The next intake of the MA in Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM) at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EAMT) is confirmed. Applications open on 15 January 2027 and close on 1 June 2027. The new cohort begins in Tallinn in January 2028 and graduates in January 2030. Two years. If you have been waiting for the moment to apply, this is it. Start getting ready now.

The dates for CPPM applications 2027 are set, and the whole year is laid out in front of you. So there is time to prepare a strong application, time to see the current cohort’s work, and time to meet the programme before you commit two years to it.

CPPM applications 2027: four dates to put in your calendar

• 15 January 2027Applications open.
• 1 June 2027Application deadline.
• July and August 2027Auditions. The format, the places and the timetable will be announced in January 2027.
• January 2028Studies begin in Tallinn. The two years end in January 2030.

Everything about the application and the audition process is on the Apply page, including the documents you need and how the scholarships work. Read it early. Then January is for sending, not for starting.

What the application asks for, and what the audition looks like

The process has two steps. First the application, submitted online, which is where you tell us who you are as an artist. It asks for a CV, a portfolio of your work as links, two references and a ten-minute self-tape: who you are, why you are applying and why now, and which artistic questions you want to spend two years on. You need an undergraduate degree, ideally in the performing arts, or a significant portfolio of practice in its place, and English at B2 level or above. The portfolio carries real weight in the selection, so it is wise to start building it, and preparing for the audition, well before January.

Then the audition. Selected applicants are invited to two full days of practical exercises, creative assignments, written tasks and an interview. Auditions are held in person and online, and the two formats are equally valid. Detailed preparation guidelines go to every invited candidate at least two weeks before their audition. These are the current requirements, as published on the Apply page. Additional information will be published there on 15 January 2027.

A young programme, a fourth cohort

CPPM is a young course. It took its first students in 2019, so the cohort that starts in January 2028 will be its fourth. In that short time it has earned the kind of standing that usually takes decades. The artists who teach here keep coming back: seven of them have returned three times, and companies such as Gecko, Troubleyn, Ultima Vez and DV8 have taught more than one cohort. Its 23 graduates so far have won five national awards between them, in Estonia, Latvia and Spain.

Who comes to CPPM

Three cohorts have studied on CPPM so far, 47 students in all, and they came from 23 countries on six continents, from Estonia and Latvia to Colombia, India, China, Ghana and Australia. Applications have come from 29 nationalities. The youngest student started at 22 and the oldest at 47, and the room has never been one profession. Actors sit next to dancers and choreographers, circus artists next to musicians and playwrights, and some arrived from architecture, semiotics, psychology or literature with a strong practice and no performing-arts degree. That mix is deliberate. It is what the work is made from.

A curated master’s, built from intensive workshops

CPPM is a two-year, English-taught MA in physical performance making, full-time and taught in intensive blocks. It is a curated programme. Instead of one resident faculty, the course is built from intensive workshops led by the artists and companies who shaped the field. They come to Tallinn and work with the cohort for one, two or more weeks at a time, on the studio floor, every day. Over the two years a cohort meets, trains and makes work with more than twenty internationally recognised companies and artists. In 2025 alone, fifteen guest processes came to one cohort of sixteen students.

Over the years the cohorts have trained with Lloyd Newson (DV8 Physical Theatre), Wim Vandekeybus (Ultima Vez) and Guillermo Gómez-Peña (La Pocha Nostra). They have also worked with companies such as the Marina Abramović Institute, Gecko and SITI Company, among many others. The guest artists for the 2028-30 cohort will be published on this website in January 2027. Until then, you can see who is teaching the current cohort on the Teaching Team page.

Train with the artists who made the field. Make the work that makes yours.

Those two sentences are the whole philosophy. CPPM is a maker’s course, not an interpreter’s. The body is the starting point of everything, and the question the programme asks every day is what you are going to make with it. Students work across the major lineages of physical performance, learning each one first-hand from the people who shaped it. Then they make their own work in every semester: solos, duets and ensemble pieces that are shown to a public audience.

The programme is intense by design. Teaching runs in concentrated Monday to Saturday blocks with independent-study gaps between them. That is how a working artist can keep a practice and a career running underneath the degree. Since 2021 the two years have ended with the cohort’s own festival, where the graduates premiere finished, publicly staged productions. Tuition fees for the 2028-30 cohort and the scholarships, which are awarded every year, are published on the Course Detail page.

Spring 2027: the current cohort graduates at CPPM Manifestal

Meanwhile, before the new cohort arrives, the current one finishes. The sixteen students of the 2025-27 cohort complete their studies in spring 2027 at CPPM Manifestal, the festival of the cohort’s original productions. It will be the third edition, after 2021 and 2024. It is also the best possible preview of what two years on CPPM lead to. If you are thinking of applying, come and see it. Meet the current students, and see where the alumni have taken their work since graduating.

What to do now

First, read the Apply page, where everything about CPPM applications 2027 will be kept up to date. Put the four dates in your calendar. Start building your portfolio now, because it is the heart of the application, and think about what you would say in ten minutes to camera. Follow the CPPM news page and @mastersincppm on Instagram, because the audition timetable and the 2028-30 guest artists will be announced there in January. Watch the current cohort’s work in Tallinn this season and at Manifestal in spring 2027. And start thinking about the work you want to make. The auditions look for creativity, artistic stamina and the ability to play in a group. All three can be practised now.

1 June 2027 is closer than it looks. Get ready.

Read how to apply →

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