Touch Activist Movement Lab

CUT PROJECT FOUNDER, FACILITATOR

Aaron Johnson (he/him) is a public speaker, facilitator, and touch activist, fostering environments where Black-bodied individuals can express their full selves. As a founder of Holistic Resistance, Grief to Action and The Chronically UnderTouched Project, Aaron takes the time to hold the stories of Black people around homophobia, transphobia, and internalized racism.

Aaron's journey began, as it does for many Black men, with lack of loving and platonic touch. Now, Aaron assists other Black men in developing holistic touch practices to move from a Chronically UnderTouched state into touch balance. Aaron aims to create spaces for Black people and People of the Global Majority (PGM/BIPOC) to connect with each other and the earth. He and his team are establishing retreats and workshops on Black-owned land in the Mojave Desert and beyond to promote emotional and physical tenderness, platonic connection, and singing, which enhances the healing process for those overlooked by mainstream society. 

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FACILITATOR, ORGANIZER

Leah (she/they) is a designer, collaborator, teacher and DJ working subtle, surrounding magic through brand identity, event production, relationship, and the dance floor.

By day, Leah is a multi-modality designer backing liberatory movements with digital, emotional, and physical systems of care.

As a nonmonogamy mentor and peer supporter, she invites people to re-imagine and sculpt their relational landscapes. Using tools of deep listening, generative questions, and an anti-racist lens shaped by Holistic Resistance, she holds peers in a container of non-judgement to unearth healthful relationship shapes that center choice, intentionality, equity and desire.

As a dancer and DJ, Leah works, plays, and dreams with her dance families to develop a role-fluid, consent-focused, justice-informed dance practice. As an instructor, she specializes in experiential classes that are all-levels and exploratory. You can expect focus on connection, communication, and consent, and ample support for dancers to locate their unique connection to their body and to the music.

Leah is a perpetual student of many dance forms and their social and cultural contexts, and seeks to honor these lineages with her learning and how she designs her material life.

FACILITATOR, ORGANIZER

Xander (they/them) is a disabled speaker, facilitator, and chronic illness storyteller who creates spaces where grief, joy, limitation, and possibility are held together.

Xander spent their life striving to be seen as perfect by pushing through pain. Eventually their body and mind were in an untenable state of pain, illness and anxiety.

That collapse led them back to their body, their needs, and the power of collective care.

Now, they create spaces where honesty, grief, and joy can coexist. Where disabled, neurodivergent and queer people can be seen in both their struggles and their magic.

Xander teaches, speaks, and writes about disability chronic illness and interdependence, neurodivergence and creativity, queerness and collective magic, whiteness, racism, and systems of harm, putting theory into practice, and power that grows in the cracks.

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ORGANIZER, SITE LEAD

Drawing on facilitation, dance, somatic experiencing, functional movement, and strength training experience, Chantalle (they/she) guides people from “I want to move but don’t want to get hurt” to “I can feel and move my body confidently.”

All Chantalle’s offerings are based in co-creation, curiosity, and the assumption that everyone has something to learn and something to offer. They’ve learned that when people feel heard and empowered, it’s much more likely for changes to actually stick. They combine deep listening with research and systems that actually work for people. They believe everyone is an expert on their body and their experience, and we all deserve the space to own our knowledge.

Chantalle is queer, white, a mover and dancer, nourisher, adventure-seeker, and will not hesitate to make snow angels in fresh powder. She has a Master of Public Administration with a nonprofit organizations’ concentration from the University of Colorado Denver and Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and Women’s Studies from Kansas State University. They are LEAN Process Improvement Certified, a Certified Nonprofit Professional, and participate in the Colorado Change Leader Institute. They are an Everything DiSC Authorized Partner and Certified Trainer and a certified Leave No Trace Trainer. They served as a founding board member of the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation so that we may learn, remember, and heal together. Chantalle brings all these experiences into my current work - embodied, emergent, lasting.

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