Acro at The Center SF: Explorations with Kadir

The word ""acro"" comes from the Greek word ""akros,"" which means ""tip end, extreme, outermost."" In the context of movement, acro refers to the extremities of the body that we use to interact with the world as well as guiding and experiencing the physics of our interactions.

This gathering is an invitation to explore your acros, not just your arms and legs, but parts of your body that you can use to interact with the world around you. We will focus on the moments where our acros make contact with the ground, walls, rigid and non-rigid objects, and other fellow human beings. We will look for these contact moments and points as opportunities to create supports and build relationships.

We will take a physics-based approach to partnering, using the principles of balance, leverage, and momentum to create free-form expressions of movement. This exploration is most useful for those who want to expand upon their acroyoga, contact improvisation and partnered-dance practice to entertain perspectives that are beyond form, shape, skill and domain knowledge.

This physics-based exploration of acro can benefit any mover and partner-mover except those who can levitate or form a force field to interact with the world around them.

The first event – Acro Foundations – is more focused towards free form physics explorations by using sticks, balls, ropes and various objects to gain awareness on how to organize our bodies to build supports and find movements that are outside learned forms, styles and movement habits.

Building upon the Acro Foundations, the second event – Acro Explorations – is more focused towards exploring ways to organize our body in relationship with a partner or multiple partners.

The Foundations and the Explorations are independent of each other so one can choose to attend one or the other or both.

Participants can join the events solo or partnered. They are free to stay solo or partnered, or change partners during the class or form groups of more than two bodies.

Kadir has had an unconventional history of training in acro.

Kadir's acro practice began 15 years ago when he met his first acro partner in 2008, a Japanese humanoid robot called CB2, also known as the world's creepiest robot. Kadir was tasked with developing software so that the robot could get up from the ground when a human partner pulled it by its arms, and balance with them. Part of this work, Kadir ended up writing source code for acro before he knew anything about acro.

Kadir continued to babysit robots in grad school by helping another robot, iCub, to physically interact with the environment to discover the physics and action possibilities in relationship with the objects and human partners.

In 2015, Kadir co-organized a 3-day yoga festival on the college campus with over 1,000 participants. There were no acro classes in Turkey at the time, so Kadir ended up teaching a series of acro workshops before he took any acro classes himself.

Kadir was born in Istanbul, the beautiful city that gave San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge its name. In 2016, he immigrated to SF and helped facilitate 2000 person-hours of acro classes at the Aerial Artique, SF Pole & Dance, Bay JiuJitsu, Yoga Tree, Yogaworks, and Golden Gate Park with his biggest support and partner, Sandi Ma.

In the last 5 years, Kadir has been offered scholarships to train with Axis Dance Company and Pilobolus Dance Company as he continued his search for an acro practice that is equally accessible for people of all minds and all bodies.

Kadir is very grateful for the Center’s invitation to share his practice with the community.

If you are interested in volunteering to assist with this event in exchange for a ticket please fill out this form.

**no refunds or exchanges are available for this event - you can sell or gift your ticket to a friend**

Host or Publisher The Center SF