[CI-Announce] Lasqueti Winter Improv & Performance Intensive 3 w/Karl Frost & others

[Onion Oak]

Lasqueti Winter Improvisation and Performance Intensive III
January 11 – March 31, 2003

11 weeks of full time research in body-based creative process, contact 
improvisation,  and interdisciplinary performance on remote Lasqueti Island 
in BC, Canada… a full time laboratory exploring the integration of art and 
life

Directed and taught by Karl Frost
With Guest Instructors:
Amii Legendre (Contemporary Dance Technique)
Joey Blake (A capella and Vocal Improv)
Jeff Mooney (Rhythm & Percussion)
Keith Hennessy (Theater & Performance Art)
And assistant instructor Jez Parus

Daily morning training in contact improvisation, focussing on release 
approaches

Afternoon work in interdisciplinary approaches to body-based creative 
process and performance including Dance Composition and Improvisation, 
Release Technique, Voicebody work, Physical Theater and Spoken word, 
Authentic Movement, Bodywork, Music and Rhythm, Solo and Ensemble work, 
Image making, Process, Performance, and Facilitation

Focus and aims
·	Deepen and widen the range of personal creative process
·	Explore creation and performance as collaborative event
·	Develop relation of personal creative process to performance and audience
·	Expand our capacity to make personally and socially relevant art in 
traditional and non-traditional contexts
·	Develop our awareness of our body/mind/self
·	Find meaning in, through, and of our art-making

The intensive is intended for those who already have experience with both 
contact improvisation and performance… an invitation to those who have 
already found an important place in their life for this kind of work.

More details below
For more information, contact Onionoak@hotmail.com
Or call 250 333 8608
Also, check out www.karlfrost.com, which should be up in late June.


Please forward this notice to any who you think would be interested.
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Peace

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More Details….

Intentions
The Lasqueti Winter Intensive is a multi-dimensional program of training and 
practice for experienced movers and performers.   Directed by Karl Frost, 
the work will be physically rooted in the study of release approaches to 
contact improvisation and will venture from this base into a range of 
performance and creative practices.  The aim is to develop an organic 
approach, based in improvisation, which blends across disciplinary 
boundaries.  In this context, contact improvisation serves both as metaphor 
and physical embodiment of working principles of articulation within a flow 
and interplay of intention and detachment.  Lasqueti Island provides a 
beautiful and quiet context for focus on the work

Approximately a third of the work will be in contact improvisation, focusing 
on release work.  Physical power is cultivated through release of 
unnecessary tension, passive sequencing of momentum through and between 
bodies, and use of falling weight as a source of momentum to be channeled 
through 3 dimensional space.  Dropping away excess effort, our dance becomes 
more dynamic and powerful while simultaneously softer and more articulate.  
Proprioception guides movement, allowing efficient use of the body and a 
more direct interrelationship with the sensory world.  As a movement and 
awareness practice, contact helps us expand awareness of our mind and body 
in motion.  Beyond simply a physical exercise, we look to bring the whole of 
ourselves to our contact practice and see what the dance reflects back at 
us.  In the relationship of open awareness and availability to intention and 
will, we look for what it means to be present.

The intensive branches from this base in contact improvisation into an 
organic mixture of interdisciplinary approaches to body-based creative 
processes and performance: dance/movement improv and composition, theater, 
text, performance art, bodywork, voice, authentic movement, stage, music and 
percussion, image making.  Creative process will be investigated in relation 
to self-exploration, creative interaction, and performance.  In performance, 
we investigate viewpoints of space, time, shape, emotion/feeling, 
narrative/flow, and kinesthetic experience.   We look at the technical 
details of entering and exiting, timing, use of space, orientation, 
lighting, presence, physical/emotional states, theme and variation of 
structures, silence and stillness, counter point, shifts and sustain, 
relationship of the individual and the ensemble, interrelationship of music, 
sound, movement, image and text.   While tracking details, we also look for 
an intuitive view and feel of the whole of what is happening.  We look to 
how the event is experienced by both audience and performer.  Within 
improvisation, we learn to utilize the interplay of the random and of will, 
of listening and direction, of open availability and extemporaneous 
composition.  We investigate improvisation both as an art of its own and as 
a laboratory and tool for composition.

We view creative process with the thinking, physical and emotional bodies.  
With the body as source we look for play, seriousness, aesthetics, 
communication, self-revelation, concurrence and contradiction.  We look for 
a felt sense of meaning and relevance within our work and then look at how 
it communicates.  We look at performance as a place where we process the 
question of how we want to live our lives.

