The Poetics of Human Contact
A weekend workshop in Contact Improvisation

with Karl Frost

Saturday/Sunday, July 24/25

at Synapsis Wharehouse

in Eureka, CA

These days will focus on the art-making inside of the practice of contact improvisation. We use our base in the physical skills and sensitivities of contact improvisation to explore a kind of collaborative art-making of personal experience… the poetics of human contact. The workshop will look at both the kinesthetic side of the dance and the somatic-psychological possibilities of touch and human interaction

Poetics … the metaphor of written or spoken poetry gives us an expanded vision of how we might play in contact with each other, exploring touch as a poet explores words, looking at multiple layers of perspective on what is happening and playing with intention, impulse, availability, and feeling

Physics is our base. We look for poetry in the experience of weight, pressure, complex forces, textures of touch, intention and surrender, simple and complex movement through space – both the space of the room and the experiential space of each other’s kinespheres. Speed and spatial relationships are explored not just as abstract qualities, but as things with repercussion on the Feel of contact

Felt Experience
We expand our sense Poetry to include other realms of the felt experience … what we might call emotions, but not wanting to limit ourselves to things that we can clearly label with words. We see what arises, we offer possibilities, and we play with sculpting experience. What emerges might have the tight arc of a haiku or the wild ramblings of a beat poem.

While we work with the body, we are less concerned intrinsically with gross level movement of the body as we are with the movement of the felt experience …

We set up precarious interactions -- physical and relational -- that challenge us to be present and offer us the possibility to find a sense of the poetic. We borrow practices and viewpoints from physical theater and somatic psyhotherapy to help us enrich the emotional world of contact and look for deeper senses of meaning within the dance...

Physical skills … while it will be assumed that everyone who attends will have some basic knowledge of contact improv, we’ll take some time for physical skill development. Expanding our 3-dimensional articulation and availability for unpredictable weight sharing and forces, we widen our artistic pallet and increase our freedom within the dance. We also see how the sensitivities that we cultivate in release technique allow us to see in more detail how emotion manifests in the body, both our own and our partner's.

Stillness … we look for the movement of experience that happens in stillness, for the deepening of listening that happens in a moment of calm and for the play of tension that happens in a pause. We look for the motion of the small dance that exists below the level of ordinary consciousness and learn to play with what we find. We use bodywork to calm the nerves and to help us drop into deeper details of perception. We allow our awareness to wander to what is already there. This awareness then becomes the seed for more articulate and dynamic movement through 3 dimensional space.

Meaning … We explore layers of meaning below the level of surface impulses… meaning perhaps held in the mind, but more importantly in the felt experience of the body. We support each other through simple witnessing and through touch, offering kinesthetic environments to explore and collaborating on a felt sense of journey in movement.

Performing Touch … we share our explorations with witnesses, expanding the culture of exploration beyond the private, interior experience to the communal in a space of theater or ritual. How do we watch another’s exploration and how do we share our exploration in a meaningful way with a witness?

Further, exploring "interactive" or "participatory" performance, we look at the idea of “performing for touch”, where we perform for an individual that we meet in physical contact, moving with another with an eye not just to our private experience of the interaction, but with our attention on a collaboration with our partner n the composition and improvisation of the poetry of their experience.

With a wide pallet of perspectives, we openly explore the poetics of human contact.

Contact is the frame.
Improvisation is our response.

Body work
Mind work
Art

and a fair bit of sweat

LOGISTICS

Saturday/Sunday July 24/25, 12pm - 6pm

at Synapsis Wharehouse, 47a W 3rd St, Eureka, CA

(the second half of sunday's workhsop will be outdoors, weather permitting.)

cost: sliding scale $120 to $200 w/ $50 deposit

$95 + if deposit received by July 17

$145 + "at the door"

paypal deposit to info@bodyresearch.org or mail deposit to

Leslie Castelano, PO 4408, Arcata, CA 95518

For more info contact Leslie at muppet33@gmail.com, 707 616 3104

Karl Frost has been teaching and performing contact and related work in body-based creative process for the last 20 years. He is known internationally for his dynamic and articulate movement style, his rigor in physical research and teaching, and for the edge-pushing nature of his work in both practice and performance. His work, influenced by studies in contemporary release technique, Alexander technique, and martial arts, has been showcased across the states, Canada, Europe, and Israel. His performances take the body and emotionally and physically felt experience as their reference points. He is currently pursuing graduate studies at UC Davis (MFA in Choreography and MS in Ecology).

Some of his recent projects have included the Dancing Wilderness Project, the blindfolded participatory performance work AXOLOTL, and Contact Camp at Burning Man.

Of his performance work...

utterly compelling!
Brett Fetzer, The Stranger, Seattle, April 2004
extremely interesting.
Ann Wagner, The Stranger, Seattle, Sept 2004
the most surprising performance experience i've ever had and ... one of the most rewarding.
Brendan Kiley, The Stranger, Seattle Oct 2005
’something startling but strangely beautiful to behold.
Molly Rhodes, SF Weekly, San Francisco, August 2007