I have at times found it effective to ask students to not ask questions and just watch. Dropping the verbal, doubting self can invite our ability to perceive and understand physically what we see and experience to blossom.

The intensive will be an improvised relationship among us all and between me as instructor and the group. We will have time together as dancers, feeling our way through and using non-verbal communication, ranging from intended physical transparency, feeling, proprioceptive sensing, and telepathy-like mimesis to more fore-brain moments of symbolic gesture and pantomime. We all come with the agreement of contact improvisation, but that is a big territory and we will feel our way through the details

The silence invites introspection and a moving beyond verbal concepts to the sensorially perceived world. Contact invites reflection on the body and the self in relation to environment and other. We come together with a very basic mutual agreement of exploring physical contact within a frame of classic contact improvisation (sensing, being in physical/mechanical relationship, weight sharing, exploring the range from diving into subtle details to playful mutual challenging, risk taking and responsibility for self). Again, we feel our way through the details.

Eyes closed solo movement and mutual witnessing will be a recurring practice. How does the curiosity I have about myself transfer to curiosity about other or myself in relationship to environment and other?

I will be teaching through a mixture of demonstration and non-verbal communication. We’ll try to create together a mutually supportive environment for introspection and mutual curiosity. You will be asked to explore following your authentic interest and awareness based on what you see and in physical and investigative relationship with others.

Enter
Karl

***

Karl Frost has been practicing, performing, and teaching contact improvisation and interdisciplinary, dance-based performance since the mid 80’s in California. His work has been showcased over the last 2 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 explores postdramatic 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. Currently (2023), he is a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture in Leipzig, Germany.

The practice of Contact Improvisation – for me – begins by listening inward, by turning
towards the mind of the body and noticing its dialogue with the Earth. Then gradually
opening out, becoming aware of what is around, integrating the inner awareness and the outer
focus. I am curious about this inner/outer perceiving dialogue, which could happen while
dancing alone or with one or more partners. I am curious how can we dance and compose
together by seeing inside through touching and seeing far out with our soft eyes.

The intensive is offering a space to explore how visual impulses transform into tactile ones,
how our dances can be drawn, and then how can we be danced by the drawings. We might
also draw the clouds, the leaves, the meadows, as well as the images, sensations, energies, and
thoughts that move us. We will gently tune in to listen through our eyes, and listen through
our skin as eyes. Eventually, somehow, we will find our way to get into a dancing dialogue by
drawing both the visible – shapes, outlines – and the invisible – energies, visual narratives,
inner states – and the tangible, and the ephemeral. And perhaps we will find out how the
drawings can support the not knowing.


***

Eszter Gál is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, a certified Skinner Releasing Technique
teacher on the Introductory and Ongoing levels. She is a Ph.D. student at the University of
Theater and Film Arts in Budapest, researching the Hungarian legacy of Contact
Improvisation and analyzing its methodology for performance art education. She has been
practicing, studying, and teaching releasing work and improvisation including Contact
Improvisation for over 25 years. She has been creating her work, performing solo and group
improvisation since 1993, and has been a guest teacher at Master workshops and International
Festivals since 1998. She was the artistic director and organizer of the annual Kontakt
Budapest International Improvisation Festival from 2002 until 2015 and has been leading
national and international events, and projects in Hungary and Europe. Her artistic work and
teaching method are greatly influenced by artists like Eva Karczag, Mary Overlie, Yoshiko
Chuma, Mark Tompkins, Keith Hennessy, Stephanie Skura, Nita Little, Nina Martin, Benoit
Lachambre and Peter Pleyer, who is her most inspirational and encouraging longtime
collaborator. In 2020, she joined Cranky Bodies a/company to research collaborative
performance-art making within an international frame and make the artistry of the
Postmodern dance legacy visible.