CI Explorations

 

What: a 7 week series of class/labs developing and springing off of classic, physics-based CI
When: 2.11 to 14.12 2025
Sundays: 18h – 20h class into 20h + open practice
Where: Tanzerei Flugfisch, Leipzig
With Whom:

  • Karl Frost (California/Leipzig)
  • Deborah Manavi (Kassel/Leipzig)
  • Olha Bershadska (Kyiv/Leipzig)
  • and friends

For Whom: those who already have an introduction to CI practice and techniques of weight sharing, physical listening, and adaptation

Contact Improvisation is a 50 year old movement exploration and art practice, an open ended explorations of the physics, creative possibilities, and of listening bodies moving through interdependent contact.

The Explorations sessions blend technique, movement/lift vocabulary, and score-based research. Feedback and discussion help connect practice and understanding. 

Ease in weight sharing, more committed physical listening, moment to moment awareness and readiness for adaptation… advanced practices in CI are primarily fundamentals explored in finer detail.  We open further into the back space and shifting, 3-dimensional falling pathways, lifts, and flow of momentum, articulately engage with the pelvis/center, diversify how we offer and seek support. We get more precise about the details of sensation and mechanics and abandon ourselves further into exploration and curiousities. We work to let go of reactivity to cultivate a more intelligent “moving with” (see the Passive Sequencing work),.

As CI is an art practice, there is a blend of the physical, the intuitive, the intellectual… a primarily non-verbal exploration interplays with self-observation and verbal articulation. It is also an exercise in personal agency, where we encourage each other to initiate and experiment and commit to our own agency and active curiosity in a spirit of mutually supportive shared practice.

The series is meant to be very wide ranging within the overall world of classic CI, with our exact path through the material being an improvisation.

In the spirit of “Lab”, there will be a focus on articulating curiosity. We follow, learn from, and take pleasure in focused experiments. It is a closed group, rather that a “drop-in class”, so we have time to develop with each other, encourage each other, and be better supported in our own investigations, rather than “refind the group” each session.

Details and Logistics

Schedule: 18:00 – 20:00+
About 2 hours of class flows into open practice/jam. We’ll aim to start by 18:10 to allow time for arrival and personal warm-up, flowing into led class and facilitated explorations. Closer to 20:00, we’ll end with practice/jam space, which will be somewhat open ended. we go until at least 20:00, but with practice space available until 21:30, depending on the energy that day of the group and host. Exactly how this work, we’ll feel out as a group.
Post-class practice space is a chance to integrate what we’ve been exploring with what we already know, sometimes by holding tightly to it and diving in deeper, and sometimes by forgetting it and letting it drop into the unconscious in more open dancing. It also will be a place where we can explore other questions we have, feeding into the group conversations in later sessions.

Fees
20e – 30e per session, sliding scale
Pay what you can in the range. Also, no one turned away for lack of funds, so write to us if money is an issue.

Bios
Olha Bershadska, Deborah Manavi, and Karl Frost co-organize the Pelvis and Momentum CI Festival.

Karl Frost has been teaching and performing contact and related work in body-based creative process for the past 40 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 Europe, and North and South America. His performances, via Body Research Physical Theater, take the body and emotionally and physically felt experience as their reference points, often in highly audience interactive frameworks. Karl holds a PhD in Ecology and MFA in Dramatic Arts, and a BA in Physics. He is currently working as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Deborah Manavi (she/her) works as a freelance contemporary dancer and choreographer as well as a dance teacher and dance therapist. She started exploring Contact Improvisation in 2018. Her artistic practice and classes are characterized by an understanding of dance as a transformative force for the visualization of social conditions and as a power for change. She is interested in creating spaces in which individual expression can unfold, in which all of a person’s experiences flow into the dance, creating a unique language of movement, dynamics and utilization of space, as well as creating space for a collective experience. The guiding principle of her classes is to convey the joy of movement and to provide space to rediscover one’s own movement patterns. Working on the differentiated perception of one’s own body, the feeling and development of the individual dance, is the foundation in every class she provides. With Olha Bershadska and Karl Frost, she co-organizes the Pelvis and Momentum CI Festival.

Olha Bershadska is a CI dancer and co-organizer of the Leipzig CI Festival “Pelvis and Momentum” and the Leipzig Wednesday Focus Jam. She began practicing Contact Improvisation in Ukraine in 2021 while exploring movement as a way to help people feel more comfortable in their bodies—a natural extension of her work in adult education. Olha believes that CI is a unique blend of practical techniques, self-discovery, and joyful movement, and that the key to developing in CI lies in playfulness, curiosity, and the willingness to challenge oneself through small risks. With years of experience preparing people for teaching and group facilitation in invited workshops around Europe, Olha is an expert in creating “learning-by-doing” environments. She studies how skills are developed, has a wide variety of tools to help participants master new movement patterns more easily, and creates an engaging and supportive space where individuals can experiment freely and build confidence in their movement.