Currently based out of Leipzig, Germany, BODY RESEARCH is a project of director Karl Frost, devoted to self exploration through the lens of the body.
Contact Improvisation, a physical art practice exploring the possibilities of bodies moving through physical contact is a core practice of Body Research. Part non-martial “martial art”, part collaborative physical meditation, part improvised partner acrobatics, a contact improvisation duet follows the curiosities of the partners and the dictates of physics and gravity … sometimes quiet and reflective, sometimes explosive and acrobatic. It is simultaneously a functional physical self-awareness practice and fun, collaborative play.
Karl Frost has been practicing, teaching, and performing contact improvisation and related practices since the 1980s in California. He teaches internationally, and his regular classes, produced workshops, and contact jams in Leipzig are the center of a growing new local scene for the focused study and practice of CI.
Body Research’s work encompasses stage work, paratheatrical workshops in investigative/creative process and functional body awareness, and gatherings that facilitate the study and practice of body-based exploration and the intersection/integration of life and art. The work crosses many boundaries and territories: disciplinary boundaries of theater, dance, and self-exploration; the boundaries between proscenium performance and communal interactive happenings; the spectrum from dramatic dance-theater to post-dramatic theater that invites the audience into independent investigation; the range of explorations from professional-level creative and theater work to community oriented experiential facilitation.
BODY RESEARCH integrates the disciplined study of Contact Improvisation into research explorations from tanztheatre, paratheatrics, somatic psychology, and other fields of self-investigation. Many of Body Research’s performances are highly interactive performance works, inviting, provoking, and questioning agency of audience members, both in the theater and in life. Our investigative process accesses and invites both intuitive/experiential processes and formal scientific/empirical investigation of phenomena of human behavior and experience, with recent work incorporating behavioral experiments on the edge of scientific understanding with audience members as both investigators and subject of investigation.
BODY RESEARCH is devoted to a life lived more pleasurably, compassionately, and convivially in balanced relationship with each other and the world we live in … in a way which is sustainable for ourselves and the planet and rich in opportunities for the appreciation of life’s complexities…
As part of this devotion to sustainability in art-making, BODY RESEARCH is committed to providing affordable contexts for training and exploration that can be a sustainable part of a life integrated with art-making. Body Research also organizes regular fundraiser events for environmental and social justice causes, including The Dancing Wilderness Project.
Check out the sidebar on the right for events happening soon. Sign up on the mailing list to receive occasional e-mails about events (filtered by region), especially for contact improvisation workshops, classes, and jams in Leipzig.
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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 particularly known for his articulate teaching of contact improvisation and other practices 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 postdramatic performance work is 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 research position at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture in Leipzig, Germany.