Dungeons & Dragons: no longer the sole province of chubby basement-dwellers. On Saturday, a group of adventurous paladins, wizards, and half-elf rangers gathered in a Crown Heights arts space to play the game while meticulously executing difficult poses like “Opening Door,” “Sword One,” and “Dice Rolling.”
This was D&D Yoga, an event borne out of a desire to add a “guided narrative” to the traditional practice, according to its creator, artist Scott Wayne Indiana. See it in action, set to some appropriately chilled-out ambient music, in the video below.
Led by both a yoga instructor as well as a Dungeon Master, players performed poses that were guided by the action happening in the role-playing game. “Entirely new yoga moves were invented for D&D Yoga to interpret the action,” Indiana told ANIMAL via email. “Sarah (Dahnke, the yoga leader) was also prepared to create new moves if a turn of events dictated the need for it. D&D Yoga Riffing if you will.”
To simplify things, participants jointly inhabited a single character, who Indiana describes as “a roguish rugged individual who has run afoul of the local law.” Your task? To deliver a package to an ancient, wooded temple, “and leave it in its proper place.”
Sound like your kind of thing? The group is considering meeting more regularly, and Indiana is interested in branching out to different locations. Next time, the game will be even more interactive, according to Indiana: “we will be bringing more decision-making, dice rolls, and player discussions into the whole thing.”
