Zhenevere Sophia Dao, a transgender woman, is a poet, novelist (Penguin Books), playwright, and existential and cultural philosopher. She was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University, after which she relinquished a Jones Lectureship position in Poetry and Creative Writing at Stanford, leaving academia for the equestrian and blacksmithing professions, and to become an independent scholar. She is the founder of Mythosomatics, an original body of mythopoetic movement art, and the philosophies of Post-Daoism and Neo-Romanticism. She teaches workshops in INTEGRITAS: Inversions of Power Through Spiritualized Martial Arts, as well as VOICE & VOICE: Profound Experimental Theaters of Body & Song, with her companion, vocalist Willa Roberts. She is the founding director and a principal player of SACRa Theater. Zhenevere makes the better part of her living as a blacksmith, farrier (horseshoer), and horse trainer.
INVERSIONS OF POWER
Workshop Centering the LGBTQIA+ Community & our Allies
The justice and power of difference as a somatic experience.
Sunday, November 17th
10am—1pm
at SITE SANTA FE MUSEUM in Santa Fe, NM
with Zhenevere Sophia Dao and vocalist Willa Roberts
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New Series
with Zhenevere Sophia Dao
Untimely Meditations & Sincere Seminars
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Over the next many months I am going to be holding a series of two-event colloquiums focusing on uncomfortable or challenging or “untimely” topics and considerations that, it seems to me, utterly influence our lives on a most fundamental existential level. I’ll be focusing on aspects of culture that in my opinion contribute to, and in some cases even cause our difficulty in navigating these complexities. Our topics will include the likes of: Culture & Fascism, Pornography & Intimacy, Media and Fear, Psychology, Hate Speech & Cancel Culture, Sensory Overload & Depression, Identity & Social Media, Neo-Liberal Spirituality and Consumerism, etc. These two-day colloquiums will consist of two, 1.5 hour events: a Lecture on a Tuesday evening (Mountain Time, USA), immediately followed by a dialectical seminar on the next day. The lecture and the Dialogue are considered two parts of a single event. These seminars and lectures will not be available beyond their real time experience on ZOOM. I realize this is hard for some individuals in some time zones. If enough students in such time zones communicate with me directly their desire to have seminars more suitable for their schedules, I will create study events in keeping with that request.
Culture and Fascism
Lecture:
Tuesday, October 29th
6pm—7:30pm MT USA
Dialogue:
Wednesday, October 30th
6pm—7:30pm MT USA
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Fascist ideation become popular when the will to think and feel complexly diminishes in an individual and in a culture. I see this trend happening all throughout culture, both on the Left and on the Right. In this lecture, I’d like to lean into my own philosophy of Post-Daoism and Neo-Romanticism to try and address how it is possible that thought (deep, complicated thought) and feeling (deep, complicated feeling) have disappeared as existential powers and personal and social satisfactions, and been replaced by simplistic and reactionary responses to the challenge of living, which is leading us more and more into fascist states of consciousness, and possibly fascist regimes.
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2025 Open In-Person Intensives
with Zhenevere Sophia Dao & Vocalist Willa Roberts
Umbria, Italy, May 14-20
POWER, EROS & IMAGINATION
at Casa Sangam
Gubbio, Italy
REGISTRATION FORTHCOMING
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