VertebraDansa
International Performing Arts Festival
Chaz Buzan
Marie-Louise Hertog
Peeping Tom
Maura Morales
Candela Capitán
Wim Vandekeybus
James Vu Anh Pham
Horacio Macuacua
Alleyne Dance
Los INnato
Rakesh Sukesh
Yasser D’Oquendo
© 2026 All rights reserved
Chaz Buzan is a dancer-choreographer and educator rooted in Arizona whose work spans performance, teaching, and creative collaboration. His movement explores the juxtaposition of momentum and stillness, creating work that is both precise and deeply human. Chaz brings a grounded emotional presence and refined physicality to every project. His professional credits include performing and choreographing for world-renowned artists such as Madonna, Britney Spears, FKA twigs, and Chappell Roan. He has appeared on some of the industry’s largest stages, including the MTV Video Music Awards, the Grammy Awards, and recently The 97th Academy Awards. Eager to continue his journey, creating and connecting with young to professional artists around the world.
A high-vigor contemporary class rooted in power, musicality, and performance commitment. Dancers will work through demanding phrase work that requires stamina, precision, and full-bodied intensity. The class explores the balance between raw physical power and intentional control, emphasizing movement that is fierce yet clear. Through vigorous, intricate phrase work, dancers will deepen musical awareness, push beyond habitual energetic limits, and embrace risk while defining newfound intensity with refined detail. Together, we will cultivate a heightened sense of performance quality, an embodied and purposeful physical connection to the music, and ultimately, a commanding stage presence.
Marie-Louise Hertog is a Dutch contemporary dancer based in Germany, currently performing with MiR Dance Company under the direction of Giuseppe Spota. A graduate of Codarts, she has worked with Nanine Linning Dance Company, Scapino Ballet, and numerous international guest choreographers. In 2025, she choreographed Sacre for Scapino Ballet and has been sharing her ongoing improvisation research through workshops, performance, and collaborations across stage and screen.
This workshop combines guided improvisation tasks with taught choreographic phrases to explore movement quality, musicality, coordination, and physical diversity. Through the use of simple rules, imagery, and structured exercises, participants will investigate how constraints can become tools for creativity and how structure can open up new possibilities for freedom in movement. The shared material will be developed and expanded throughout the week, encouraging curiosity, adaptability, and a deeper awareness of personal movement habits and preferences. By working across both improvised and set material, dancers are invited to reflect on how they make choices, respond to musical and spatial information, and build clarity within complexity. The workshop aims to support confidence, presence, and a growing understanding of individual movement language within a collective learning environment.
SAMUEL LEFEUVRE
Trained in dance in Caen and at CNDC Angers, Samuel Lefeuvre moved to Brussels in 2001, performing with Michèle Anne De Mey and Les Ballets C. de la B. He later joined Peeping Tom, co-founded ENTORSE with Raphaëlle Latini, created several works, and collaborated with Jérôme Bel and Boris Charmatz/TERRAIN, and participated in Avignon Festival 2014 Cour d’Honneur creation notably.
LAUREN LANGLOIS
Lauren Langlois joined Peeping Tom in 2020 for Triptych. She previously danced with Australian Dance Theatre, Sydney Dance Company, and Chunky Move, earning major award nominations. She collaborated extensively with Anouk van Dijk, winning a Green Room Award, and has worked with numerous companies. A Tanja Liedtke Fellowship recipient, she also choreographs internationally and creates works for diverse institutions worldwide.
FRANCK CHARTIER (guest online lecturer)
Franck Chartier began dancing at eleven and trained in classical ballet in Cannes. He performed with Ballet du 20ème Siècle, worked with Angelin Preljocaj, and later joined major Brussels companies including Rosas, Needcompany, and Les Ballets C de la B. Co-founding Peeping Tom in 2000, he directs internationally acclaimed dance and opera productions. He has created for Nederlands Dans Theater.
For the first time since the creation of the Kitchen series, Peeping Tom leaves its Brussels studio to take part in Vertebra Dansa 2026. Led by Samuel Lefeuvre and Lauren Langlois, with an online lecture by Franck Chartier, this summer intensive offers insight into the company’s creative process.
Over five days, participants will develop ideas from everyday life, use the environment as a source of movement, and build characters through context and space. Through a multidisciplinary approach, they will shape and structure material into a cohesive piece.
