California Spring Contact Improvisation Intensive

 

 

a 2 weekend CI intensive with Karl Frost

  • 15-17 & 22-24 March
  • Berkeley/Oakland, CA (see below for locations and times)
  • 28 hours of CI training and exploration
  • An annual workshop series offered in the spirit of affordable training
  • $360-$600 sliding scale for both weekends, plus early registration discounts. (early registration deadlines 9 February and 1 March… scroll down for fees and registration)
  • For single weekend possibility, see below

2 weekends of focused and affordable training in the artsport of Contact Improvisation guided by a teacher with over 36 years of experience

For a group of dancers already familiar with contact improvisation, ready to challenge themselves physically in a focused and convivial environment.

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​This intensive follows on a tradition of Karl offering multi-weekend intensives in California. For those who have done a training before, the workshop will be a mix of classic materials worth revisiting with refined attention and new material to stretch the body and brain, taking both the “art” and “sport” aspects of CI seriously.

Simple pleasures, subtle study, embodied art, and wild abandon.

This 2 weekend intensive will be an organic mix of technical contact skills and experiential explorations of the physical poetics of contact.  The foundation of the work will be classic, physics-based contact improvisation. We then use this base in exploring the sensory play and experiential, interactive art-making of CI.

 

The technical work is a blend of classic CI skills and Karl’s Passive Sequencing work: a release-based approach to contact improvisation.  Classical material includes off-balance and weight exchange, lift vocabulary, physical listening skills, dynamic use of alignment for lifts and supports, readiness for adaptation, and falling together through space and into and out of the floor. It will range from conceptual work on body-organization for ease and power, tracking, readiness and adaptation to “lifts and tricks”. Passive Sequencing, a technique which Karl has been working with for decades, borrows from release techniques and soft martial arts. With concrete training exercises, we work on dropping nervous reactivity in order to stay more physically present and functionally adaptive in dynamic dancing with a partner.

The Physical Poetics work applies the metaphor of “poetry”  to contact improvisation: we play with refined articulation of focus and experience and apply this to a felt sense of art.  We establish a vocabulary of sensory foci and mechanical process. With this internal vocabulary, we creatively play with experience and meaning, image and feeling.  We move beyond the conventional social self in movement exploration to find “deeper” or simply “other” explorations than we normally access in an open contact jam.  we shape experience even as we give ourselves permission to abandon ourselves at times to it. Eyes closed exploration (similar to Authentic Movement) offers a gateway into a felt sense of poetry or meaning in the body. This work borrows heavily from Body Research’s participatory performance works Axolotl, Proximity, and Tocame!

body work
mind work
and a fair bit of sweat

 

Karl Frost started dance in the SF Bay Area in the 1980s and has been teaching, practicing, and performing works based in or inspired by contact improvisation since then.  His work has been showcased internationally and he is recognized for his articulate teaching work, dynamic and sensitive technical work, and for the psychologically and physically edge-pushing nature of the performances he directs. His company, Body Research, is devoted to exploring how we live, think, and feel through the body.  Much of the work is highly audience-interactive, with roots in somatic psychology and in Grotowskian paratheatrical exploration.  He has a BA in Physics (UC Berkeley), and MFA in Dramatic Arts (UC Davis), and a PhD in Ecology (UC Davis) and currently works as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture.

Logistics

Locations and Times

15-17 March: Western Sky Studio (2525 8th street, Berkeley)

    • 15 March (Fri): 7pm-10pm, Western Sky
    • 16 March (Sat): 12am-6pm, Western Sky
    • 17 March (Sun): 1pm-6pm, Western Sky
  •  
  • 22-23 March: Ellen Webb Studio (2822 Union St, Oakland)
    • 22 March (Fri): 7pm-10pm, Ellen Webb
    • 23 March (Sat): 10am-4pm, Ellen Webb (schedule changed to accommodate Jess Curtis’s memorial ritual at Ocean beach at 5pm)
    • 24 March (Sun): 2pm-7pm, Ellen Webb

Workshop requirements

The workshop is for those who already have had some introduction to Contact Improvisation, feel comfortable in an open level CI workshop and who are ready to engage in a very physical, multi-weekend intensive. This means both being physically ready in terms of body and technique basics and also understanding the norms of a CI space as friendly but focused art and technique exploration working extensively in physical contact.  All should be excited to push themselves mentally and physically. We cultivate a practice environment as at a contemporary dance or martial arts class, with an easy sense of focus, discipline and drive to explore.

Single Weekend option

Priority is for those who can do both weekends, and it is priced to make this affordable.  The workshop is, however, open for single weekend participation.

The first weekend is open level, but assumes familiarity with CI basics. 

The second weekend would require more CI experience to join on its own.  write for details…

Fees

Full workshop

Sliding scale
Pay what you can within the range
no one turned away for lack of funds

 Early Enrollment
— alternate lower end of sliding scale

  
by 10 Feb by 1 March “at the door”
$360-$600 300 330 380

Single weekend

Sliding scale
Pay what you can within the range
no one turned away for lack of funds

 Early Enrollment
— alternate lower end of sliding scale

  
by 10 Feb by 1 March “at the door”
$210-$350 185 205 380

“No one turned away for lack of funds” means that if you can not afford the lower end of the sliding scale but would still like to do the workshop, we can usually still work out some sort of happy exchange so yo can come.

To Register

  1. Fill out this linked registration form
  2. Send in fees.  Include a note that it is for this workshop,
    • methods:
      • Zelle is preferred (direct bank transfer), sent to “culturalvariant@gmail.com” .  No fee is charged for the transfer.  Most banks are starting to offer this.
      • Wise to “culturalvariant@gmail” also works. They charge $6
      • Paypal to “culturalvariant@gmail.com” also works.  They charge 2.5%
      • Venmo does not work… requires US phone number. 
      • For those with an EU bank account, you can do an EU bank transfer… contact karl for details

More information?  write to info@bodyresearch.org