Courses

Comprehensive Training Winter 2023 Natalie Yalon, Boris Rabey, Marjolein Baars, Catherine Delasalle, Claude Magne, Inbal Yalon / from 09 January 2023 to 31 March 2023 - Brussels Belgium

Comprehensive Training Winter 2023 Natalie Yalon, Boris Rabey, Marjolein Baars, Catherine Delasalle, Claude Magne, Inbal Yalon / from 09 January 2023 to 31 March 2023 - Brussels Belgium

Registration is now open for our Comprehensive Training : The power of presence January-March 2022.The course is structured as a series of 11 week sessions or intensives. Each intensive meets five times a week. Our classes are given mostly in French.

The training develops in a way such that the actor achieves ever-greater levels of psycho-physical awareness and sensitivity and, at the same time, deepening his practical knowledge of acting craft.
The course is aimed at artists in the performing arts who wish to improve their performance, and to renew the approach to their art. It focuses on the quest for a radiant and liberated stage presence in order to achieve a life that is deeply authentic, exhilarating and fascinating.
These training course offers an advanced technique derived from Michael Chekhov and Russian and American acting practices. Extremely simple, fast and efficient, it is based on the radiation of the presence, the receptivity and imagination of the body. It provides a magnetic performance featuring an impressive energetic force and variety ranging from tragedy to burlesque, from epic to realism.
By activating a continuous flow of acting, the memory of sensations and the investigation of a purely physical imagination, this technique allows the actor to achieve a high degree of psychic and emotional mobility in the lightness and joy of personal expenditure.
This approach, which is deeply sensitive, intuitive and playful, is based on the conscience and the full and sincere experience of the present via the imagination.

Content

1. Working on the physical instrument
Everything starts with the setting in motion of the body, since the moving body is what the public sees. The aim is to make the body as sensitive as possible in order to make it receptive to the subtle nuances of the person’s inner life, and able to express them.

The work is also based on vocal exploration, as this practice focuses on the body and its full range of expression.

Energy: This principle can be understood as the life force that animates the body. Mastery of its radiating power greatly increases the quality of the actor’s presence, making his/her acting magnetic.

Imagination: This element is essential, since all potential lies in the ability to imagine. It allows a person to cross over the threshold of everyday life and to explore the world of the creative artist.

Concentration: This awakens a more intense power than that exerted during everyday consciousness. This faculty helps develop the wonderful feeling of intense presence in the here and now.

Incorporation: This faculty, which derives from empathy, allows one to project oneself into an image and to become one with it; it therefore constitutes a key principle in transformation. It is based on the sharpening of receptivity and psychic mobility.

2. Working on the role : characterisation
This comprises learning about characterisation tools such as the imaginary body, imaginary centres, the psychological gesture and archetypes. These tools allow the actor to identify and understand who is playing the role, and to make the right choices when creating the character.

Practical details
Price: 2500€.
Contact and admission : studiochekhov(at)gmail.com
Phone number: +32 475 36 12 74
Schedule: from Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 1 pm/ from 10 am to 5 pm, depending on the program.
Location: Cellule 133, 133a avenue Ducpétiaux, 1060 Brussels.

The Studio

The Michael Chekhov Studio is an international centre for training in the performing arts, situated in Brussels at the heart of Europe.  It offers performing artists advanced training based on the organic truth of acting, the radiance of the presence, the mastery of energy and the sharpening of the imagination. It is based on the psycho-physical practices of Michael Chekhov and Lenard Petit. The studio works in partnership with the Michael Chekhov Acting Studio New York.

The benefits of training

"Transformation is what every actor consciously or unconsciously longs for."  Michael Chekhov

The training provides the keys for:

  • achieving a high level of presence, creativity and energy on stage
  • producing a performance that exerts the power of fascination
  • experiencing the joy of the presence of mindfulness by existing intensely in his/her body and its sensations
  • leaving one’s comfort zones to experience mystery and the unknown in a performance
  • achieving a new relationship to the stage, a relationship that is fuller, and  more open and creative.
Michael Chekhov

MICHAEL CHEKHOV (1891-1955) was an internationally acclaimed actor, director, and teacher. Nephew of the famous writer and dramatist Anton Chekhov, he was famous for his audacious talent and inimitable characterizations. Stanislavsky called him his “most brilliant pupil,” and likely altered his own acting system after Chekhov’s influence.

Marked by the Soviets for arrest, he escaped to the West in 1928. In exile, he impressed and astonished European and American audiences and critics with his tragic, comedic, and operatic roles and productions.

After his stays in Germany and France, he settled in England and co-founded the Chekhov Theatre Studio at Dartington Hall,  where he further developed his method. In 1939, he relocated his studio to America, where he continued to train young actors and lecture to experienced professionals. 

ABOUT THE CHEKHOV METHOD
The Chekhov method is a ‘psycho-physical approach’ to experiencing the truth of the moment. It is founded on creative principles, such as working with impulse, archetypes, atmospheres, sensations and gestures. Chekhov training and practice awakens and elaborates the actor’s artistic imagination, strengthens the capacity for intense inner action, and loosens habitual restrictions to expressive emotion. It delivers techniques and exercises that respect and unleash the actor’s highest nature. Professional application of the method satisfies the actor’s longing for transformation.

