fascinating; awkward, tender, and violent movement combined with snippets
of dialog and swiftly built-up characters and relationships, creating
social and sexual conflicts with an almost unnerving intimacy...
utterly compelling.
BRETT
FETZER, The Stranger (Seattle April 2004)
{about
Ashes}
... extremely interesting. I highly recommend it.
ANNIE WAGNER, The Stranger (Seattle October 2004)
{about
Axolotl}
I
left the theater shell-shocked. It was easily the oddest, most surprising
performance experience I've ever had. And, against all expectations,
one of the most rewarding.
BRENDAN
KILEY, The Stranger (Seattle October 2005)
{about
Axolotl}
Karl Frost
has been practicing and performing contact improvisation
and interdisciplinary, dance-based performance since the mid 80's.
In the last years, his work has been gravitating more and more towards
directing experimental body-based theater. His physical work is influenced
by release technique, his study of martial arts, and an intimate knowledge
of physics (physics degree from UC Berkeley, 1992). Known
internationally for his dynamic movement style and for the edge-pushing
nature of his work, physically and psychologically, both in process
and performance, his performances take the body and emotionally and
physically felt experience as their reference points. His work has
been showcased over the last 2 decades across 5 continents, both in established institutions/universities and in independent studios and theaters.
His work frequently crosses genre boundaries and challenges preconceptions
and easy definition. His life represents an organic blending
of performance, teaching, organization, creation, direction, and facilitation,
comfortable in the realms of both theatrical and consciousness theory
and the down to earth of building geodesic domes and organizing the
feeding and coordination of large groups of creative artists.
Karl is particularly known for his work in the art of Contact Improvisation,
where he has a reputation as a very clear, wide ranging, and richly
informative teacher and as a physically articulate master of the practice,
comfortable in both the small and subtle explorations and in the wild
and explosive. Many students have profoundly evolved their practice
of contact improvisation through his workshops, which provide a friendly,
yet disciplined and down-to-earth atmosphere of study, growth, and pleasure in life. He is uncompromisingly devoted
to the idea that one’s practice of contact should be one that
actively promotes physical well-being. His approach to contact improvisation
lives both in the realm of art and in that of contact as social practice.
His work fans out from this base in contact into the realms of dance,
theater and personal exploration. His approach to performance
is very process oriented and centers around the idea that the most profound performances come out
of a process of investigation which is itself meaningful. Some of
his recent and ongoing projects include
The
Dancing Wilderness Project - an ongoing exploration of
the interrelationships amongst body-based creative process, wilderness
experience, and how we choose to live our lives
The experimental theater work, Axolotl
- a participatory performance in which the audience
is blindfolded for 2 hours and invited to interact and explore with
each other and a group of actors, dancers, and musicians investigating
the nature of meaningful experience
The Lasqueti
Island Winter Contact Improvisation Intensive –
a 3 month, full time training program in contact improvisation and
interdisciplinary performance work (theater, music, dance …
practice and theory) integrated with rural communal living off the
power grid on remote Lasqueti Island (2000, 2001, and 2003)
Contact
Camp at Burning
Man –
an international collaboration of contactors gathering to share
their practice in the radical context of the week-long Burning Man
festival
He is devoted to the idea that reclaiming the joy of being in the
body is a necessary part of the revolution against materialism. His
long term goals center around living in rural community in a mixture
of simple living, farming, and creative exploration.
In addition to the project links above, you can click here for