Collaborative Physics and Sensorial Poetics
a contact improvisation workshop with Karl Frost
- March 6-8
- Friday 20-23h, Saturday/Sunday 12-18h
- Leipzig (Tanzentrale, Studio 1)
- on facebook
We’ll play, this weekend, back and forth between the challange of collaboration in movement with shared structure and the aesthetic sensorial play of proprioception.
A Collaborative Physics
Contact Improvisation can be subtle and meditative or explosive and acrobatic, but at it’s core is the challenge to stay present and adaptive to the shifts of structure, forces, weight, and momentum of a similarly improvising and adapting partner. We explore a dance of shared weight, mutual support, falling and lifts, and both a surrender into the influence of another while similarly being present with our own power and influence.
Developed out of principles from release technique, Alexander technique, and practices from the internal martial arts, The Passive Sequencing work cultivates finer awareness of our own body use and how we affect the state and body-use of our partner. We increase moment-to-moment functional awareness through tuning into proprioception – our physical experience of the body – allowing for greater ease, speed, and power. Through more sophisticated movement intelligence (as opposed to “muscling through”) we find a more dynamic perception in time, informed by our accumulated skills but less hindered by attachment to physical habit. Through releasing patterns of hyper-control, we find dense, rich awareness of and participation in human interaction.
A Sensorial Poetics
We look at our sense of meaning in movement… the poetics of interaction, whether in kinaesthetics and physics or in the poetry of sensation, emotion, and experienced image. We play with holding onto themes and frames of reference in the dance in a collaborative art-making that moves us literally and metaphorically. The poetry is the poetry of inner experience shaped by and interlocking with the physical. I collaborate with you on the poetry of your experience. You collaborate with me in the poem which is mine.
A primary tool in this exploration is the distilling of modes or foci of investigation. By narrowing our focus and allowing this specificity to reshape our whole body-use, we find a freedom to explore territories that habit and daily social impulse prevent us from discovering. For example, by holding our attention on specific qualities of sensation of skin or fascia or by narrowing our movement to specific ranges of speed, this restriction launches us into new territories that freely wandering attention would otherwise never allow. This allows for a more nuanced interplay of deliberate intention and abandon in finding more meaningful dances.
This material borrows from Body Research’s work in interactive performance in works like Axolotl, Proximity, and Tocame.
Note: This workshop is open to beginners, but it should not be your first time trying contact improvisation… that is, you should already have done a class/jam or two before coming so you have some basic sense of some of the possibilties and explorations of CI. If you live in Leipzig, check out the Leipzig Contact Improvisation group website for regular weekly opportunities for drop-in classes and jams. You can also find local CI events on the Leipzig CI Facebook group.
Logistics:
Fees: 125 -240e sliding scale (pay what you can within the range). Early registration: 85-240e if registered by February 8, 105-240e if registered by February 23
20% discount possible on Softness, Strength, and Skin , a collaborative CI workshop with Zita Pavlištová (Czechia) and Karl Frost April 3-5, with enrollment in Collaborative Physics and Sensorial Poetics.
To register, send an e-mail to info@bodyresearch.org and payment via bank transfer to Karl Frost (IBAN DE03860700240162275200)
housing available for out-of town dancers
workshop is in English