Experiential Physics and Kinesthetic Poetry
A workshop in Contact Improvisation explored as bio-mechanical play and experiential art.
- When: 21-23 and 28-30 March, 2025
19h-22h Friday, 10h – 18h Saturday/Sunday - Where: Leipzig, Germany
- Registration info… coming late December
Contact Improvisation is a 50 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, body mechanical tools for moving with weight sharing, mutual supports, and lifts. Poetic explorations investigate art-making and poetic sensibility in movement together through physical contact. We develop tools and perspectives for distill our explorations of physical contact and use the metaphor of “poetry” in exploring moving together. This allows us to access a far wider range of states and explorations, a wider artistic pallet than we conventionally find in contact jam culture. The technical work is both a pleasure in itself and a tool for more refined art-making.
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 the senses, two-body composition, and experienced meaning in movement. “Meaning” may be in the pleasure of kinaesthetic experience, curiosity, and physics. It may be in the poetry of sensation, emotion, and experienced image. 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 themes 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.
While CI has its origin in postmodern dance, the US West Coast early on took the work into experimental physical theater via groups like Mangrove. We take inspiration from Jerzy Grotowski’s felt, states-based approaches to theater making and paratheatrical exploration. Following Grotowski, we see the play of theater not as a pretend play, but as a revealing of different truths inside us… as the dancer is acrobat of the body, the actor is acrobat of the heart.
The poetry we explore is the poetry of inner experience shaped by and interlocking with the physical. The goal is a blending of felt meaning and artistry.
As part of our poetics explorations, we will play with eyes closed work via the “Deepening” score… a mixing of eyes-closed “Authentic Movement” practice with physical following, adaptation, and relating skills from CI as participatory witness. Eyes closed exploration invites us to let go of our daily social selves to find layers of curiosity and process both aesthetic and psychological hidden underneath. We cultivate a sense of physical poetry and felt sense of meaning in contact exploration and the joy of supporting each other into deeper exploration.
Logistics:
Fees and Registration: coming in late December
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 or on Instagram.