Name: Martial Dance and Contact Improv: Improvising Touch w/ Karl Frost
Start: 2024-11-30T10:00:00+01:00
End: 2024-12-01T17:00:00+01:00
Location: Fudoshin Dojo Leipzig - Philippe Orban

$Martial Dance and Contact Improv: Improvising Touch w\/ Karl Frost$

Martial Dance and Contact Improvisation
30 November – 1 December 2024
Saturday 10h -18h, Sunday 10h – 17h
With Karl Frost
Leipzig, Germany
Fudoshin Aikido Dojo Josephstraße 45 in Plagwitz
(housing available for those traveling from out of town)
150-250 euro sliding scale
100-250 euro with registration by 10 November
See website for registration
www.bodyresearch.org
In this very physical workshop, we explore playful and inquisitive sensing and improvising through touch ... manipulation, yielding, direction and redirection, sensing, connecting ... 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, soft 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 taking movement into and out of the floor and through the air with supports and lifts (a gentler take on “throws”).
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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 [email protected]
Space is limited to 24, so early registration is recommended.
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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, 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.