Dancing With Gaia: Earth Energy, Sacred Sexuality, and the Return of the Goddess
Dancing With Gaia explores the continuum between earth energy, sacred sexuality and the return of the Goddess to modern consciousness - and it reveals how to use the power of the earth in your own life. Filmed in prehistoric sites of ancient earth-centered religions throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and the USA, fifteen visionaries stir your imagination with new ways of looking at the world. Discover how to use Sacred Sexuality, Chi Gung, and Earth Energy to benefit the world, yourself and your community. As speaker Joan Marler says, "As long as we conceive of divinity as outside or above us, there is no way we can change our course." Our culture needs new myths to live by, which include the experience of earth and our bodies as sacred.
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Jo CarsonDirectorCamera Operator/Unit Director of Photography, The Nightmare Before Christmas
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Jo CarsonWriter
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Jo CarsonProducer
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Fred AdamsKey Cast
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Francesca De GrandisKey Cast
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Cerridwen FallingstarKey Cast
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Richard Feather AndersonKey Cast
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Dr. Serena Roney DougalKey Cast
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Monica SjooKey Cast
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Joan MarlerKey Cast
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Alex ChampionKey Cast
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Jill SmithKey Cast
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Leila CastleKey Cast
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Cheska PotterKey Cast
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Blanche RowenKey Cast
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Kathy JonesKey Cast
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Nuala MacDowell AhernKey Cast
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Project Type:Documentary, Feature
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Runtime:1 hour 22 minutes
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Completion Date:December 10, 2009
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Production Budget:109,000 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:Greece, Ireland, Malta, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:720x480
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Fairfax Documentary Film FestivalFairfax, CA
United States
April 11, 2010
North American Premiere
Official Selection
Jo Carson graduated with honors from the UCLA Film School with an MFA in Film Production. She worked for 25 years in the film industry as a cameraperson, during part of which time she also served as president of "Behind the Lens", a Los Angeles-based association of professional camera women. Her camera work may be seen in Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, in various installments of The Matrix, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Star Trek and the Academy Award winning InnerSpace. She has won two Clio Awards for her lighting and camera work in commercials. In addition to Dancing With Gaia, Jo's directing work includes two documentaries, Feraferia - A Dance for the Goddess, and the award winning Himalayan Pilgrimage. Jo has followed Pagan and animist lines of thought for over 40 years. She rose to president of the Board of Directors of the non-profit Feraferia in 2008, a nature and Goddess-oriented spiritual organization. She was instrumental in creating a beautiful small library, which archives the books and papers of Feraferia founder Fred Adams. She authored Celebrate Wildness with Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferia Path, a visual introduction to Feraferia. She is working on a Tarot Deck and accompanying book that expresses the Feraferian cosmology. Jo lives with her family in a small town in Northern California.
In the seventies, I made a 16mm film on the Goddess-oriented nature worship group Feraferia, doing their Solstice and Equinox rites. I wanted to understand them, and making the film was a good way to do that. By 1989 I wanted to explore their ideas more deeply, so I started interviewing Feraferia’s founder, Fred Adams, on video. He pushed me to interview more people, especially women, and to film sacred places all over Europe, the Middle East, and here in the US. I traveled to nine countries and interviewed 15 visionaries, including artist Monica Sjoo, teacher Francesca DeGrandis, artist/poet Jill Smith, geomancer Richard Feather Anderson, teacher Serena Roney-Dougal Ph D, teacher and priestess Cerridwen Fallingstar, priestess Kathy Jones, geomancer Alex Champion and author Joan Marler.
"Dancing With Gaia" came out of that, with its focus on the nexus of earth energy, sacred sexuality and the goddess as Gaia. It shows different ways to experience our connection with Earth and wilderness directly, as part of our own bodies. By moving earth energy currents up through us consciously, sexuality can be a way to experience the life force of Earth.
My journey began in 1970 when I met Fred Adams, whose home was filled with goddess imagery, sparking my fascination with connecting to the Goddess and nature. Fred's first group, the Hesperian Fellowship, which later became Feraferia, was into fun, outrageous things, like the Fruit Squash at the river - decorating each other with a truckload of overripe melons and peaches; and the Ground Star ritual trance. They were sanctifying nature in a playful way.
Traveling to the special places Fred told me about was profound. I was so moved by going to the ancient temples and caves, like Newgrange; I filmed inside it alone; that is incredibly rare. The filming felt like a pilgrimage blessed by the Goddess, because so many unusual things just fell into place for me on the way.
I remember being at the Sea Cave with Nancy Poss's Sea Coven, near Dana Point, doing Siberian Chanting inside at low tide when it was barely accessible.
It was powerful, too, being deep in a limestone cave in Lake District, England; chanting at night by firelight with a group of witches from all over the world.
I was privileged to visit the Hawaiian Pele Cave, which is three layers deep. It's closed now; it was dark, sacred, sensual; a haunting experience to take in.
There were amazing people, such as artist/author Monica Sjoo - we traveled for three days together in Wales; she took me to the Bleeding Yew Tree in Nevern, and to Pentre Ifan dolmen near there, a real dream-initiation portal, and another at Carreg Samson.
There was Kathy White, founder of the Goddess Festival in Glastonbury, who did plays where people became the Greek gods and goddesses and were changed by that.
Jill Smith, who kept a solitary vigil at Callanish Stone Circle and the Sleeping Lady Mountain, was living with her young son, cutting and gathering peat for the winter. She described how she had traveled the Gypsy Switch by horse and buggy, and birthed her baby son on a hilltop in Wales.
Visiting Malta, I had a real rebirth experience, inside the 5,000 year old Goddess Temple of Mnaijdra. It inspired me to write on approaching sacred sites as oracles. The ancient temple-palaces in Crete were amazing too. It was such a beautiful, playful culture, over three thousand years ago.
Dancing With Gaia invites us to celebrate wildness and nature magic, to turn from traditional hierarchies to recognize the sacred joy within us and the paradise of wild nature. The Earth is a vast living being, and we are dancing on it and with it, all the time. I think this is the only thing that is going to save us - a new approach of treating the whole planet as totally sacred, so that we can how to live in harmony with all life.