BRUNO CAVERNA

PLAY FIGHT & LIQUID BODY

The Process

The classes are built on are premises that being born on the gravitational field of our planet will inevitably generate fear-reactivity and an accumulation of unnecessary tensions of all sorts stored in the bodies. Along the growing up process, external pressures and challenges from society, educational system, family and so on, will inevitably be added into the construction of personal narratives, potentially further compromising a sense of connectedness. Play-Flight Practice brings awareness into the unconscious resistances towards gravity and the implications of the universal fear of falling on every facet of human expression. Tensions and adversities are necessary frictions to spark evolution but when stagnated and repressed in the body-mind system, it becomes a traumatic event, the source for a myriad of dysfunctionalities. The physical exercises, orientated in playfulness, focus on recognizing, acknowledging and recycling those harmful lifelong accumulation of tensions and stored blockages into a self-empowerment cultivation. Ultimately, the practice stimulates self-honesty and the embodiment of non-resistance, rescuing flow and a sense of unbroken wholeness as our original state of being.

Philosophy

Play-Fight practice is a deep excavation into the nature of our human existential condition, interweaving the inherent life polarities like a symphonic interplay between confrontation and cooperation, form and formlessness, presence and absence. On a biological perspective, life can be regarded as an unavoidable relational play-fight dynamics that takes place uninterruptedly within ourselves from moment to moment as well as at each interaction in our surroundings. The cooperative aspect of the practice ensures that individual’s integrity is imperative. On the confrontational side, the practice has the potential to reflect each other’s blind spots and to expose concealed unconscious resistances and self-deceptive mechanisms, like a ruthless mirror that can potentially reveal the delusory myth of our acquired identities.

Origins

The roots of Play-Fight Practice goes back in 1995 when Bruno Caverna was heading a Capoeira project for patients of a public psychiatric hospital in Rio de Janeiro in collaboration with Luiz Cantador. From the very beginning, the classes were characterized by a deconstructive approach, questioning the dysfunctional aspects of the more conventional Capoeira methodologies at that time. Along its evolutionary teaching process, Bruno would organically integrate principles and knowledge from his experiences in various disciplines such as Physiotherapy, Psychology, Contact-Improvisation, Pushing-Hands, Contemporary Dance, Somatics, Russian Systema, Watsu, Biotensegrity and more recently Freediving.

The label Play-Fight coalesced and took shape only in 2012, though, when Bruno traced back his teaching trajectory and realized that the practice could no longer fit into any known category. The chosen name was a way to acknowledge its Capoeira foundation, while at the same time honoring the extrapolative territory that would most coherently represent the essence of an ever-evolving holistic practice.

EXPLORATORY GUIDELINES

State of play
Anatomy of flow
Falling as state of being
Gravity practice
Falling-up technique
Non-resistance embodiment
Recycling stored tensions
Interplay confrontation vs. cooperation
Principles of effortless motion
Functional fluidity
Soft-power craft
Degrees of connectivity
Evolutionary biomechanics
Out of the comfortable zone
Riding through the unknown

Bruno Caverna will be teaching during April & for the WOMB festival.

BIO

BRUNO CAVERNA

Formless Arts Founder

Originally from Rio de Janeiro Bruno started practicing a vast array of physical practices at the age of 8, such as capoeira, contact-improvisation, contemporary dance, acrobatics, watsu, taiji, qi-gong and systema. Through his autodidactic nature, Bruno has been extensively researching ways of integrating elements of these diverse movement practices into a more expansive somatic understanding and training method (for dancers, movement practitioners and anyone seeking a path towards reconnecting with their body knowledge). During his journey, Bruno has been deeply fascinated by the mysterious ways water behaves and flows in its natural environment; the water studies next to the education in watsu have become a fluid compass for his life navigation, leading him to develop Liquid Body, the foundation of his movement practice. Since 1994 until now Bruno has been teaching/sharing passionately and tirelessly his life experiences with people from all walks of life in more than 30 countries. He authored Formless Arts, an umbrella and philosophical core for Play-Fight and Liquid Body practices, results of a vision that questions our crystallized concepts, while at the same time interweaving a multitude of disciplines and tribes through a common thread.