Characteristics of the method
The technique is psycho-physical, and always takes the external movement of the body as its starting point in order to create an inner life in a process that is profoundly alive and deeply connected to the here and now.

This technique aims at the organic presence through a purely physical imagination, economising on any prior psychology.  Psychology and circumstances arise as a result of the process of embedding images or impulses, and are therefore used more as a starting point for the creation of life on stage.

Instead of tapping into his own personal history to create the character, the actor plunges into the reserves of his imagination and his subconscious.  This considerably accelerates and facilitates the creative process.

With its recognition of the true nature of the actor-human being, the Chekhov training represents a healthy and dependable approach to freeing the actor’s talent and highest potential. Hand in hand with the development of the actor’s whole instrument, the method facilitates the acquisition of a comprehensive professional craft.

Training

NATALIE YALON

artistic director, actress, acting teacher

Belgium

First Prize in Drama from the Royal Conservatory of Liège, and a graduate in Philosophy from the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles).  She specialises instage productionand Russian theatrical pedagogics in Russia: in Moscow’s Gitis (the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts) and the Vakhtanghov Institute; her teachers are Vladimir Skoritz, Andrei Droznin, Boris Rabey, Slava Kokorin.  She is also following an intensive training programme at the Michael Chekhov Acting Studio in New York with Lenard Petit.

http://www.studiomichaelchekhov.org/

NATALIE YALON

artistic director, actress, acting teacher

Belgium

CATHERINE DELASALLE

voice teacher, Feldenkrais teacher

France

Songwriter and performer born in Paris. She travels a lot, and has many jobs before starting a career as an ambassador for French songs in Flanders. Alongside her career as a songwriter, she is interested in the voice in all its forms, and participates in many experimental projects. For many years she has been putting poetry into music and writing her own lyrics. The meeting with the Feldenkrais method offers him the ideal framework to develop his experiences, to continue to evolve and to start teaching. She has taught at the Lassaad International Theater School, at the Brussels Conservatory of Music, and conducts numerous workshops and workshops in Belgium and abroad.

http://www.catherinedelasalle.be/

CATHERINE DELASALLE

voice teacher, Feldenkrais teacher

France

BORIS RABEY

stage and film director, acting teacher

Russia

Boris Rabey graduated from The Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS) and from the State Institute of Culture, Moscow. Specialization: Directing of the Dramatic Theatre and Performance Pedagogy, under the direction of Maria Knebel (Stanislavski’s last assistant). Artistic Director of the « Masterskaya » Theatre (Moscow).
He has been invited to teach Master Classes and has staged over 30 productions in countries including Russia, France and Belgium.

He has been invited to teach at the Conservatory of Liège and at the Royal International Summer Academy. He regularly teaches at The Russian University of Theatre Arts .

Since 2006, he has directed over 10 serial dramas for Russian TV.

BORIS RABEY

stage and film director, acting teacher

Russia

MARJOLEIN BAARS

stage director, acting teacher

Holland

Marjolein Baars works with clown and Michael Chekhov acting technique since 1991. She creates performances, gives workshop all over the world (US, Australia, Russia, Turkey and Europe) and applies theatre tools to social fields such as dementia and health care. Her latest interest concerns the elements, the planet and how to contribute to a fundamental change in society. www.tinyhero.nl, www.destichtingkoffer.nl, or www.unitiative.nl

MARJOLEIN BAARS

stage director, acting teacher

Holland

INBAL YALON

actress, acting teacher

Belgium

Following drama courses at INSAS in Brussels, at the Conservatory in Liège and Leipzig, and at Vassiliev's school in Moscow, Inbal Yalon has been an actress and a stage director for over 15 years. She is also a teacher and a coach for actors. She has worked with numerous stage directors in Belgium as well as in other countries. Having a Master in Linguistics and Foreign Litterature, she also translates litterary works or art-related texts.
Further, she is the co-author of Sex Politex, and the author of “L’histoire ludique et détaillée du Clitoris” (The Clitoris’ Playful And Detailed History), which she stages and plays in Belgium and abroad.

INBAL YALON

actress, acting teacher

Belgium

LENARD PETIT

stage director, acting teacher

USA

Lenard is an actor/director who resides in New York City. He has been working in the the theater for thirty years collaborating with other artists to create original works for the stage , cinema, and television. He has directed plays and performance pieces on and off Broadway and in as well as out of the United States. As an actor he has performed in some works of such notable directors as Julie Taymor, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman, Ping Chong, and many others. Mr. Petit is the Artistic Director of The Michael Chekhov Acting Studio. As one of a handful of teacher students trained by the original members of Michael Chekhov’s Theater School his knowledge of the technique coupled with his gifts have brought him to be recognized as one of the foremost teachers of this technique in the world.

As a member of the international Michael Chekhov Association, he has been invited to teach Master classes at the Moscow Art Theater, The International School for Film and Television in Munich, Helsinki University, as well as acting workshops in Denmark, Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin, Zurich, London , Riga, and Irkutsk Siberia. For the past 14 years he has been teaching Chekhov Technique in the MFA Acting program at Rutgers University.

LENARD PETIT

stage director, acting teacher

USA