Beginning / Intermediate Acrobatic Stilts

info below applies to SF workshop - for Arcata contact us
08/28 - 8/29 - San Francisco, CA
- 1:00pm - 7:00pm
$155 discounted early registration (register by Aug 7);
$195 regular registration
BYO stilts or $40 to rent our aluminum acro stilts

workshops@carpetbagbrigade.com 517-881-9307

Co-taught by Anson Smith and Sid Silver, this workshop will challenge you to learn acro stilt walking in a two day intensive format. The workshop is geared towards people with balance and movement training (dancers, acrobats, yoginis, etc.) in order to cover ground quickly. Previous stilt experience is helpful, but not necessary.

Our work and play will include

• stillness, walking, falling, landing and rolling
• pathways to the ground and up,
• partnering and ensemble thinking
• physical character on stilts
• games, improvisation and choreography

We will draw on Circus, Contact Improvisation and physical theater to transorm the human body into something eight feet tall, dynamic, stable, fragile, and beautifully precarious.

We will have several pairs of our aluminum acro stilts to loan to participants: space in the workshop is limited.

Carpetbag Brigade's Summer Stiltasana Seminar will be at Green Valley Village near Sebastopol, California.

It will take place between the 11th and 31st of July. The workshop component of the seminar will be from the 12th to the 23rd and will focus on technique and composition. The laboratory component of the seminar will take place from the 25th to the 31st and be oriented around a collective creation process that leads into local presentation the 30th and 31st of July.

We will work two sessions a day; morning and late afternoon/early evening. Participants in the first component are welcome but not required to be in the second component.

Jay Ruby will be the primary instructor. There may be a 2nd instructor to come in and work with training in contact improvisation and choreography and a musician to work with rhythm and presence.

The first two weekends will be for rest and exploring. The third weekend will be used for presentations.

• Workshop cost (1st two weeks) = $550
• Laboratory cost (last week) =$150

Green Valley Village is an intentional community on 300 acres of land. It is a combination of Redwood Forest and grasslands. We will work in the performance barn upstairs for wooden floor training work, as well as near the grape arbor for grass surface training work. There is a pond for swimming and a camping area that will be used for lodging..It will be necessary to bring tents and sleeping bags. The pond and camping area are about a 1/4 mile walk from the rehearsal area near the performance barn. Participants will be responsible for their own food. On the ground floor of the barn is a communal kitchen with two refrigerators, stove, silverware, and plates.

Green Valley Village

The Pillars of Spectacle Based Drama
A Physical Theater Seminar for Ensembles

The Pillars of Spectacle is an intensive physical theater seminar that integrates the training forms of acrobatic stiltwalking, butoh dance, contact improvisation and synthesizes them in the compositional scaffold of physical theater. The seminar is best taught in a residency fashion with a committed core of participants who can share their learning process together. The skills accrued during the residency would strengthen the capacity of an ensemble to create dynamic spectacle -based work together and increase the acrobatic stiltwalking skills of the participants. The residency would lead towards the creation of material that could be presented in an informal fashion to the general public.

Acrobatic Stiltwalking skills (Stiltasanas) include: lifts, falls, partner exercises, still point encounters, stick work, groundwork and geometrics plus core strength and balance building exercises from ashtanga yoga and pilates.

Acrobatic Stiltwalking has been at the core of The Carpetbag Brigade's evolution and international success. Directors Jay Ruby and Kristen Greco have created diverse techniques and exercises to prepare the body for the intense physical impact of stilts and simultaneously developed a way of integrating a sense of theatrical aesthetics into the teaching of their work.

Contact Improvisation exercises focus on: developmental movement patterns in the body, the giving and taking of weight, movement as metaphor for relation, and safely releasing the body into precarious balances with others.

Contact Improvisation is the foundational movement practice for The Carpetbag Brigade. It emphasizes release in the body and relation between individuals through the basic and core concept of weight in space. Specifically adapting the principles of contact improvisation to acrobatic stiltwalking has created a sense of grace in partner exercises and sharpened the awareness of lifting and falling on stilts.

