“We poke the body and see what happens…”

Organizers of playful transformative events (e.g., subcultural gatherings, dance festivals, bodywork events, and many more) provide intense experiences to their participants, that have the potential to transform their cognitive, emotional, or bodily state temporarily or permanently. With participants attending such events with strong expectations both towards the transformative potential, as well as the general dynamics and structures of the event, organizers need to reflect on and engage with strategies for creating, managing, and calibrating these expectations. To illustrate such strategies, this paper reports on three cases of somatically and emotionally transformative events, including a queer festival, an artistic retreat, and a clubbing event for grieving individuals. Based on interviews and an ethnographic field study, we apply a dynamic model of expectation types to locate relevant organizers strategies for expectation management for playful transformative events.