devised project

POLITICAL MOVEMENT

double bill

Creators and performers:

Zhenyan Ding (China), Elar Vahter (Estonia), Leah Gayer (Germany / Great Britain), Edward Skaines (Australia), Maarja Tosin (Estonia), Jeson Joy (India), Clarisse Degeneffe (Belgium), Daniel Ortiz Amézquita (Colombia), Ana Trif (Romania), Charis Tapin (Great Britain), Avery Gerhardt (USA), Juuli Hyttinen (Finland), Dita Lūriņa (Latvia), Anette Pärn (Estonia), Oskar Moore (Latvia), Maria Papachristodoulou (Greece).

Premiere
23.01.2026
EAMT black box

POLITICAL MOVEMENT is a double bill devised performance presented by the MA in Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM) at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EAMT), marking the culmination of the second term.

It brings together two original ensemble works collaboratively created by the 16 CPPM students. Rather than solo statements, these performances emerge from a collective creative process where each artist contributes to a shared vision while asserting the full expression of their own physical language. The result is a layered physical dimension: a co-created space in which individual voices and bodies coexist, clash, and resonate.

Working within the curatorial frame POLITICAL MOVEMENT, the artists have been invited to explore the relationship between movement and politics, both in the social sense and in the physical. The performances reflect on the nature of political movements: how they form, gain force, divide, unite, and leave an impact. At the same time, they ask how physical movement itself can carry political meaning. What does it mean for a body to take space, to resist, to collapse, to reach, to follow, to lead?

These works are not the embodiment of a single artist’s vision, but living processes – bold, physical, and exploratory. They are open arenas for creative debate, alliance, and confrontation. Each group was self-formed by the students and has devised, tested, and restructured their performances through rigorous collaboration, moving through clearly defined stages of creation. The process has been informed and challenged by the input of CPPM guest artists and tutors. The creative task has not only been to make work, but to make work together – to listen, respond, adapt, and cohere across difference.

The performances respond to the urgencies of our time: grappling with personal and collective struggles, structures of power, invisible systems, and inherited legacies. They do not claim to offer answers, but rather to ask: How do we move through the world? What moves us? And can the way we move together be political in itself?