Breaking Ground: Figure Drawing + Embodiment
Earth moves slowly. It settles, compresses, and forms mountains.
Breaking Ground is a Chaosmos Experience at Primal Moves, bringing live figure drawing and embodiment into earth's own pace: slow, dense, and full of pressure that builds toward release.
Created by Chao Dou, experience architect, who makes room for the artist in everyone, all levels welcome.
Throughout the night, our movement artist, embodies earth itself, dancing between rounds, shifting through each state before settling into stillness for the room to draw.
"My inner teenager felt like she was part of something really cool and edgy, like an underground drawing club."
- Lindsey, No Edges
The evening moves through three rounds, each one asking the body to hold a little less and move a little more.
Mountain - Solid, still, the longest holds of the night, five minutes to settle in.
Dune - Shifting, quicker, the room moves to three minute poses.
Quake - Sudden, full body, one minute and everything held finally moves.
"So many open minds, open hearts, artists of all experience levels in this room. The music was amazing, the movement was cherry on top."
What to Expect:
Live figure drawing with movement
Guided visualization
Opening and integration circles
Social connection
All materials provided
7:00p doors open for socializing, drinks and snacks available for purchase at Cherish Cafe. 7:30p doors close, event starts.
Come as you are, and get comfortable. We'll have soft seating to sink into as you draw.
Creator
Chao Dou is an experience architect, embodiment activator and artist. Raised between China, the United States, and Singapore, she grew up watching her grandfather turn their living room into a space for the community, offering free treatments to anyone around them. Healing began with listening to the body.
With over a decade of architecture, interior design, and workplace strategy across those same three countries, she brings a rare understanding of how environment, culture and body shape each other.
Her practice chaosmos creates playgrounds for rediscovering your body, creativity, and sense of aliveness - through multisensory experiences that blend movement, intuition, art, and collective play. Guided by the belief that 'knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the body', she designs spaces where the thinking mind and the sensing body meet.
Movement Artist
Ethan Wolf is an exercise physiologist, movement coach, and bodyworker who believes the physical and non-physical aspects of ourselves are always in conversation. With formal training in exercise science, he founded Howl Fitness, a private training studio in West Hollywood, where movement is treated as a language and people are invited deeper into their bodies.
Alongside this, his massage practice extends that understanding into the tissues, reading the body as a reflection of our mental and emotional states.
With over two decades of dance, flow arts, and fire spinning, movement has long been his meditation, a practice of bringing full awareness to the body and the present moment.
Primal Moves
Arrive early to check in and settle before we begin.
Parking in the neighborhood is limited. Princeton, Thatcher, Berkeley, and Del Rey offer free street parking. Read the signs closely, and please park with care, avoid blocking driveways or neighboring homes.
Primal Moves is a shoes off space. Remove your shoes at the door and keep them off until you leave.
Pets are not permitted inside. Please leave them at home.
Thank you for helping us keep this space clean, welcoming, and considerate, for our community and our neighbors.
By attending, you give chaosmos and our photographer permission to use photos, video, or audio taken during the event for future promotion, with or without your name attached. We're not able to offer compensation for this.