If you are into dance, spirituality, self-expression and music, you just may be a candidate for the “Biodanza” weekend Feb. 27 through March 1 at Cocoon Philly in the Philadelphia Circus School, 6452 Greene St. in Mt. Airy.

According to Ashley King, co-host of the event who brings nearly two decades of experience as a “somatic psychotherapist” and facilitator, “at its core, Biodanza is a practice on cultivating the beauty of life. The dance is a call to our collective re-enchantment with the heart and its affective power to lead us from chaos back to reverent, humane order. Together we will journey through an exquisite blend of music, movement and relational encounter, skillfully interwoven to promote self-expression, aliveness, open-heartedness and a deep respect for the sanctity of life at the center.”

Biodanza is a system for personal development involving movement, dance and more that was developed in Chile by a poet, artist, author and psychotherapist named Rolando Toro Araneda as a response to a post-World War II world. Known as Rolando Toro, he believed that music and movement could have a significant and positive effect on people’s emotions and well-being.

“Biodanza is big in Latin America, South Africa and parts of Europe but has been slow to grow in the U.S.,” Meghan Anne Dwyer, longtime Chestnut Hill resident and avid Biodanza practitioner, told the Local recently. “Rolando came here in the ‘80s and said that the U.S. wasn’t ready for this practice, but that is changing. I believe this practice and its heart-centered nature is sorely needed to meet these times.”

King spent several years training in Rhode Island with a senior Biodanza teacher named Carolina Churba from Argentina, who had studied with Toro. “I’ve spent a few weekends under Carolina’s guidance,” Dwyer said, “and she is quite a force of nature.”

Churba also brought Biodanza to Africa, where she taught and ran a school for 23 years. Most recently, she was the director of the Rhode Island School of Biodanza,where she trained 18 new facilitators. Churba has trained almost 100 teachers worldwide. King, on the other hand, is the founder of Psychoalchemy.com and Biodanza Philly, where she is growing a community of enthusiasts for the “Dance of Life.”

King grew up in Haddonfield, N.J., and graduated from Moorestown Friends School and Goucher College in Maryland, where she majored in English and minored in Spanish, graduating in 1999. She earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, taught high school English for six years, earned a second master’s degree from Temple University in 2009 in counseling psychology and up until last September was living in Providence, R.I., for two-and-a-half years while becoming certified in Biodanza.

“People now come to me for a range of existential issues,” King said, “that are not necessarily unique to therapy — relationship concerns, questions related to sexuality, life transitions, health struggles, crises of meaning and purpose, generalized anxiety, depression and chronic stress.

“An uncomfortable truth about psychotherapy is that, at its core, it is a politically incorrect endeavor. Human beings are messy inside; we’re wild, instinctual, sometimes disobedient creatures. The terrifying beauty of aliveness is that it is an insubordinate force; it chafes at imposition and refuses to abide socially sanctioned notions of propriety. The sanctity of therapeutic space rests on a commitment to welcoming everything, to taking up the vow of Roman African playwright Terence, who once wrote, ‘I am human. I consider nothing human alien to me.’”

For more information or to sign up for the Biodanza weekend, which consists of sessions Friday, Feb. 27, 7-9 p.m.; Saturday, Feb. 28, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, March 1, 11:30 a.m.-5 p.m., visit psychoalchemy.com.