Gulzar [DUP / Integration Practice in Community]

Sharing the Dances and creating heart-centred community is one of the greatest joys in my life.
I lead Dance days and Retreats in the UK and abroad, also combining the Dances with the powerful practice of Heart IQ (Embodied Awakening) which I offer with my partner, Simon.

I am a Mentor for Dance Leaders and am delighted to be able to share the love of the Dances in this way.

I have been co-creating and teaching 2-year long international Dance Leader Training programmes for 6 years.

I am currently honoured to be serving as the Camp Advisor for our beautiful camp. Apart from my love of the Dances, I hope to bring to camp safely held spaces to practise deep listening where people feel included and accepted, especially deeper connection and understanding across the generations.

My passion is that camp can serve as a resource and inspiration for the world we want to create in our communities.

Yelena Swarana [DUP]

Yelena Swarana is a dance mentor-in-training who encountered the Dances in 2006. Since then, she has been compelled to serve as an organizer for Dancing Heart camps and events, a role she has continued for the past 16 years. Her passion lies in traveling and sharing the Dances in various locations, including the Baltics, Poland, the UK, New Zealand, Turkey, and Israel and Sri Lanka. In collaboration with Vasudeva from Russia, they initiated the first Indian annual camp, attracting both international leaders and local dancers.

For a decade, Yelena has spent several months in India, visiting the holy mountain Arunachala, which she considers her home. Through the Dances and mantras, Yelena shares the joy and sweetness of the heart. In her professional life, she works as a freelance architect and serves on the board of directors of DUP International.

Looking back on her transformative experience, Yelena says, "The Sacred Arts camp in 2007 was the first international camp that changed my whole life. It is my sincere joy and a great honor to be here!"

Nathalie Blanc [DUP]

Nathalie fell in love with DUP in 2002 at the international camp in Lavaldieu.
Year after year she has found inspiration through wonderful teachers at the Sacred Arts and Unicorn camps, including Dakini, her Sufi guide, and Jilani, with whom she is a mentor in training.
For more than ten years she was part of the holding group and DUP team at the French summer camp, and now leads DUP weekends and events in Brittany, often with other teachers and musicians, including her husband, Robin Ireland. Nathalie is the mother of four grown-up children, has worked for 30 years as a trainer of school teachers and is passionate about literature and art. In Rennes, she is part of a choir singing East European and Yiddish music and she loves Circle Dance. She transmits the dynamic and uplifting energies of DUP as well as the deep and meditative.
As a Sufi, she respects the authenticity of each spiritual tradition, and is especially drawn to the Aramaic dances created by Saadi. Nathalie embodies enthusiasm, delight and simplicity in her teaching of the Dances, these living mandalas through which we can create unity. More than ever during our troubled times, the DUP are a way to practise peace and to strengthen our hearts and spirits, to bring together different cultures and generations and to encounter each other soulfully.

Glen Unmana [DUP]

Glen Unmana is originally from England, now living in Berlin. A student of the dances for twenty-five
years, he has given hundreds of workshops and longer retreats across many countries in Europe and
beyond.

Glen speaks of the Dances in this way: "Through the use of mantras, music and movement, these
Dances reconnect us to the flow of life, to our hearts and to our divine nature. Simple in appearance, on
a deeper level they are also a channel for the transmission of blessing."
Accompanied by his guitar, Glen's craft takes us into the depths of our being and transports us into a
state of pure joy and heart opening – the state of natural presence. May we dance, may we sing, may we
celebrate together our innate and underlying connectedness and unity!
www.dancingforjoy.weebly.com

"The camp leaders and loyal campers are amazing people, they run the camp like the most nurturing home with open arms to newcomers like me.  Many people came and

chatted or just smiled to me over the course of the week and by the end

of it I felt we had become part of an amazing family." - Emma

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