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WHAT IS AN INTIMACY COORDINATOR?

An intimacy coordinator/director is a specialist for the

depiction and creation of intimate moments in film,

television and performance. Fundamentally both Intimacy Coordinators (ICs) and Intimacy Directors (IDs) serve the same purpose, namely to advocate for actors's safety and respect of their boundaries when working on intimate scenes.

Read more about what Intimacy Coordinators/Directors

(Intimitätskoordinatoren) do and don't do, and what the foundations of intimacy work for stage and screen consist of.

WHO WE ARE

At ICDS we work hard to continue our education as Intimacy professionals and

hope to make Intimacy Coordination/ Direction and its many benefits more widely known in Switzerland. 

Ximena Sànchez (she/they)

Intimacy Coordinator and Director

Ximena is a producer and intimacy coordinator and director. She studied film and television directing at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina, and has attended masterclasses with Ricky Ceballos at Real Theater, and with the independent collective Cirulaxia in Córdoba. In subsequent years, she refined her acting through classes in South Beach, Miami, and with Binario 7 in Monza, Italy. Ximena is a certified Mental Health First Aider with a focus on Adults and has trained as an Intimacy Coordinator/Director with various leading IC/ID educational organisations such as Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE), Principal Intimacy Professionals (PIP) and Red Cheeks Academy. From 2023 onwards, she has been under the mentorship of Michela Carattini (KIS) and starts her journey of training with the SAG-AFTRA accredited IC/ID programme of  Key Intimate Scenes (KIS) in 2024, where she focusses especially on cultural competency. Ximena is the resident Intimacy Director of  Copper Tongues Theater. 

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Désirée Wenger (she/her)

Intimacy Coordinator and Director

Désirée is a director, writer, theatre educator, and Intimacy Coordinator/Director. She studied French and English literature and linguistics at the Universities of Zurich and Lausanne, and holds a Master of Arts in Theater Directing from Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London, completed in 2021, where she wrote her thesis about Intimacy Direction for Intimate Violence. After her studies, she worked as assistant director at Schauspiel Bern, and as a choreographer and theatre teacher at KinderJugendTheater in Zurich, while training as an intimacy coordinator/director with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE), Principal Intimacy Professionals (PIP), National Society of Intimacy Professionals (NSIP) and Intimacy Directors and Coordinators Professionals (IDC). Since 2023 she is under the mentorship of Michela Carattini (KIS) and will start her SAG-AFTRA accredited training programme with Key Intimate Scenes (KIS) in 2024. 

Meg Adams (she/her)

Intimacy Coordinator and Director

Meg is a musical actor, theatre director and Intimacy Coordinator/Director. Originally form Philadelphia, US, she studied Musical Theatre at the Guildford School of Acting in London, UK, before working as an actor in the US for a couple of year. Now based in Zurich, Meg teaches singing and acting to aspiring acting and musical theatre students, as well as leading workshops for lovers of all things theatre. Furthermore, she directs shows for the English language White Rabbit Theatre Company in Zurich. Since 2022 she is training as an intimacy coordinator/director with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE), Principal Intimacy Professionals (PIP), National Society of Intimacy Professionals (NSIP) and with Amanda Blumenthal at Intimacy Directors and Coordinators Professionals (IDC).  

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Emma Murray (she/her)

Intimacy Director (Dance, Performance)

Emma is a New Zealand performer and choreographer living in Bern, Switzerland. After graduating from the New Zealand School of Dance in 1992 she danced as a soloist with the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company, before moving to Europe in 1997. She danced with Konzert Theater Bern for 8 years, leaving in 2008 to establish herself as a Swiss based choreographer and performer. She was appointed Associated Artist at the Dampfzentrale Bern from 2013-2015 where her work is regularly co-produced. Since 2013, she has been the recipient of support from the City of Bern and ProHelvetia Switzerland. In 2020, she obtained a Masters Degree at the University of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland in Contemporary Art practice. Since 2023 she is training as an Intimacy Director with Theatrical Intimacy Education (TIE) and IDC Professionals

Michela Carattini (she/her)

Intimacy Coordinator and Director, Key Intimate Scenes

Michela Carattini is a SAG-AFTRA-accredited intimacy coordinator, and Head Trainer at Intimacy Coordinators & Directors Switzerland (ICDS) and Key Intimate Scenes (KIS) Australia. Her intimacy coordination credits include the Amazon hit series NINE PERFECT STRANGERS (starring Nicole Kidman, Tiffany Boone, Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon and Samara Weaving), the Berlinale-selected SBS hit series WHILE THE MEN ARE AWAY (starring Michela De Rossi and Gemma Ward), the critically acclaimed films BLAZE (starring Simon Baker and Yael Stone) and BIRDEATER (starring Shabana Azeez), and she has overseen intimacy direction for celebrated stage productions such as WHITEFELLA YELLA TREE and for the ROYAL NEW ZEALAND BALLET. 

 

She was part of the team which drafted Australia’s National Intimacy Guidelines, and is a consultant on the Austrian National Intimacy Guidelines and the Swiss National Intimacy Guidelines. She has provided advanced training and instruction for a number of international conferences and curricula, including at the inaugural International Conference for Intimacy Coordination (ICIC) at Berlinale, for the Bundesverein Intimitätskoordination & Kampfchoreografie (BIK), the Australian Film & Television Radio School (AFTRS) and the Spanish-language curriculum for Intimact Spain for trainees in Latin America and Spain. Michela co-founded the Arabic Intimacy Coordination Resource Group (AICRG), the Australasian Intimacy Coordination Network (AICN), and developed an Australia-specific, Indigenous-led IC training curriculum - currently one of the three SAG-AFTRA accredited intimacy coordinator training programs outside of North America and the UK. She has worked in the screen and stage industries for three decades, with a focus on cultural competence and mental health. She received her BA in Psychology from Columbia University and her Masters in Criminology from Sydney University Law School, working for just under a decade across three countries as a caseworker and counselor specializing in violence against the less powerful and culturally and linguistically diverse clients. 

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ICDS in the Media

Find articles and interviews featuring ICDS collective members 

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