Butoh dance work leads the participants into: altered states of physical expression, activating imagination in the body, ancient memory as departure, timeshifting, animal nature, transcending habit, psychophysical endurance, awakening hidden energies, seducing ghosts and harnessing liberation.

Butoh dance is an antidote to overreliance of spectacle technique. The Carpetbag Brigade uses Butoh to engage a dialog with archetype, shadow, history and character. Enmeshing a butoh sensibility with stiltwork brings in a multi dimensionality to the theatrical possibilities of stilts as well as confronting performers with the evolution of their essence as human beings.

Physical Theater exercises access: departure points of improvisation, initiating frames of composition, evolving and refining forms and scores, arranging narrative structure and dynamic sequencing.

Composition and narrative are used as devices for framing dramatic narrative and character. Constructing tight vital expressive forms that layer and augment meaning and emotion enable the company's performances to transcend cultural boundaries.

The Pillars of Spectacle can be constructed as an ongoing course with each element present every day or as a series of pods. The acrobatic stiltwork (stiltasanas) is an optional part of the seminar. It can be eliminated as part of the seminar or activated as the primary focus.

The intent of this seminar is to provide training tools and creative processes for performers and preferably ensembles to transform their expressive bodies, safely take physical and aesthetic risks, and evolve a collective ethos and aesthetic around working together.

The seminar requires a serious time commitment and primary focus on the part of the performers for the duration of the seminar. A minimum of 10 full days is necessary and a full month is desirable.

Seminars utilizing the stiltasana portion require all participants to be outfitted with aluminum stilts.

The Voice in Action

Words, Songs and Sounds from the Body as a vehicle for interaction
A Physical Theater Workshop for the Voice

The Voice exists as a common everyday medium of expression through the use of words and sounds. It is a tool for the ordinary. In an expressive forum it can be expanded to become a vehicle of action and exploration, a tool of improvisation and discovery. It can excavate personas and altered states.

The Voice in Action uses text, song, and sound as a basis to explore character and soundscape with the voice. Activities include breathing exercises, sound resonators, techniques of memorization, imagery, stream of consciousness writing, voice projection and the deconstruction of vocal habits. The relationship between the physicality of the body and the quality of vocal expression is the reference point for the research. There will be individual as well as group exercises that awaken the participant's vocal capacities and expand their vocabularies and approaches to training the voice as a tool for improvisation and expression.

Words from Water
Mapping the shoreline between thought and movement

Words from Water harvests the impulses in the field of activity between the moving body and the fluid mind. Participants write and reflect on chosen and given themes. Mixing improvisational dance frames from contact and butoh with specific writing exercises we dilate and articulate the poles of our collective mind body.

Each class follows an initial thread of intention that weaves the focus back and forth from writing structures to creative movement and action. Arenas of interaction and witnessing expand into character, poetry and narrative. By engaging and revealing the habits of mind in our movement we expand our perceptions, reflections and expressions.

Words from Water is an excellent remedy for writer's block, habitual movement, or fear of speaking one's own words. Byproducts of this experiential laboratory class include intuitive character and narrative development, text material, disciplining mental chatter, suspending judgment, full body listening and thinking into one's feet.

Particpants should bring pen, paper and loose fitting clothes and be willing to take risks.

Harvesting Chaos
A Site Flexible Street Theater Worskshop

Design Strategies for the Body and Voice to Intervene in the Social Fabric

Expand your repertoire of risk taking in public space, of shifting energy and focus in the anonymity of the crowd, of turning the inside out in the alienation of the everyday rhythm, of seducing ritual out of the mundane. Harvesting Chaos defines strategies for becoming present to inner rhythms, expressions, and connections in a crowd and manifesting performance out of the moment.

A workshop laboratory setting where we create points of departure in an internal setting then go out to the city, village, mall or field and interact with the general public.

Harvesting Chaos cultivates a set of internal disciplines as guide posts to sustain improvisation and evolve the moment of spontaneous performance. It activates frames relating to stillness, absurdity, timeshifting, objects, history, archetypes and illusions.

Participants will engage in butoh and clown exercises and create personas to engage each other as well as the general public in the street. We will witness and comment on our strategies of engagement and create a laboratory setting for reflection.

The workshop will culminate with an intervention in a nearby public locale.