BODYDRIVERS method by Konstantin Grouss

ARTISTIC PROJECTS

Managing potential and kinetics of the body

by Konstantin Grouss

BODYDRIVERS® method

"Dance is a manifestation of life, its energy, its cyclic nature, the clarity of its intentions, and its uniqueness in every moment. Become aware in the moment, and you will understand that dance cannot be started or finished; it simply exists, without a beginning and without an end. It is life itself!"

it's important ...▷

By knowing the limited, we discover more about the boundless.

BODYDRIVERS ®

Mastery over the body and space
Trust in intuition
Elegance and precision in movement
Integration of body memory and body intelligence into everyday life

The practice organizing the body on four levels:

1. Physical
2. Mental
3. Energetic
4. Emotional

All four levels work simultaneously and integratively. The technique allows us to focus our attention on various aspects through a dialogue with our body, attention to small details, analysis, and the development of a comprehensive approach to the body as a tool for life. The practice of these sessions is directed towards obtaining keys to one's own body on all levels.

FOR WHOM

This class is for someone who wishes to...

To Obtain

For those who wish to obtain strength and inspiration to embark on new endeavors or continue long-delayed ones through the integration and enhancement of concentration, attention to unexplored or forgotten aspects of the body, gaining access to sources of energy, and creating new neural connections

To Feel

For those who want to feel their body light on the rise, free in movement, and precise in executing every action.

To Master

For those who wish to master what nature has bestowed upon them, capable of unlocking this potential and gaining maximum opportunities for their own realization.

To Overcome

For those who have experience in dance, yoga, qigong, and other forms of physical practices, to conduct a more detailed analysis of their own experience, overcome potential developmental crises, and gain new keys to the mysteries of their body."

To Know

For those who are not ready to stop and know that every moment can bring a brilliant solution, a new turn in life, and reveal all its magnificence. For those whose task is to be prepared to see it, to accept from life everything they need, and to let go of everything that creates annoying obstacles along the way.

Do it first :)

group and individual tranings

Curiosity about life in all its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

FEEDBACK OF PARTICIPANT

Reality has exceeded all my expectations. I had imagined a class on expressive movement somewhat differently. Such events were foreign to me; in my youth, my companions were wrestling, boxing, and weightlifting. It's amusing how, after experiences like those, I found myself in a plasticity class. No need to grapple with anyone, twist joints when you can engage in free movement without causing harm to an opponent. It brings people closer, allows them to be more flexible, smoother, and united in a single movement. The closed-off, constrained, and divided mindset and body that often dominated our daily lives vanished without a trace.

Our bodies seemed to anticipate this moment of releasing pent-up energy, longing for free movement, expression, and grace. Movements emerged from the depths of our unconscious and manifested in the external world, taking on shape, rhythm, and tempo. Sound vibrations filled the space, resonated, and bounced off the walls. When interacting with the entire group, a sense of unity arose. The impulse initiated by one person passed through the others. As the tempo increased, the collective consciousness in action danced as one.

From the outside, it may have looked like complete madness, but when I let go of those thoughts, I continued the process. Upon completion, we were entirely different, more open, sincere, and liberated.

Denis

Participant of the class

I enter the classroom for the plasticity class. The class is located on the 3rd floor of Parq, and the white walls are adorned with bold and definitive black strokes of symbols and lines - paint on the walls, curtains, and canvases. The glaring spotlights blind me. The air carries a coolness from the recently turned-off air conditioner. In the space, I sense a concentrated collective attention focused on what Konstantin is about to unfold. I bear witness to a powerful act of love, creation, and life. Without attention, extraction is impossible. Two inseparable elements, the foundation of life.

Hungry empty vessels - the perfect place to extract what you have. About 30 empty vessels have gathered in the class. I quietly join them.

We, like children, begin to acquaint ourselves with our bodies - there are hands, legs, fingers, pelvis, shoulder blades, head - what are these, what are they for, and what can they do. Then the body's axis, balance. Then we transform into dancing snowmen. Then we merge with the floor - the boundaries between body and floor blur. Then we become constellations - vast, containing countless stars, giving birth to them and dispersing them. Constellations breathe and pulsate into infinity, residing in their galactic power. Then we become something headless, only transmitting impulses. A swarm of extraterrestrial beings bursts into the room, continuing each other's movements. Everything blends together, boundaries disappear again. We swim in space like dissolved sugar in water. Sound emerges. Our bodies start to resonate, and the sounds are otherworldly. More accurately, they are human but rare to encounter someone who sounds like that in everyday life. There were intermittent cries, imploring shouts, surprised exclaims, indignant mutterings, squeaking noises... Unexpected but exceedingly natural. Of course, it's natural because, after all, "In the beginning was the Word"! Everything is initially sound. And it manifested through our bodies and their movements. This sound provided new impulses for the movements of our bodies. It was an endless dance of Freedom.

