Softness, Strength, and Skin

a Contact Improvisation weekend

with Zita Pavlištová (Czechia) and Karl Frost (California/Germany)

8-10 October, 2021

Leipzig, Germany

• Friday 19h -22h workshop
• Saturday 9h – 16h workshop, 19h – 21h open contact jam 
• Sunday 9h – 17h workshop,  
• at the Fudoshin Aikido Dojo, Josephstrasse 40
• Workshop is now Full.  Write to be put on waiting list in case of cancellations

… a collaborative weekend contact workshop co-taught by Karl Frost and Zita Pavlištová.  The workshop will be a collision of improvised material exploring the curious interconnections amongst softness, strength, and skin.  We explore power through soft intelligence of body use, a sense of lightness through effectively channeling our weight in ways that support easeful movement rather than restrict it.

Letting go of control, we ironically find more effective control of our bodies through a water-like fluidity. We find ease in motion independent of weight or muscle.  We’ll play with modulating taking and offering support.  We allow ourselves to be influenced by even light forces from our partner … adjusting the architecture of the body, changing the trajectory of our movement, and channeling forces more precisely through space.

We release reactivity and stabilizing to perceive a finer level of information about the organization of the forces in the body and space. Greater presence allows for more intelligent response to change, for power not so reliant on muscle, but instead relying on dynamic alignment.  Letting go of our own resistance and fear we dive into the pleasure of interconnected motion.

We search out ways that energy is wasted on “muscling mass around” and on unconscious stabilizing and learn to feed that energy instead into faster and more 3-dimensionally expansive and articulate movement through the space.  We maintain intelligent body-reorganization in the context of both surface level softening and core-level passive sequencing.

We work on practical skills:

• Feel and follow our own and our partner’s bodies dynamic structure.
• Read momentum, follow it, and influence its direction.
• Maintain vital movement energy by removing internal resistance
• Use our partner as a dynamic support. Be able to use a moving body part as a support, rather than expecting a static support.
• Read and anticipate the partner’s trajectory, be able to join it anytime.
• Develop mobility without losing mechanical interdependence of bodies.
• Fluidity

The workshop will involve slow motion exercises, conducive to self-study.  This slow self-study leads to more dynamic and efficient movement with greater 3 dimensional awareness and sophistication.  With this awareness we embrace an animal abandon in motion.

Skin… we feel from the skin and explore the skin as a physical organ with structure and plasticity.  While sensing the architecture of the skeleton, we explore the skin as antennae.  In contact with partner, we learn how surprisingly the rest of the body follows the plasticity of the skin. We capture with our skin, use the weight of the skin, keep smooth connection with the skin, and soften our landings and connection to the floor with our skin.

Skin is a wild animal, nimble and impulsive, decisive and independent. When action comes from the skin, the whole body activates and organizes

We embrace the pleasure of the body, enjoying touch, both at surface and at depth. Our result should be the feeling of security, a strange softness of our movement that immediately flows with changing forces, smooth spreading of weight and accurate placement of force and weight without stiffness of body or mind.

The workshop is an experimental collision of two teaching styles and approaches.  Let’s see what we find!

Logistics:

Fees: 140 -240e sliding scale (pay what you can within the range). 
Early registration: 100-240e if registered by 15 September, 120-240e if registered by 1 October

20% discount available for those also doing either Karl’s 2-3 October workshop in Prague

To register,

• fill out this linked form
• send payment via bank transfer to Karl Frost (IBAN DE03860700240162275200) or via other arrangement

workshop is in English

everyone should already have some introduction to contact improvisation

Sunday evening will be a lightly structured contact jam, open to the local Leipzig community

Bios

Zita Pavlištová (Czech republic)
… is teacher of contact improvisation in Czech Republic. In her work, she connects movement techniques with contact improvisation. She shares movement art based on listening to our body. In her work, she seeks for limits and loves extremes. She inquires into the body in movement and its connection with mind. She uses long, still and conscious watching to the inner movement, as well as pace, loss of control and risk – situations where body needs to be given an implicit trust.

„Through the body, it’s possible to understand a lot. Just listen to the ways how it speaks to us. My body is wise, it teaches me much more than all of my teachers. And at the same time it is willing to be taught. It’s not a good idea to force it in any way, it’s better to trust it boundlessly. Then it manages things that we have never even dreamed about.“

Zita operates in Prague. She founded and direct Druna – a space for CI, dance and movement. (www.druna.cz). For 7 years she has led her classes here, held evening and weekend jams, and invited teachers from the world. Every year she is organising the month of international summer workshops in Eagle mountains. Today, she teaches in Prague and in the whole Czech Republic, and also in Spain, Germany, Poland and Philippines.

Karl Frost (Germany/California)
…has been practicing, performing, and teaching contact improvisation and interdisciplinary, dance-based performance since the mid 1980’s in California. His work has been showcased over the last 3 decades across 5 continents, both in established institutions/universities and in independent studios and theaters. 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. He is known for his articulate teaching and the depth of the material that he accessibly offers. He began his movement explorations in martial arts as a teenager, before expanding his studies to contemporary dance, contact improvisation, physical theater and a variety of somatic practices. His performance work, via his company, Body Research Physical Theater (www.bodyresearch.org), explores postdramatic works rooted in somatic psychology and paratheatrical exploration, alternating between stage productions and highly interactive performance happenings exploring audience agency and personal meaning. A base of his movement practice and teaching is the Passive Sequencing work which he has developed, cultivating ease and presence in motion, soft power through movement intelligence, and the pleasure of finer moment-to-moment awareness of self and partner in motion. He has a BA in Physics, an MFA in Dramatic Arts, and a PhD in Ecology. Currently, he has a position at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture in Leipzig, Germany.