’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

 

The Dancing Wilderness Project

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 one to four week long wilderness trip/dance laboratories for groups of 6 to 15 artists, it has also directly 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, 1999), the Sierra Nevada Mountains(1999, 2007, 2008, 2009) (California), Olympic National Park (1998, 2003), Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Northern Cascades (2003, 2004, 2005) (Washington), Les Cevennes (2002) (France), 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.

Lab Structure

Each project has a unique flow, but the basic format is to have at least enough backpacking time to get outside of the range of casual dayhikers and then make a base camp from which to explore without packs. For part of the time, Karl facilitates explorations in Contact Improvisation, Authentic Movement, Viewpoints approach to improvisation and composition for dance and theater, and sensory explorations to kick start investigations in wilderness awareness and to provide some common language. From this base, the projects are an improvised process, sometimes Karl being more instructor and sometimes facilitator, more involved with helping the group find affinities of interest and coordinate time together and time apart solo or in subgroups.

For more information on the structure of the open laboratories, goto Dancing Wilderness Labs

Upcoming Dancing Wilderness Project Labs

 

March 20-28, 2010: California

The 2010 spring California Dancing Wilderness Project is still being organized

We start with two days in the dance studio in Berkeley to ground together as a group and establish some creative vocabulary together. We then head off for 7 days of wilderness backpacing and dance laboratory in nature.

location is still to be determined, but currently under consideration (as of September) are Death Valley, Ventana Wilderness, Pt Reyes National Seashore, and the Lost Coast.

for more information, write to info@bodyresearch.org

Click here for a 1998 essay on The Dancing Wilderness Project