Dancing in Sächsische Schweiz

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Sächsische Schweiz
16-18 September 2022

Because of the summer forest fires, I am canceling the September Dancing Wilderness Project. we’ll try again in the spring, and perhaps will do a winter day trip if we get snow in Sächsische Schweiz. write to info@bodyresearch.org to be kept informed

hiking, movement exploration, and quiet time in forests and beautiful sandstone formations. somatic and sensory investigation and simple, reflective quiet time together in a landscape of forests and sandstone formations. ‘sleeping outdoors under rock shelters (“boofen“).
facilitated by Karl Frost
Where: Sächsische Schweiz, a cross-border park and nature preserve an hour east of Dresden on the German/Czech border
Time: The weekends begin with hiking in Friday early evening and leaving Sunday evening. Option also to come a day early on Thursday to just relax and explore
Cost: 125e – 300e sliding scale
- sliding scale… pay what you can in the range, No one turned away for lack of funds.
  It all goes to a good cause!
- see below for REGISTRATION

A Non-profit Fundraiser: Karl is not making any money from the event. All profits go to good causes, split between grassroots Environmental Justice causes and Ukraine aide.
on Facebook
Note: Currently (late July), there are forest fires in the area, but not where I had planned for us to go. I expect the fires will last a while, but be ended by the time of the workshop. I wrote a little something HERE about the situation

The Dancing Wilderness Project was started in 1997 by Karl Frost as an exploration of the interrelationships among wilderness experience, body-based creative process, and how we choose to live our lives. With open mind and senses, we look for an immediate experience of nature: experience unmediated by ideas or preconceived limits. We explore…

Nature as source of metaphor and inspiration for movement and image
Quiet experience of nature as food for the soul
Finding a different sense of space, time, and relationship away from civilization
Dance not simply about the environment, but with it
Extrapolating our knowledge and practice of dance and creative process in the studio to new environments: forest and mountain top as the stage and earth, pine needles, and rock as the floor.

The days will be a mix of quiet hiking and exploring time and simple movement scores from the Dancing Wilderness Project, using and building on what we explore in studio. These simple structures invite us into altered states of awareness of place and exploring of meaning in sensory connection to the “more than human” world. We find a sense of “dance” emerging out of functional movement exploration on unusual surfaces and in unusual spaces. As we dance in nature, rather than looking for spaces most like a dance studio, we instead look to see what each space offers.

We’ll be dancing with sandstone, trees, fallen leaves of past seasons, and each other.

Logistics

Schedule: We begin on Friday afternoon with a hike in to Sachsische Schweiz. We’ll be out by evening on Sunday.

Location: precise meeting point To Be Announced

Camping: Normal camping is not allowed in the area, but as the area is a traditional rock-climbing area, “boofen” – bivouacing in rock shelters – is allowed. This means no tents, just sleeping bag and sleeping pad

We hike in, bringing everything that we need for the time with us. We pack in our food and refill on water along the way. We practice low impact camping, paying attention to our physical relationship to the world around us. Hiking to base camp will be moderately strenuous. All should have some hiking experience and some experience working creatively with their body. Feel free to call or write with questions.

Coronavirus protocol: Assuming that the corona situation will be improved by mid-June, we will do the event with just testing. While we will be working outdoors, thus very much reducing risks, we will be working often in contact. Being vaccinated and boosted is still highly recommended.

Weather: Everyone should have clothes for warm and for cold weather, rain gear, as well as sleeping gear appropriate for cold weather. You don’t need a tent, as we will be sleeping under rock overhangs to protect from rain. The event will happen “rain or shine”, though this may be revisited in the event of an extreme weather event. In general, there is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.

Food: Different for this year, everyone is expected to bring their own food. New regulations prohibit the use of camping stoves, so we will all just bring in our own food rather than cook together. Pack the minimum you need to reduce weight, and try not to bring in glass jars. Feel free to ask for advice for minimizing weight!

Registration and Fees: To register for the Dancing Wilderness Trip …

fill out this linked Google Form and
send in payment (125e – 300e sliding scale): bank transfer to to “Karl Frost” at IBAN DE03860700240162275200, BIC DEUTDEDBLEG

Pay what you can in the sliding scale, knowing that everything that you pay upwards will be go directly to effective grassroots activist campaigns. If you have less and want to come, feel free to pay downward in the sliding scale. If you are a committed environmental activist as your profession and/or life path and you are not feeling abundant in finances at the moment, let me know, and we can work out a special rate 🙂 .

Fees are refundable with cancelation, minus a 50 euro deposit

Group size is limited to 12

Environmental Justice Fundraiser: The trips are produced as non-profit fundraisers for environmental defense / environmental justice organizations. All of the money beyond expenses goes to small, grassroots activist campaigns effectively working to protect our environment and foster a healthy relationship to it. Part of the money will be going to indigenous groups in northern British Columbia, Canada, fighting effectively against extractivist industry to protect their pristine homelands and their sustainable way of life. The rest will go to environmental groups working in europe.

Gear: everyone is expected to bring their own camping gear. As we cook together, you don’t have to bring your own stove.

**You should have space in your pack for a share of the group food supply, water supply, and cooking gear.**

A quick list of the essentials you would need to bring would be

sleeping bag (rated to zero degrees at least) and sleeping pad
layered clothing to be OK with working in both warm and cold temperatures
rain gear, just in case
personal toiletries, plate, cup, spoon
Day pack! We will be leaving our big packs and gear as we go out exploring for the day. We will also need capacity to bring water back to base camp.
Journal and pen for writing
Your food
Water! Water is an issue. In this part of the park, we should be able to refill our water here and there, but we will have to transport it back to our “base camp”. You should have capacity for carrying at least 3 liters of water per day, as we will be active and sweating.
a pack for all of your gear.

Extras

water filter
camera

Note: We won’t be carrying all of our stuff all of the time. We hike it in and then spend most of our time with just what we need for the day, stashing the rest of our gear at a base camp while we are out day-hiking.

For more information, write Karl at info@bodyresearch.org

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Check out Accidental Tourists: a film montage of sensory meditations in places less marked by human action. The first offering in a multi-year project exploring the effects of nature-time on awareness, emotion, and how we choose to live our lives.

Karl Frost has been practicing and teaching contact improvisation and related investigations since the late 1980s in California and has shared his work in over 25 countries. He began his movement explorations in martial arts as a teenager, before expanding his studies to somatics, contemporary dance, contact improvisation, and physical theater. His performance work, via his company, Body Research Physical Theater, explores postdramatic works rooted in somatic psychology and paratheatrical exploration and alternates between stage productions and highly interactive performance happenings exploring audience agency and personal meaning. He has an MFA in Dramatic Arts and a PhD in Ecology. He works at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture.

Of Body Research performing work …

’something startling but strangely beautiful to behold. Molly Rhodes, SF Weekly, San Francisco, August 07