Improvising Touch

 

Martial Dance and Contact Improvisation

  • Untitled-130 November – 1 December 2024 
    • Saturday 10h -18h, Sunday 10h – 17h
  • With Karl Frost
  • Leipzig, Germany
  • (housing available for those traveling from out of town)

In this very physical workshop, we explore playful and inquisitive sensing and improvising through touch, manipulation, yielding, direction and redirection, with applications toward dance, martial arts and body awareness.
The material in the workshop blends practices from contact improvisation, internal martial arts (Tai Chi, Ba Gua), and contemporary dance release technique.

Contact Improvisation is an “artsport” initiated in the 1970s exploring the physical and sensory possibilities of bodies moving through contact. We touch, lean, give weight, playfully challenge and support each other, fall and fly together into and out of the floor. It is a play of body mechanics and physics, sometimes subtle and meditative, sometimes high flying and acrobatic. We explore principles as well as learn lift and movement-partnering vocabulary from which to improvise.

Martial Dance is a practice developed by a group of dancer/martial-artists in California in the 90s.  It’s foundation is the playful touch practice of Toishou (“push hands”) from the Chinese Daoist martial arts (eg. Tai Chi, Ba Gua Zhang, etc) … somewhere between a gentle sparring practice and sensory meditation on physical listening, body mechanics, and complex adaptive alignment and dance.  We touch, we listen through touch, we perceive ourselves in mechanical relationship, and play with adapting that relationship while our partner does the same.  We participate in shaping our partner’s movement while our partner does the same with us.  Following curiosity and a sense of play, we oscillate between playful mutual challenge and pure following/adapting/sensing.  We expand 3 dimensionally on traditional push hands work through taking movement into and out of the floor and through the air with supports and lifts  (a gentler take on “throws”)

 We cultivate deep physical listening to our own and our partner’s structures and weight, accepting the inevitable influence from the other that comes with physical contact as we play with directing, accepting direction, and redirection. We play with mutual manipulation and influence, adapting to circumstances. 

To paraphrase a Daoist principle, we are never fully in control … accepting this, we become more present with what actually is and better adapt in the flow of what is.

A reference point in the workshop will be the Passive Sequencing work, a training practice for releasing unwanted reactivity and hyper-control and for developing more nuance proprioception (structure and weight perception) of self and other.

 

An open level workshop for the physically adventurous and inquisitive.

All are expected to be excited to  challenge themselves physically and to be comfortable moving through physical contact with another body.  If you have questions if the workshop is appropriate, feel free to write with questions to info@bodyresearch.org
Space is limited to 24, so early registration is recommended.

Registration and Fees

Fees

Early registration (Before 8 November): 100-250 euros sliding scale
regular (After 8 November): 150-250 euros sliding scale
As with most Body Research events, this workshop is “no one turned away for lack of funds”. This means pay what you can in the sliding scale range, and if you can’t afford the lower end, write a note and we can work something out.

Registration…

To register, do both of the following

    • send payment via bank transfer to Karl Frost (IBAN DE03860700240162275200)  and
    • fill out the google doc here 

For refund policy, click here

Workshop in English

Housing is available for visitors from out of town.  write a note if you need it

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Bio: Karl Frost began his movement studies with the Hawaiian martial art of Lua in 1982. He began to study dance (contemporary dance and contact improvisation) 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. In addition to studying different forms of contemporary dance and experimental theater work, he expanded his study of martial arts with Hapkido, capoeira, Yang Thai Chi and Ba Gua Zhang. In the context of this, in the early 1990s, he and other dancer/martial artists began the playful skill sharing and exploration they called Martial Dance, which Karl has been continuing to explore in rehearsals, labs, and workshops since.

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 and Choreography (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.