Schedule
Workshop
The Intensive runs about 40 hours per week.  The first 8 weeks are workshop. 
  Daily Training in contact improvisation mixes with training in a wide 
spectrum of body-based creative and performance practices.
A series of guest instructors will introduce new material and broaden our 
study (see below for details). Each guest instructor teaches an open weekend 
workshop and then stays for some extra time to work with just the intensive 
group. In particular, Amii Legendre sticks around for an extra three days to 
help us work on technique and Keith Hennessey takes over for a week to share 
his work in performance art and to integrate it with his own approaches to 
contact improvisation.    Karl weaves the material of the guest instructors 
into ongoing explorations in CI and interdisciplinary improvisation and 
performance.  In addition, during the second weekend, there will be an open, 
2-day/2-night contact jam, giving us an opportunity to get to know each 
other’s dancing in a less formal atmosphere and a chance to meet other 
contact improvisers from around western Canada and the US.

Primarily the study will be physical, but there will also be time created 
for discussion of the work and of a series of readings and performance 
videos.  A weekly open contact class will serve as a laboratory in teaching 
as students teach class for the community.  Informal performance 
opportunities through the intensive and through independent open-mics on the 
island give us the chance to share work.

Laboratory
Weeks 9 and 10 open up from classes into an organic mixture of training, 
laboratory, performance development, and rehearsal.  The emphasis turns more 
towards integration and personal research.  Karl will continue to teach 
some, but the time will also open up as we allow group curiosity to guide 
and allow everyone to follow their individual passions.  We aim to identify 
and pursue our own passions both in contact and in performance work.  We 
develop and expand the work of the training period, shaping individual and 
ensemble sensibilities for a series of collaborative performances in the 
11th week.

Performance & Teaching
The intensive concludes in the final week through performance and teaching. 
We will perform in a series of community halls around the gulf islands 
leading into street performing in Victoria, where we investigate sight 
specific work.  We use each performance as an opportunity for research.  
Everyone shares in feedback after the performances, evolving the process 
together from one to the next.  We also turn towards sharing the work 
through teaching. The intensive closes as we return to Lasqueti, where 
intensive participants design and teach a weekend contact improvisation 
workshop. During the student led workshop, Karl will be there to offer 
suggestion in designing the workshop and to smooth out transitions, but 
otherwise stands out of the way so that intensive participants can design 
their own workshop.

Logistics:  The intensive is intended for those who already have experience 
with both contact improvisation and performance … an invitation to those who 
have already found an important place in their life for this kind of work. 
Limited to 16 participants.  Tuition is $2000Can - $2500Can sliding scale. 
($1350-$1700 US).  Some work exchange will be available.  Applications 
received by September 15 get priority; final application deadline November 
1.   Although there will be some variation on how much housing and food 
costs, a rough estimate would be about $1200Can ($800 US) for the 11 weeks.
For more information on the intensive, experience requirements, or to apply, 
call 250 333 8523
Write… onionoak@hotmail.com or
Lasqueti Winter Intensive  GD, Lasqueti Island, BC V0R 2J0 Canada
www.karlfrost.com for more details.

Lasqueti Island is an isolated, rural island in the Georgia Straight, 
between Vancouver Island and the lower mainland in the west coast of Canada: 
no car ferry, off the power grid, and a winter population of fewer than 300 
on an island the size of Manhattan.  Winters are mildly cold, wet, very 
quiet, and green. Seals, otters, blue herons, osprey, and eagles share this 
temperate rainforest island.  Forests and rock bluffs overlook the ocean.   
Living is very rustic. Limited distractions provide an excellent opportunity 
to focus on creative work.

Karl Frost has been practicing and performing contact improvisation and 
interdisciplinary, dance-based performance since the mid 80’s.  His physical 
work is influenced on the one hand by modern release technique and Alexander 
work, and on the other by his study of martial arts.  He is known 
internationally for his dynamic movement style and for the edge-pushing, 
experimental nature of his work, both in process and performance.  His 
performance takes the body and the emotionally and physically felt 
experience as its reference point.  His work has been showcased across N and 
S America, Europe, Australia, and, more recently, in Israel.   He is the 
director of the Dancing Wilderness Project, an ongoing investigation into 
the interrelationships amongst wilderness experience, body-based creative 
process, and how we live our lives.

Jez Parus (assistant) has been a musician since a young age and began dance 
and contact improvisation in 1996.  She has worked with teachers Nancy Stark 
Smith, Peter Bingham, Ray Chung, Chris Aiken, and Karl Frost.  She is 
devoted to play and bodily awareness as revolutionary acts.

Jez and Karl share vision of rurally based art making and simple living in 
connection to the land.  They collaborate in teaching and performance under 
the name Onionoak.

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Open Weekends

Contact Improvisation Jam – January 24-26

Two days and two nights of open time sharing contact improvisation, creative 
process, and dance at beautiful Lasqueti Community Hall.  Morning warm-up 
classes, opportunity to share performance work, dj’d music on Saturday 
night, and lots of open time for jamming, relaxing, or just taking a hike in 
the woods.
An invitation for those already comfortable with contact basics.
Starts Friday at 4PM and ends Sunday at 3:30PM (to coincide with the 
ferries) $60, includes all meals. Space limited to 55

Amii Legendre -- February 1-2
Technique, Composition, Partnering

Technique: athletic and full-bodied modern dance technique, working with 
principles of alignment, release, inversion, and flight.
Composition: Taking the technical information, integrating it with personal 
movement styles and shaping it for performance, solo and in ensemble, mixing 
the set and the improvised.
Partnering {w/Karl Frost}: Integrating partnering work into improvised and 
choreographed dance work.  Lift and momentum exchange vocabulary and 
principles integrated into a larger dance.  Focus on continuity and flow, 
maintaining an independent dance into and out-of contact.
Looking for a liquid relationship between self and other, floor and sky, set 
and improvised, we work from there.

