Reclaiming Romance
29 December 2025
to 1 January 2026
A New Years Retreat
Register by December 12 or while spots last
The year is ending.
Like a beautiful affair — you both knew it couldn’t last.
Now, with the scent of memory still on your collar and a heart fuller than before, it’s time to let go. With gratitude.
One last dance under the stars.
The year softly whispers “you were wonderful” in your ear.
You glance back one last time to blow it a kiss.
And then — there it is:
The new year, standing shyly in the doorway, asking:
May I have this next dance?
This retreat is your invitation to say yes — not just to the year ahead, but to a more romantic way of being. We know, romance is a tricky word, tangled up with possession, performance, projections.
But what if we reclaim it as a practice of contemplation and care? What if we embrace its cringe as something that enchants the everyday?
We will meet at the tranquil retreat centre Drawehn, located halfway between Hamburg and Berlin. Set in an historic farmhouse and a circular space to play and dance, here, we’ll explore the gestures of romance — both playful and profound. Writing love notes, offering a rose, holding hands or a gaze just a second too long.
Through Contact Improvisation, somatics, kink, and embodied inquiry, we’ll reimagine romance as something tender, bold, and beautifully ours. Putting on rose-colored glasses — not to escape the world, but to make it more bearable.
Finding not “the one”, but returning to the many ways we can fall in love — with life, with each other, with now.
This event is a collaborative creation, offering everyone the opportunity to seek what truly nourishes them, to share what genuinely excites us and to create space for experiences that wish to come alive in the present moment.
Our mornings are dedicated to our shared somatic practice:
Katya will hold two Contact Improvisation Classes for us, as well as one Jam in the first evening.
The afternoons are dedicated to offerings from all who wish to share their skills and passions with a romantic twist.
Maybe you will host a writing class on love letters?
Maybe someone will open a discussion round on revolutionary flirting?
Maybe there will be a kissing performance?
This is how our schedule most likely looks like:
The evenings are reserved for collective play, starting with guidance and ritual, leading into free flow.
We feel honored to welcome tantric touch artists Eva Hanson and Stina Lehr (from “Ehrlichleben”) to facilitate the first ritual night for us.
On the final night, Manu and Beata (from luhmen d’arc) will guide us through an intimate BDSM-inspired ritual — an exploration of power, desire, and trust to ignite a passionate transition into the new year.
Participants sharing their ideas, phantasies, desires and offerings could look like this for example:
Let’s see what we come up with in this unique group!
Over the course of the retreat, Manu and Beata will guide us in exploring our wishes, caring for our boundaries, and gathering once more in connection before we part ways 🥀
Come as you are. Depart indulged in sweet connection.
– Open to all levels–
The Team
Beata Absalon
Curation and Production Lead Facilitator Consent Intro and BDSM New Year Ritual
Beate or Beata – both names suit her German-Polish background – designs workshops, gatherings, and counseling sessions that invite participants to engage with the fact that people are inconvenient. Rather than trying to eliminate or gloss over this reality, she finds it worthwhile to recognize and work with it, as it forms the basis of ethical relating.
She pursued a PhD on consent and published her book “Not Giving a F*ck”, lovingly questioning sex positive spaces and exploring the erotics of non- or asexual liberation.
In her current training as a couples therapist she is wondering how romance is tearing couples apart and how it could at the same time support them to really encounter each other.
www.luhmendarc.com/beate-absalon
Instagram: @beateabsalon
Manuela Bosch
Curation and Production Lead Facilitator Integration Practice
Manuela facilitates transformation at the threshold between endings and beginnings. Rather than imposing visions, she cultivates spaces where we learn to sense what’s actually needed, tend to our relational and renewal capacities, and co-create with emergence. As Generative Facilitator, Manu works at the intersection of body wisdom, ecological regeneration, and organizational transformation—supporting the future skills that matter now: groundedness, relational intelligence, and the willingness to let go of what no longer serves.
Touch&Play for Manu is like a laboratory where future skills can be cultivated. But much more it’s a place to have fun, creativity and to co-create beauty.
www.manuelabosch.de
Instagram: @beateabsalon
The Teachers
Katya
Contact Improvisation Dance Facilitator
Katya (they/them/none/my name) is an artist for spaces, CI research, electronic music and club culture.
Their contemporary dance background lead them to CI as a dance focus and they are part of the CI community for almost two decades.
Besides the technical and artistic aspects they are engaged in the discourse around social topics, consent, gender, power dynamics and community care within CI.
Eva Hanson
Tantric Touch Ritual Facilitator
Touch artist, touch coach, and flâneur at the intersections of various (not only sexual) subcultures.
Accompanies people in individual settings, gives lectures, and organizes sensual events. Writes on several blogs about tantric massage, alternative forms of relationships, and sexual culture (feel free to link: sexuellekultur.com).
In 2025, her first book, “Hautrausch: Inside Tantra-Massage,” was published.
Christina Lehr
Tantric Touch Ritual Facilitator
Passionate philanthropist, midwife, and mother of an adult daughter.
Has completed training in shamanism, tantra, and Gestalt therapy and now has 14 years of experience as a tantra masseuse. Since 2020, she has been accompanying people in individual settings and workshops.
She likes to spend her free time doing contact improvisation.
The Teachers
Katya
Contact Improvisation Dance Facilitator
Katya (they/them/none/my name) is an artist for spaces, CI research, electronic music and club culture.
Their contemporary dance background lead them to CI as a dance focus and they are part of the CI community for almost two decades.
Besides the technical and artistic aspects they are engaged in the discourse around social topics, consent, gender, power dynamics and community care within CI.
Eva Hanson
Tantric Touch Ritual Facilitator
Touch artist, touch coach, and flâneur at the intersections of various (not only sexual) subcultures.
Accompanies people in individual settings, gives lectures, and organizes sensual events. Writes on several blogs about tantric massage, alternative forms of relationships, and sexual culture (feel free to link: sexuellekultur.com).
In 2025, her first book, “Hautrausch: Inside Tantra-Massage,” was published.
Christina Lehr
Tantric Touch Ritual Facilitator
Passionate philanthropist, midwife, and mother of an adult daughter.
Has completed training in shamanism, tantra, and Gestalt therapy and now has 14 years of experience as a tantra masseuse. Since 2020, she has been accompanying people in individual settings and workshops.
She likes to spend her free time doing contact improvisation.
New Year’s
Get Together
29 December 2025
to 1 January 2026
Register by December 12 or while spots last