This structured, participatory event is all about connection. It's about seeing each other and honoring each other, in all our beauty and brokenness and bad-assery. This is not a show! But it is art -- made out of people and words and desires and honesty and humor and vulnerability and loves notes and you. It's fun. And surprising. And weird! And real. People come not to judge or be judged. They come to connect -- meaningfully and genuinely. Bring a notebook!

Este evento participativo y con estructura tiene que ver con la conexión. Se trata de vernos y honrarnos, en toda nuestra belleza, quebrantamiento e intensidad. ¡Esto no es un espectáculo! Pero es arte. Hecho de personas y palabras y deseo y honestidad y humor y vulnerabilidad y notas de amor y usted. Es divertido. Y sorprendente y raro y real. La gente no viene ni para juzgarle ni para ser juzgada. Vienen para conectarse. De una manera significativa y genuina. ¡Traiga una libreta!

The Not-Creepy Gathering began as a dance-theater show that Jenna Bean Veatch was developing as part of her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2015. The show was to be about the desire for human connection – but the project veered in a different direction. Veatch realized that if her goal truly was to facilitate connection, dancing about it wasn't the best way to get there. She has since hosted 60+ of these structured, participatory events designed to facilitate connection, spreading love up and down the West Coast and expanding the definition of art.

Jenna Bean Veatch (Artist)
Jenna Bean Veatch is a multi-disciplinary artist, teacher, facilitator, and queer single-mama-by choice who has been accused of creating “pure, unadulterated, heart-stopping whimsy.” Her work revolves around creativity, radical kindness, vulnerability, and the desire for human connection. She teaches classes on the creative process and views artmaking as a political act. She has made full-length dance-theater shows, short clown pieces, stop-action animation, music, writing, connections, community gatherings, protest performances, props, prompts, pants... and one gorgeous little human.