Seasonal Event

Body of Knowledge

Vanderhoef Studio Theatre (2011)
Fri – Sat, Feb 18-19, 8PM
Thu – Sat, Feb 24-26, 8PM
Sun, Feb 20 & 27, 2PM

General: $17/19
Students/Children/Seniors: $12-14

Body of Knowledge, by Karl Frost/Body Research, sits in the territory between somatic psychology, experimental theatre and human ecology. The performance begins with the audience participating in a behavioral experiment looking at human interaction. As the experiment deconstructs, the audience freely wanders the stage with the performers exploring the relationship of their bodies, emotions, and minds to each other and the environment in an audio and video installation.The installation incorporates scenes from nature, the human constructed environment, and lands modified by human action.

The audience chooses their level of interaction. They can just sit back and watch from a distance or come closer to the performers, creating different views of the work and, if they choose, accepting invitations from the performers to engage in verbal or physical explorations of the themes of the piece. The work juxtaposes different ways of knowing and acting: “scientific” knowledge versus other, perhaps more intuitive, ways of processing experience.

Karl Frost is currently pursuing an MFA in choreography at UC Davis as well as graduate level studies in ecology and anthropology.  He is the director of Body Research Physical Theater. His work varies between the purely kinesthetic and the psychological, between works for the stage and interactive performance works inviting audience members into greater degrees of agency in performance and life. His current artistic passion is around creating work that reflects the spirit of “research,” scientific and intuitive, applied to questions of how we choose to live our lives and how this affects, and is affected by, the world in which we live. Karl has been pursuing interdisciplinary performance work since the late 1980s and is recognized internationally as a leading teacher and innovator in the world of contact improvisation. Since 1997, Karl has directed the Dancing Wilderness Project, an ongoing laboratory into the interrelationships among wilderness experience, body-based creative process, and how we choose to live our lives.

This production is rated PG-13.

Read the press release.

See photos.

 

Press release

Interactive Performance Work Explores Environmental/Political/Personal Realities at UC Davis

UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dancepresents Body of Knowledge choreographed and directed by Karl Frost/Body Research Physical Theater. This interactive work explores how awareness and feeling live in our bodies, how knowledge of and debate on environmental and political issues exist alongside personal and private realities.

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