Practice Weekend

About Raffles and Neva

Raphael Sacks (they/them) is a singer, dancer and theatermaker born and raised in NYC. They first connected to meditation practice and dharma study through performer training, and began the deepdive into committed practice more than 15 years ago.

Raffles has performed internationally with the English National Opera in London; Loom Ensemble’s annual performance season in Dubai, and with the Art Monastery Project in Italy, Belgium, Stockholm, and Berlin. New York highlights include Lincoln Center with Urban Research Theatre, New York Philharmonic with Constellation Chor, BAM with Meredith Monk, and La MaMa with Loom Ensemble.

Raffles is particularly proud of their role in devising, producing and performing in “Bootstraps: An American Fable” which toured the US in 2017 and 2018, combining dance-theater and anti-racism workshops; most recently Loom Ensemble’s “Twenty Twenty / Twenty Twenty-one” which included participatory ritual for grieving racist police violence, and guided audiences to imagine their own role in cocreating a more just future.

Co-Director of Loom Ensemble since 2010, co-Director of the Art Monastery from 2014 to 2022, “500-hour” certified Yoga Teacher, and dharma student since 2010, Raffles believes in the artist as a whole human, and advocates for integrity in all the little choices of daily life.

Artistic Director of Loom Ensemble

Neva Cockrell (she/her) is the co-founder and co-director of WildHeart: Center for Performance and Embodiment Practice, where she lives, creates, and works in the Hudson Valley, NY, since 2022.

She is a professional dancer, director, and educator. She danced with Pilobolus from 2016-2019, as Dance Captain 2017-2019, and now teaches with the company. With Pilobolus she toured extensively to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, China, Mexico, Israel, Dubai, and within the US. 

She is also a writer/director/choreographer who uses dance-theater as a tool for social change. In 2010 she co-founded Loom Ensemble, which has toured across the US, Europe, and UAE for 14 years. She is passionate about using Loom Ensemble performances to open difficult conversations, and then facilitate community discussion to unpack the emotional vulnerability and cultural taboos of each show. For her directorial work with Loom Ensemble, she is the recipient of several grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, including the New Work New England Grant. 

In 2012, she joined the Art Monastery, whose mission is dedicated to exploring community, contemplation, and creativity. She served as a co-director of this non-profit from 2014-2021. Through these years she deepened her meditation practice, and uncovered the overlap of art-making and personal practice. 

She has been teaching dance, theater, and embodiment practices for over a decade, including opening Physique 57’s first international studio in Dubai and developing her own movement technique, Catalyst. Her diverse background in gymnastics, partner acrobatics, contact improvisation, Capoeira Angola, and Yoga inspire her unique style of Contemporary Dance in both her choreography and her classes. She is a yoga teacher certified through Simple Yoga with Eric Stewart, and in training to become a Somatic Movement Educator through Body-Mind Centering. She is deeply passionate about the overlap of somatic work and breaking down systems of oppression, and has been offering workshops integrating somatics, art-making, and culture shift work for the last 5 years.