Yesterday's plasticity class once again immersed me in my body, and it began to live its life separately from my head. It turns out that the body and the head are entirely different things, and they have different consciousness. The body without the head is infinitely beautiful and organic; it merges and interacts with all surrounding objects according to the laws of energy flow. Tantra occurs. And it looks like a dance. The most beautiful dance is the dance without the head, a tantric dance.
💃✨

Inga Egorova

Participant of the class

The room, seemingly large for our small group, quickly felt crowded within an hour. We filled it with life, touches, and sound. Our movement discharged the oxygen, like an explosion. It was hot.

The body hummed, breathed, and with every cell, it said, "Thank you." I felt my muscles becoming warm and supple. I smoothly flowed through the space, creating a picture with my own body.

The master, like an autumn leaf, glided among us, figures in an ecstatic dance, without touching, effortlessly, invisibly, almost inaudibly because his words immediately penetrated the consciousness and were absorbed by grateful bodies.
Use gravity as your assistant. Isolate your centers; let them move separately. Feel it.

Maria

participant of the class

Unconsciously mimicking a curious little girl in a strawberry dress, I, a curious adult in jeans and a modest t-shirt, stood high on a chair, balancing on one leg. My left hand leaned on a crutch, and my right hand held a phone, capturing the captivating bacchanalia.

Nearly four dozen beautifully human forms filled the vast white space with their energy. A smile never left my face; it became evident due to the dryness of my front teeth and the slight discomfort in my cheeks from prolonged tension. I felt the beauty of this life in the white light, right in the middle of my parted chest. It was happiness.

Yes, I couldn't channel my emotions into dance in the usual and vibrant way, hindered by my Achilles' heel. But I could keenly observe every gesture, curve, sweep, and gaze with a discerning eye. I passionately absorbed and felt the subtle interactions of beautiful souls. And this sincere "now" took me away from time, worries, and anxieties.

Simply people. Simple happiness. Authenticity. Freedom. Life.

Ilona

Participant of the class

artist / choreographer / author of BodyDrivers method based on more then 30 years of artistic and yoga practice

konstantin grouss

The creator of numerous performances, festivals, and artistic events in the fields of dance, theater, and contemporary art, with a focus at the intersection of choreography and visual arts principles.

Personal artistic works have been showcased at festivals and exhibitions in Stockholm, Vienna, Basel, Pisa, Washington, New York, Brussels, Tallinn, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, Norilsk, and Lviv.

A recipient of the danceWeb program scholarship for contemporary dance and choreography in Vienna, Austria, and a resident of the ICR (International Choreographers In Residence) program at the ADF festival. Also, a resident of the SPACE program in Dublin, Ireland, and the OMI Arts Center in New York, USA.

Collaborated with various theater choreographers and directors, including Gennadiy Abramov, Shusaku Takeuchi (Netherlands), Yuriy Urnov, Valeriy Fokin, Tatyana Grindenko, Kirill Serebryannikov, Efva Lilja (Sweden), and Maida Withers (USA).

Throughout the artistic practice, incorporates various yoga and meditation techniques, seamlessly integrating these practices into everyday training.

In the first part of the class, we delve into a holistic approach to working with the body, focusing on anatomy, warm-up, muscle elongation, and the practice of ergonomic and unrestricted movement.

In the second part of the class, we concentrate on movement, emphasizing technique, the integration of the body and space, working with mental imagery, emotions, compositional techniques, and unlocking one's own potential and individual characteristics.

Details

HOW THE CLASS WORKS

Throughout the class, we explore how to create a dance from every movement and how to imbue each movement with meaning. We unlock the keys to our own bodies along with techniques for their skillful use.
We use the class as a tool to heighten awareness, to perceive the patterns in both external and internal rhythms, to release subtle energetic flows, and to craft our own personal dance
We work on methods to enhance and practically apply intuition, paying attention to anatomy, practicing ergonomic movement, and working with mental imagery
We consolidate and reveal individual characteristics, elevating our own potentia
As a result, you achieve mastery over your body and space, develop trust in your intuition, attain elegance and precision in movement, and integrate the body's memory and intelligence into everyday life.

Video "Warm memories of the winter"

/fragment of the programme/
This is our joint project with Anna Toncheva, the musician, 'Warm Memories of Winter'. The first published fragment is set to music by Cesare Negri, a composer and choreographer from the 16th century. This will be followed by several more fragments recorded by us using authentic instruments of the time.
In addition to the stage programme, we also perform the BODYDRIVERS training which I have developed as part of my professional practice to unleash the potential of the body and free movement. In the joint training with Anna we address the topic of dance in its retrospective and organically connect it with the modern technique of movement. The result is an interesting composition. The footage for this video was shot by different cameramen at different times. My thanks to Sasha Fedorov (@bad.planet) for filming my class and to Lera Sabirova (@my.poetic.body) for organising it. Thank you to Lena Scheglova and Kirill Didenko for filming on stage and in the hall. Thank you to the beautiful Ester Lein (@lein.ester) for the costume for the dance! And, of course, thank you to the beloved space of the Creative Castle Guslitsa, where we performed and filmed everything!

