Professional Certified Performance Training
The Body and Performance provides performers with intensive in-studio training, mentorship through independent projects and public showcasing. This is for actors and dancers who wish to create their own work and expand the aesthetics of the body in performance. 2025 - 26 training takes place at the beautiful Moving Parts Shala in the stunning and tranquil jungle of North Goa, 10 minutes from gorgeous beaches.
Our professional physical performance training is taught through classes and creative process that works towards performance. Students are supported through devising and choreographing their own work with a 'whole person' approach which enables a learning journey that's exploding with revelation and joy!
The Body and Performance course is a rigorous, multi-disciplinary training that combines physical theatre, voice, contemporary dance, therapeutic movement, choreography and devising to equip performers with a rounded set of skills and abilities. We believe in the creativity of performers to make their own work and the powerful, radical, life changing potential of theatre and dance to enliven, enrich, provoke and transform society.
JUMP IN FOR A SERIES OF CLASSES, ONE MONTH, OR MORE...
Taught in association with Embodied Poetics.
* Intensive full-time in-person teaching taught over 4 'parts'
* Person-centred training with individual attention, group sharing and support
* Mentored individual projects and final presentation
* Certification and public showcasing
* Collaborative artistic link between India, UK and EU institutions.
Every week students create and present back to the group and faculty: this is a space to experiment, test ideas, fail in a safe nurturing space, find your artistic voice and fly...
This course is taught through a series of intensive masterclasses, regular scheduled classes, and mentored creative and rehearsal processes.
3rd December 2025 - 28th March 2026
The Body and Performance Course
Part One 3 - 23 December 2025
In this intensive 20-day foundation in physical theatre and contemporary dance, students develop the essential technical, creative and ensemble skills that underpin Lecoq-inspired physical theatre performance. Training introduces the core languages of physical storytelling alongside contemporary dance principles such as groundedness, momentum, spirals and dynamic shifts.
Participants explore embodiment, poetic imagery, improvisation scores, and the Laban cube to expand physical imagination and movement analysis, while foundational floorwork builds softness, efficiency, directional awareness and a confident relationship with the ground.
Selected Lecoq “20 Movements” support precision, coordination and expressive clarity, and students learn how to shape meaning through compositional structures, emotional phrasing, rhythm, and physical rupture or “breaking points,” supported by voice work that integrates breath, resonance and movement.
A strong emphasis on ensemble practice guides each participant in becoming responsive, adaptable and collaborative performers capable of co-creating original work. Through contemporary improvisation strategies, shared weight exploration, devising tasks and essentialising techniques, the cohort learns to generate material collectively and construct poetic images, atmospheres, character and narratives. The challenge of crafting epic landscapes within small spaces further develops group imagination, spatial intelligence and compositional awareness.
The month culminates in Performance One: Ensemble
on 23 December 2025, at the Moving Parts Shala, Arambol
Part Two 5th - 30th January 2026
This four week intensive deepens participants’ creative, theatrical, dance and choreographic capabilities through an exploration of epic and tragic worlds, the journey of the Neutral Mask, and the archetypal structure of the hero’s journey.
The group works with imaginative frameworks such as “seeing the world through a dark mirror” to generate creative writing, character material and embodied 3D devising skills that bring atmosphere and landscapes alive, while learning to construct conflict and dramatic tension with clarity in the space.
Lecoq-informed ensemble principles are expanded through the study of the Tragic Chorus, spatial counterpoint, push and pull dynamcis and the transformation of still images, particularly paintings, into dynamic three-dimensional movement sequences.
Contemporary dance approaches to choreography from inner awareness help refine presence, initiation, emotional texture and embodied intention. Alongside this, focused work on monologues and vocal technique strengthens expressive range and dramatic articulation.
This part culminates in
Performance Two: Epic Story and Landscapes
on January 30th 2026
Part Three 12th Feb - 14 March 2026
Part Three bursts into the wild, ridiculous and joyfully high-energy comic territories of the Body and Performance course (12 February – 14 March). Students dive into the spirited world of Commedia dell’arte, discovering how stock characters, masks and exaggerated physicality ignite bold storytelling. This flows into the profound and vulnerable craft of clown, where performers learn to fail brilliantly, connect honestly with an audience and reveal the humour at the heart of human fragility. The work is supported by expanded devising and choreography skills, acrobatics for creative play, duologue scene work, and deeper vocal exploration to develop a rich range of comic characters and dynamic partnerships.The month blends theatrical comedy with the physical elasticity of acrobatics and Contact Improvisation, pushing performers into new dimensions of timing, risk, rhythm and imaginative responsiveness. Students build sharper physical precision, craft choreography drawn from their own playful worlds and develop ensemble structures that celebrate chaos, surprise and joy.