Amii LeGendre is a mover, teacher, and choreographer. She is the artistic 
director of LeGendre Performance Group, a Seattle-based contemporary dance 
company, with whom she has made five full evening works, many smaller works 
and projects, performing and teaching all over the West Coast and Ecuador.  
The work is firmly rooted in dance, but tends toward hybrid performance, 
bringing in elements of film, video, live sound, set installation and/or 
light design to explore a subject or material. Influenced deeply by training 
in gymnastics and 10 years of practice in contact improvisation, her work 
and ideas are informed by movement that is low and fast, tricky and 
innovative, blending the idiosyncratic voices of her performers and students 
with physical contact-based relationships that communicate emotionally

Jeff Mooney  -- Feb 8-9
Percussion and Rhythm

Class will be based on body, breath, sounds and rhythm as language for 
ensemble building and group spirit. All skill levels welcome. We will 
indulge in the joy of trance pulses, non-verbal conversation and basic 
compositions, energy flow, dynamics. From stillness to ecstatic beats, 
whispers and screams included. Some writing games to discover personal and 
collective chants.

Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney has lived in SF since 1984. He has taught music, 
rhythm and improvisation for 10 years in SF, LA, Boston, Vermont, Missouri, 
independently and through his involvement with Reclaiming, a Bay Area based 
community of eco-activist and feminist pagans. He is currently recording a 
CD. He loves to sing in the shower.

Joey Blake – February 15-16
CIRCLE SONG

Circle Song helps each participant explore the art of Improvised Vocal 
Expression. Participants work with the arts of instrumental singing, vocal 
improvisation, and body percussion as they relate to different styles of 
music. We use the entire body including the breathing to produce rhythms. In 
addition to melody and rhythm, the voice is used as a paintbrush to create 
visual textures and to create a visual, mental and emotional experience for 
the listener. The ultimate goal is to give participants a renewed sense of 
freedom to discover their own style of vocal expression and improvisation.

Raised in a family of musicians and gospel singers, Joey studied classical 
voice and vocal jazz arranging at Phil Mattson's School for Vocalist in 
Spokane Washington, developing his deeply resonant and expressive bass 
vocals. He is one of the founding members of Voicestra the a cappella 
ensemble created by Bobby McFerrin, and also the group Circle Songs. He 
currently performs with SoVoSo, a six member a Capella ensemble that spun 
from Voicestra. Joey's desire to teach is motivated by his need to give back 
to the music that fills his life with so much joy.

Keith Hennessy – February 21-22
Performance Art: Inspiration and Intelligence

How to make rich, innovative, personally and socially meaningful art with 
your mind, your body, and the world around you.  How to interweave spoken 
word with physical image in a relevant way.

The body is a potential source, metaphor, representation and home-base. 
Extending this awareness to the collective body, earth body, energy body, 
family body, and others we'll enter a shared laboratory of performance 
research and renewal.  Working with improvisation and composition, alone and 
in collaboration, we'll engage in a hybrid process that includes all the 
potential languages of spectacle, ritual, theater, action and performance. 
Our sensations, ideas and desires collaborate with the classical ideals of 
Truth and Beauty.

Keith Hennessy is a Canadian-born, inter-disciplinary artist and organizer 
living in community in San Francisco, where he has won numerous awards for 
his work. Hennessy’s solo work has been produced throughout the US, in 
Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, including several Queer Performance 
Festivals.  He was a founding member and principle collaborator in 
CONTRABAND, an internationally acclaimed performance company and since 1998 
has performed with the French cirque batard CAHIN-CAHA. Hennessy serves 
radical cultural agendas as a consultant, director, teacher, curator, and 
agitator and co-directs 848 Community Space, a thriving urban gallery and 
performance venue. www.848.com

The Group  -- March 29-30
Contact Improvisation

Come to a weekend of contact exercises, scores, and skill building led by a 
group of experienced contacters who’ve just spent 3 months developing and 
honing their skills and understanding of contact improvisation.  An 
exceptional opportunity to get a variety of voices giving perspectives on ci 
as well as a lot of experienced dancers with whom to work.  Includes CI Jam 
Saturday evening.

The weekend workshops are $80 to $120 sliding scale, except for the March CI 
workshop, which is $45 to $60.  Space is limited and they do fill fast. 
Workshops start 11AM Saturday and end 3:30 Sunday, coinciding with ferry 
schedule to Lasqueti. Fees include lunch Saturday and Sunday.
Call or write for info, registration, and/or help with housing…
(250) 333 8608/onionoak@hotmail.com



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