Music - Cesare Negri
Lute - Anna Toncheva
Dance/Choreography - Konstantin Grouss
Costumes Dance - Ester Lein
Cameramen - Elena Sheglova, Alexander Fedorov, Kirill Didenko
Editing - Konstantin Grouss
Fragments of BODYDRIVERS class is used

Filmed at the GUSLITSA Creative Castle

"Warm memories of the winter"

/fragment of the programme/

Some more inspirations from participants

Dance makes people happy

Lera Sabirova
poet / performer
Feedback on Konstantin Grouss's class:
For me, as an artist with no professional training, it is very important to develop the possibilities of the body, which I actively use on stage, and in life. At the class, we worked with different focuses of attention in the body, movement and space, learned to draw with the body through movement and observe, as if from a distance, these drawings in space, invisible traces, lines that leave hands, feet, head, fingers... Here you can get surprised and enjoy your own movements, which with different focuses of attention blossom like exotic flowers.

For me it is a new level of attention, not only to hear the inner impulse to move, but also to see, to trace with attention its manifestation in space. It is not so simple, attention needs to be trained to cover both the physical and the non-physical at the same time, to feel both the breath and the beating of the real heart, and the movement of the invisible kilometre long tail, whose presence changes so much the style and character of my dance. It's a challenging but amazingly fascinating process! I am filled with inspiration from new discoveries, meeting unfamiliar sides of myself. And on top of all that, I've had a lot of fun communicating with my own body.
Camille Lubart
artist
For me dance is a continuous line; in graphics, painting, drawing, movement, music, breathing... It is this approach that is very valuable to me in Kosta Grouss's classes. I have been perceiving all visible and invisible processes of existence as a dance for a long time now. Like a breath of invisible presence. A total dance. That is why I do not divide the arts within myself: it is visual arts, it is poetry, it is music... No, it's all the same. In painting and graphics my daily dance practice helps me a lot - to understand line, form, fullness and emptiness, the richness of tone and colour. That's why Kosta Grouss's classes help me, and make me happy - precisely with the precision of my understanding.
Mikhail Kolesov
Film director / breakdancer
I was at a class of Konstantin, I really liked his methodology. In spirit, it is very close to me. The way he reveals the flow in the movement and organicity of each gesture in combination with the following, I was inspired not only to apply his method in dance, but also in everyday life! A huge thank you to him!
Maria Nanzat-Ool
singer
Kosta is an amazing person. A talented teacher who helps you find the "keys" to your movements; a magical performer who inspires you to dance; and a wonderful person with whom you can talk about any subject. After his classes I came closer to understanding the mechanics of my body. I recommend his dance classes to everyone and thank you for the experience!
Julia Hudolei
Amateur
Thank you for the immersion in the body. I studied choreography at a primary school for 7 years. And I wanted to continue the body and plastique classes. To learn facets of the dance world. The body has been asking to do it ever since. And that is what prompted the arrival of the Guslitsa - to visit the lesson of Konstantin Grouss. For a long time I've been dreaming to attend a lesson with the master. Sitting at home, followed the news from Guslitsa and saw, that classes have started in Guslitsa creative castle and this news prompted me to come back there. The plunge of attention into the body took place. Felt electricity begin to run and strengthen old neural connections and form new ones. Felt that I hadn't felt much before this moment. Slowing down, grounding. Turned out to be a Practice of self-love for me. Periods of mediation and dynamic practice. More aware of the movements now in normal life, this is what I noticed after the first two-hours class.
Alexander Blinov
performer / breakdancer
I had a very interesting master class from Konstantin. I liked the comparison of myself with space, and taking apart the skeleton by parts, drawing attention to certain parts of the body. He also explained what the flow is and we moved towards the shore like waves in the sea. Interesting work with space and awareness of oneself as an organism in space to melodic rhythms. For me as a non classical dancer it was very interesting to add to my baggage of knowledge. I look forward to the next class.
Katya Kanakhina
ceramic artist
Repeatedly contemplated the dance of Konstantin Grouss it fascinates and holds the attention at all 100! Very useful masterclass for my body, for basics of dance. By the way the whole next day after the transformation with the body continued: as if I did the usual things in a new way - with easy grace, in the flow of dance very naturally. A miracle! And it is only 2 hours of work with the body, which flew by unnoticed) clever leading and bright inspiring images in the explanations. I want more and will be!
Max Dorozhkin
artist
Thank you very much! Very interesting class! Listening more carefully to my inner and outer sensations, I was able to better understand the world, myself and my body. In general, to move, and dance in particular, became more joyful and interesting. Learned important subtleties. I would sign up for a class.

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BodyDrivers

Master-class, retreat. Managing the potential and kinetics of the body. Author of the method - Konstantin Grouss