Axolotl Participatory Performance July 12-26 The 2 week San Francisco Contact Intensive August 8 to 10 The Dancing Wilderness Project August 19 to 24 Body Research Contact Festival at Sierra Hot Springs, CA August 25 to Sep 1 Contact Camp at Burning Man |
 ’Wilderness’
… we scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound
of it draws all those whose nerves and emotions have not been irreparably
stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating
scramble for profit and domination. The word suggests the past and
the unknown, the womb of earth from which we all emerged. It means
something lost and something still present, something remote and at
the same time intimate, something buried in our blood and nerves,
something beyond us and without limits. -- Edward Abbey
Without experience of nature, humans become mad. – Paul Shepard Theater is the place where we process the question of how we want to live our lives. – Peter Brook
was started in 1997 by Karl Frost as an exploration of the interrelationships
amongst wilderness experience, body-based creative process, and
how we choose to live our lives. Primarily organized as 3 day to
4 week long wilderness trip/dance laboratories for groups of 6 to
15 artists, it has also birthed a number of stage works exploring
the effects on body and psyche of time in nature, away from civilization. Projects have happened in Ventana Wilderness (1997), Pt Reyes National Seashore(1997, 1999), Big Basin State Park(1997), Death Valley (1997, 1998, 1999), Carson Iceberg Wilderness(1999), S Fork Yuba River (2007)(California), Olympic National Park (1998, 2003), Alpine Lakes Wilderness (2003, 2004, 2005) (Washington), and Dark Canyon (2002) (Utah). Each trip is unique… unique to the time, the location, and the assembled group of artists. Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, and an open-ended invitation towards listening to the natural world serve as a base and common language, but each person’s human and artistic response to the immersion in wilderness is the drive for investigation. For general information on the open laboratories, goto Dancing Wilderness Labs The next Dancing Wilderness Projects planned are
For an essay on the Dancing Wilderness project from 2000, goto
Somatics and Nature
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