A wild night of Comic performance and Choreography concluded Part Three on 14 March
Part four Mentored Projects 16 - 28 March
From 16–28 March, the training shifts into a highly personalised and artist-led phase in which participants develop their own ideas using the full creative toolkit they’ve built across the course. This period emphasises self-direction, artistic agency and deep creative inquiry, supported by a lighter daily schedule and focused mentorship. Students draw on the devising methods, choreography tools, ensemble strategies and theatrical languages they’ve learned so far, using them to shape work that is entirely their own—whether rooted in movement, image, text, character or atmosphere. Through structured guidance and regular feedback, each participant refines their artistic vision into a coherent performance piece.
An experimental and rich performance will land
in and around the Moving Parts Shala,
Arambol on 28th March 2026.
Well worth watching!
Transformative artistic experience
World class theatre and dance ten minutes from the beach!
Magical beginnings... welcoming students
"I was truly blown away. The most intense and powerful experience of my life. As a professional, I can say I wasn't even walking before. I can now think with my body. The faculty is just amazing - everyone is accepted. They help us be ourselves."
VARUN KAPOOR, 2022
"I AM SO ALIVE:
SHINING WITH ALIVENESS!"
EVY GLYPTI , 2022
"I'm so hungry to continue. This course makes you ravenous to learn. So many lightbulbs have gone off. I feel my presence growing, honestly I'm so full and hungry at the same time. I'm amazed every day!"
ISHA SHARMA, 2022
"Classes are transcendental and shapeshifting."
2022 dancer-creator, Pushyank Nahar
This course is for actors and dancers who wish to create their own work and are able to work in a professional and disciplined environment, are willing to push themselves and have open hearts. The course is packed with a variety of movement and physical theatre-based disciplines to expand the creator-performer's repertoire. There is a rigorous selection process with two rounds of application to ensure that the international group that journey's together for three months, is of the skill and mindset to excel.
We have a playful approach to taking our work and learning seriously. We also expect commitment, discipline, professionalism and most of all willingness to be challenged to open new frameworks of thinking, doing and creating. This course is as much about how performers live and work with others, as it is about building skill and techniques.
Please read the detailed programme overview from the 2022 programme below. In the meantime, please send any questions to movingparts.india@gmail.com
We look forward to meeting you. Big courageous and warm hugs to all you brave artists, choosing this path...
Testimonies from our 4 month training 2022-23
Facilitator Training
We are offering tailor-made training in facilitation for performers who want to learn the art of guiding others. This is for performers who have completed training already and want to focus developing skills that enable leadership of classes, workshops, training and/or creative processes.
We share our teaching methodology, the values and approach that enable participants to learn-by-discovery, share the exercises and learning objectives that make up each of our training modules and dig in to the unique qualities of the practitioners who undertake this training.
Performer-facilitators will develop skills for holding space, shaping learning journeys, facilitating enquiry and generating focussed atmosphere. Specific training content includes (but is not limited to):
Developing an available, neutral body
The neutral mask & movement analysis
Somatic & anatomical knowledge
Voice & breath
Approaches to text
Building ensemble
Expressive body
Poetic body
Playful body
Artistic body
Connecting body, breath, emotions and text
Understanding space, time, image, rhythm, build, narrative
Teaching Laban and Viewpoints for actors and dancers
Teaching tragic territories
Teaching comic territories
Unleashing creativity
Teaching devising & choreography
Pedagogical principles are shared and explored, including: quality of presence, challenge, explanation, modelling, deliberate practice, questioning, and feedback. Other key principles taught and practiced are: inclusion, motivation, quality assurance, expectations, consistency & transparency, innovative approaches. How to consistently create a safe and brave space in which people are willing and happy to take risks.
This is taught through a combination of participating in the Body and Performance training, planning and facilitating sessions, personalised mentorship, reflection exercises and written tasks. Personalised feedback is given to enable each facilitator to develop skills that play to their strengths.
We are offering 3 places for this opportunity only. Please fill out the registration form explaining why you are interested in this. You will then be sent an application form. Please email movingpartsindia@gmail.com if you have any questions.
Professional artistic residency
One month studio space and mentorship
Test your ideas!
This is a professional development opportunity for physical performer-creators who want to experiment.
We provide space, mentorship, the opportunity to try ideas with other artists accepted on the programme as well as our ensemble members.
Performers would spend time developing their ideas, support the development of others' ideas also, or work solo. This is a supportive collaborative space - applicants need both performance skill and strong creative impulses.
Successful candidates will work with members of faculty, and be provided studio space, mentorship, feedback and invited audiences. We are looking for clear, innovative and bold ideas that will benefit from this incubation space.
Performers can shape their experience with a combination of classes, studio time, wrap around offerings: sauna, myofascial release, massage therapy, personal therapy, sharing circles... as you wish!
Places are limited and offered on the strength of the ideas presented and the proven ability to hold creative space, work professionally and collaborate well. All ideas will be showcased for an invited audience and filmed. NB this is low tech space so concepts should take this into account.
Feedback is also facilitated by the audience and students of The Body and Performance course.
Trainings in 2020 & 2021 run by this team
One week intensive
One month residency
Body & Performance 3 month intensive 2022
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4: public sharing
Month 2: Tragedy & Melodrama
Week 8: public sharing
Month 3: Comedy & Choreography
Final sharing and Graduation
