA are welcome to be part of this retreat. We will send out a questionnaire to calibrate the class levels to the guests attending.
There will be 4-5 aerial points. Modifications can be made for injuries/ access needs, but please look at the videos of the terrain and accommodations and inquire if you have specific needs. We are happy to discuss options.
PARTICIPANT AGREEMENT: To create a safe environment conducive to healing and community development, we will ask all participants to adhere to these agreements throughout the week.
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