Contact Improvisation as Physical Poetry
A workshop in Contact Improvisation explored as bio-mechanical play and experiential art. 
- When: 4/5 May, 2024 10h – 18h Saturday/Sunday
- Where: Leipzig, Germany
Fudoshin Aikido Dojo Josephstraße 45 in Leipzig (a convivial, focus-inspiring space with a padded floor) - Registration info… see below
Contact Improvisation is a 40 year old art-sport exploring the possibilities of bodies moving through physical contact: support, flow, resistance, lifts, and falling together through space.
The workshop will be one part technical work to two parts poetic exploration. Technical explorations develop functional physical awareness of self and other. Poetic explorations investigate art-making and poetic sensibility in movement together through physical contact. We develop tools and perspectives for distilling and diversifying our explorations of physical contact. We use the metaphor of “poetry” in creative exploration with these tools. The technical work is both a pleasure in itself and a tool for more refined art-making.
The felt experience…
One of my dance teachers, Joe Goode in San Francisco, emphasized the “felt experience” … not simply the technical tumble of bodies and chain reactions of response, but feeling the details and playing with ineffable “meaning”, interior pleasure, and real, present curiosity. This felt experience will be a guide.
Technical work…
Part of the workshop looks at the mechanics of two bodies moving together, expanding our movement possibilities with lifts and shared falls. The technical work is based on the Passive Sequencing work. Developed out of principles from contemporary release technique, Alexander technique, and practices from the internal martial arts, Passive Sequencing 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. Through noticing and releasing nervous reactivity, we find greater ease, speed, softness, and power.
In the rest of our time together, we explore a poetic play with experienced meaning in movement and the senses. “Meaning” may be in the pleasure of kinesthetic experience, curiosity, and physics. It may be in the poetry of sensation, emotion, and experienced image. We begin by distilling specific mechanical processes or sensory foci. As with writing a poem, there is a blend of intentional composition and artistry with improvisation and felt inspiration. We play with identifying and holding onto foci of curiosity in the dance in a sense of collaborative art-making that moves us. Themes are articulated modes of interaction and are only limited by imagination… skin, slowness, playfight or martial dance, architecture, momentum, image, texture, pressure, comfort, ease, slipperiness, character, small flights, or perhaps something else clear yet un-nameable… they are experienced foci or processes that we can use to creatively channel an improvisation.
The poetry is the poetry of inner experience shaped by and interlocking with the physical. The goal is a blending of felt meaning and artistry.
Holding this sense of “poetics”, we aim for a new kind of contact jam.
For this workshop, Karl will be pulling from research questions from his interactive performance works, Axolotl, Proximity, and Tocame.
Logistics:
Fees: 140 -240e sliding scale (pay what you can within the range).
Early registration: 100-240e if registered by 6 April, 120-240e if registered by 20 April
To register,
- fill out this linked form
- send payment via bank transfer to Karl Frost (IBAN DE03860700240162275200) or via other arrangement
The workshop is in English
Everyone should already have some introduction to contact improvisation.
— Bio: Karl Frost 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 post-dramatic 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. He has relocated to Leipzig for his work as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture in Leipzig, Germany. His CI and dance/theater work can be found at www.bodyresearch.org, while some of his visual anthropology work can be found at www.culturalvariant.org