Jeroen Peeters & Martin Nachbar
Backtracking - a workshop in physical dramaturgy

Backtracking - A workshop in physical dramaturgy Dramaturgy’s "what and how" are to be invented anew with each creative process, though the accumulation of experience may very well provide a multiple springboard for sharing knowledge within the field. Informed by their longstanding collaboration, choreographer Martin Nachbar and dramaturge Jeroen Peeters will lead a coaching project centred around "physical dramaturgy". Physical dramaturgy seeks to explore and exhaust the realm of meaning triggered by moving bodies on stage: it insists on analysing one’s own practice and stimulating an awareness of the underpinnings and contexts of one’s work. Physical dramaturgy embraces an ethics of collaboration and regards practice and theory, research and making, movement and reflection as imbricated activities: as an oscillating in-between space it may become a discursive site, a place that enables a critical understanding of time, space, perception, and the production of meaning. Physical dramaturgy entails a set of methods and strategies, such as: creating containers of collected materials; post-it sessions; walking around a conceptual scene; writing exercises; putting discourse to a literal and physical test; exhaustive reading of bodies wrapped in choreography; shifting awareness toward intention, physical precision, conceptual clarity or urgency; enquiring into the specificity of formats such as "task", "operation", "training" and even "research" itself. Jeroen Peeters Jeroen Peeters (Brussels) is active as a writer, dramaturge, performer and curator. Trained in art history and philosophy, he publishes on dance and performance in various specialised media, including Contact Quarterly, corpus, Dance Theatre Journal, Etcetera, Maska, Mouvement and TM. Together with Myriam Van Imschoot, Peeters directs Sarma, a discursive working place for criticism, dramaturgy, research and creation in the field of dance and beyond (www.sarma.be). As dramaturge, artistic collaborator and performer, Peeters has contributed to performances and research projects of amongst others Milli Bitterli, deufert + plischke, Sabina Holzer, Anne Juren, Thomas Lehmen, Vera Mantero, Martin Nachbar, Lisa Nelson, Meg Stuart and Superamas. Martin Nachbar Martin Nachbar (Berlin) is dancer, performer and choreographer. Occassionally, he also writes for various European dance and theatre magazines such as: etcetera (Brussels), Dance Theatre Journal (London), ballettanz (Berlin). He trained at the School for New Dance Development (Amsterdam), in New York City and at PARTS (Brussels). Nachbar collaborated in different functions with artists of different fields: Thomas Plischke, Alice Chauchat, Vera Mantero, Les Ballets C. de la B., Meg Stuart, Thomas Lehmen, Benjamin Schweitzer, Joachim Schlömer, Carlos Pez, Martine Pisani, Paul Hendrikse a.o. He has been making work and teaching in various contexts in Europe and overseas.