Rasa Labs
Moving Rasa is a practice from the Indonesian diaspora that teaches attention-through-movement and relational attunement. We use the everyday word rasa (‘taste/feel/essence’) to name the steady thread you can sense in any relationship.
What is the Rasa Lab?
Rasa Lab is a community-powered laboratory where we explore rasa through movement, making, and shared practice, led by Austronesian diaspora artists and culture bearers. Rasa is the Indonesian word for taste or essence. We experience “rasa” as the subtle movement present in our attention to any relationship, something we can notice, feel, and choose to move with. This winter, we will explore rasa through martial arts, tarot, food, sculpture, and spoken word. Over seven weeks, a cohort of 12 to 16 participants will navigate the waters of culture and life together, culminating in a final Lab where participants may share a piece of their mother culture that connects them to their rasa.
🧭 The Journey
Week 1 — Orienting
Facilitator: Andrew Suseno
We will set the stage for our time together, become introduced the moving rasa framework and meet one another.
Week 2- Body
Facilitator: Jacob Dominguez
We begin with martial arts as a language of awareness. Through balance, breath, and stance, we learn to arrive fully in our bodies and in this collective.
Week 3 — Taste
Facilitator: Chef Miranti
Food becomes our teacher. We cook, share, and remember that nourishment carries memory. We ask: what does belonging taste like?
Week 4 — Build
Facilitator: Sculptor & mover Kimberly Tate
Using bamboo and extensions, we explore how our movements touch, hold, and relate. We create structures that bend and breathe together.
Week 5 — Speak
Facilitator: Poet & performer Regie Cabico
Voice becomes motion. Through spoken word, laughter, and breath, we give language to what’s been stirring beneath the surface.
Week 6 — Intuit
Facilitator: Andrew Suseno
An embodied introduction to the Movement Tarot. We read, move, and interpret the cards as mirrors of our journeys — integrating all that has moved us.
Week 7 — Offer
Rasa Commons Night
A collective gathering and sharing. Participants offer small gestures, poems, dishes, or movements born from the Lab. We witness one another and celebrate what continues.
