Body Research

16/03/2026

3 upcoming Contact Improvisation workshops with Karl Frost

10-12 April: Berkeley, California
17-19 April: Austin, Texas
24-26 April: Eureka, California

see website for links to individual workshops

(link in comments)

18/06/2025

Traveling to teach in Ukraine again.

28/29 June in Lviv
5/6 July in Kyiv

https://www.instagram.com/lilia_rai/reel/DKgvsDzC3SC/

15/11/2024

duet from Karl Frost/Body Research "Tocame!" a semi-interactive performance work
Jote Mahern and Utam Moses
Berkeley, California 2012

on the theme of "skin"

(recorded music Laura Inserra, recycled from Axolotl performance work)

Jote Mahern and Utam Moses duet Tocame! semi-interactive performance2012 Berkeley, Californiaduet on theme of "skin"(music by Laura Inserra, recycled from th...

12/11/2024

In case anyone is interested in performance work and likes to read, I was just looking for some personal notes on an old Performance work of mine (Tocame!) and found a set of notes i gave to the performers after one evening. It was actually interesting to read back over them 12 years later. I thought there might be a few people who might be interested in getting a mysterious window into a bit of backstage process, so i posted it on my blog, which i have not written much on in a long while...

I was looking for some notes on the scores of Tócame! (a semi-interactive performance work) and found these stage notes from the 15 June performance. I enjoyed reading them 12 years later. Time flies. I just leave them here as an interesting mystery... -- Notes to performers about 15 June performan...

02/11/2024

Men's Trio
Mark Koenig, Quinton Bennett, Karl Frost
July 1999
West Coast Contact Improvisation Festival
Berkeley, California

(recently salvaged from 25 year storage on a VHS tape)

--- upcoming CI events --

30 Nov- 1 Dec: Improvising Touch - Martial Dance and CI in Leipzig
a weekend of soft practices from internal martial arts mixed with open ended exploration of touch and physics from CI. ranging from the slow and meditative to the explosive and dynamic

27-31 December: Pelvis and Momentum - the 2nd annual Leipzig winter Contact Improvisation Focus Jam Gathering.

more information at www.bodyresearch.org

https://youtu.be/ulp2XEr2_HQ

a spontaneously devised movement improvisation trio based in contact improvisation and a bit of physical theaterMark Konig, Quinton Bennett, Karl FrostWest C...

29/04/2024

I'm going to be traveling to Ukraine for 2 weeks in the middle of May!
I'll be teaching contact improvisation, taking photos, meeting people, seeing how things are, and maybe contributing to the idea that we can go travel to Ukraine, or at least to parts..)
I'll be teaching two weekend contact improvisation workshops...
10-12 May in Kyiv
18-19 May in Lviv
If you are there in Ukraine, you probably know me from contact improvisation and i hope to see you there!
Links to the individual workshops in the comments
I'll share photographs here on Facebook informally as i go.
(I used to teach CI in Ukraine years ago and helped with some fundraising when the full scale invasion started.
For those not familiar with Ukraine, it's huge... about twice the size of Germany. While Russia's invasion has affected life all over Ukraine, some areas have been hit brutally, while others have been able to keep going and rebuild from some of the initial (and ongoing) damage. I won't in this relatively short trip be going to the east where things are harder. )
(photo from me visiting Ukraine to teach in 2008ish)

PS I am also teaching 4/5 May in Leipzig and 25/26 May in Aarhus… see website for info

13/03/2024

Jess Curtis died very unexpectedly yesterday... well, day before yesterday, as i have been up for many hours writing now.

As a younger (early 20s) dancer in the SF Bay area in the early 90s, i got a lot out of Jess's classes and out of watching him move. He was in his early 30s, dancing with the legendary Contraband line-up of the time as well as sharing his own work at 848 Community Space, which he helped direct. There was something pivotal for me in that, learning from Jess about soft power, moving while relaxed, really giving relaxed weight to a partner, and within that, moving with speed and articulation. I always loved watching Jess move... really just watching how he was in his body generally.

I think those were also just aspects of his personality.

He was 62. 'too short!

I just wrote up some of the exercises that i have copied, mutated, and mangled from Jess's classes as i developed my own work in dance and theater. I attach them here.

If you do contact improvisation, feel free to copy them, try them, mutate them yourself

(I'll be working with some of them these next weekends in California, thinking thankfully of Jess.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jU_TM8idmvwyeLhc5slsU7gmacKWHVnVD7HjrbmjnGs/edit?usp=sharing