Frey Faust
After receiving primary discipline and essential experiance under the tutelage of his mother from ages 8 to 15, Frey Faust went on to accumulate an eclectic skill-set including contact improvisation, pantomime, capoiera, aikido, percussion, voice and several modalities of dancing. He traveled across the US, and then to Europe to augment his own artistic study and practice through collaborations with choreographers such as Gina Buntz, Donald Byrd, Merce Cunningham, Nita Little, Ohad Naharin, Meredith Monk, Janet Panetta, David Parsons, Randy Warshaw and Stephen Petronio, to name a few. A two-year stint as artist in residence at the Werkstatt e.V. Duesseldorf (now the TANZ HAUS NRW) allowed him to set the foundation for his pedagogical and artistic vision. Since then he has traveled the world, teaching and collaborating with like-minded artists. He is the author of the book and the originator of the Axis Syllabus; a method for teaching movement, through which he aspires to assist his students to deepen their understanding and responsable use of nature's ingenious gift, the human body.
Besides ongoing research and re-writing his book in preparation for a second edition, he continues to find contexts for collaborative art-work, most recently with Mirva Makinen in "The Balance Project", Francesca Pedulla and Richard Adossou in "Two Among Us", and "No Compromise" with Anna Claudio Pedone.
motion evokes sensation, is connected to a state of mind, heart and spirit, whether remembered, current or projected. This is also why it is so important to nourish our muscular- emotional memories with meaningful informationand healthy sensations. In the case of artistic research, the limits can and will be explored. We will then have a tactical basis for calculating the risks when departing from the zone of physio-emotional safety. If we truly want choice and freedom of motion, we need to understand the limits that nature has set for our well being in order to know how to harness them to our purpose without destroying those same means.
Between 1985 and 2000, my teaching transformed from the ordinary attempt to transmit choreographic ideas to an interest in passing on safety parameters and biomechanical principles. Successes and failures inspired or goaded me to continue to study and try various transmission techniques. In the mid-nineties I decided on a title for my method, The Axis Syllabus. Syllabus means a kind of grammar or a list and Axis refers to the three dimensions, and also the points around which we turn. The axis implies direction while the planes imply mass and both indicate inertial and momentum mechanics and therefore physio-dynamics. We could call the AS the grammar of human physio-dynamics. My aspiration with this work is to develop clear criteria for a rational approach to training the body... the muscles work like this, the joints are more supportive in this relationship, this is how you construct a logical ramp, this is how you get the force of momentum on your side, these are the appropriate moments to breathe in or out. That is the how, but not the what; what kind of jump, what kind of gesture, etc. We share a similar model but we have different shapes and tonicities and these values alter the way we move.