Open to performers, choreographers, and artists, the workshop provides tools for independent and collective creation.
Since 2010 the award-winning freelance dancer and choreographer Maura has been leading her own dance company, the Cooperativa Maura Morales, together with the composer Michio Woirgardt for which she has created a number of full-length pieces since then. With a touring volume of about 50 performances per year the ensemble is one of the most touring (nationally, internationally) independent dance companies in Germany touring regularly throughout Europe, Asia and South America. Maura Morales is also a sought-after guest choreographer and has created commissioned works for numerous state and municipal theatre ensembles
From a deep concern for respecting the body as an ally and not just a tool, Maura offers a workshop in which the initial focus is on sensitive and sensory listening to the body. Through sequences, deep breathing, and warm-ups with improvisation, sensations are awakened and bodily perception is refined.
Maura combines games, energetic dynamics, improvisation, and floor work to enhance awareness of the body in motion. She uses speed as a catalyst that allows this awareness to be integrated into spontaneous, organic, and authentic responses, born of a fully present and engaged body.
Together with composer and musician Michio Woirgardt she will invite you to enter into the language, tools, way of working and creation of the Cooperativa Maura Morales. We will explore the dynamics/rhythms of mov, the valuable guide that music is when listened to attentively while creating. The importance of the why before the how.
Candela Capitán (Seville, 1996) is an interdisciplinary artist and choreographer whose work lies at the intersection of dance, performance, and digital intervention. Her practice explores the body as both medium and support, investigating how power, technology, and hypervisibility shape bodily experience and desire in contemporary society. From a feminist perspective, her work questions forms of representation and the mechanisms of power that traverse bodies and subjectivities, developing a body of work that brings together experimentation, reflection, and artistic creation.
Candela Capitán explores the interstices between choreographic composition and performance. She develops her projects across these two disciplines, understanding that each work requires a specific structure determined by the project itself, avoiding preconceived criteria regarding form or content. During the workshop, a shared theme for collective work will be selected, serving as a starting point for the development of ideas, the planning of structures, the implementation of choreographic composition exercises, and the creation of a defined structure.
The laboratory combines choreographic practice, analysis, and critical reflection, addressing recurring aspects in the artist’s work, such as the effects of communication technologies on the body, the overexposure of the female body, the saturation of images in digital environments, and the dynamics of contemporary alienation.
Wim Vandekeybus is a Belgian choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, and visual artist widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in contemporary European dance. In 1986, he founded Ultima Vez, gaining international recognition for redefining contemporary performance through risk, unpredictability, and intense physical interaction. His works explore instinct, conflict, and the relationship between body and mind, often blurring boundaries between dance and theatre. Beyond choreography, he has directed films and created visual art projects, continuing to expand performance language internationally.
This workshop, taught by Wim Vandekeybus with the assistance of Masha Kolegova, is divided into two complementary parts. The first focuses on the technical training of the physical language developed in the productions of Ultima Vez, working on the floor, the use of space, the legibility of movement, musicality and companionship. The second part explores theatrical staging: how an idea, story, emotion or memory can be transformed into a performance where movement and words coexist. It reflects on the impact of the chosen forms on the audience’s experience, the value of emptiness and the concept of “less is more”. More than an educational workshop, this intensive week is a space for exchange and creation, where creative skills and connection with the final stage result are worked on.
James Vu Anh Pham has worked extensively with leading international choreographers and companies, including Anouk van Dijk since 2012, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui since 2016, and Akram Khan since 2019.
He has performed in numerous productions with Chunky Move, Eastman, GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, Bayerische Staatsoper, Theater Basel, and Akram Khan Company’s Outwitting the Devil, touring internationally.
Pham received the 2014 Helpmann Award and the Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer. A certified Countertechnique teacher since 2014, he joined Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in 2021, performing works by Alain Platel and Jan Martens. Most recently, he toured internationally with Madonna.
This workshop dives into a hybrid movement practice rooted in urban dance and expanded through contemporary tools, floorwork and improvisation. Drawing from his personal language, James proposes a dynamic approach that connects precision, groove and fluidity with a strong focus on transitions and texture.
Participants will explore pathways between standing and floor, working on efficiency, control and risk-taking, while developing awareness of timing, musicality and spatial intention. The class moves between guided material and open research, encouraging each dancer to find their own voice within the work.
Special attention is given to flow, continuity and the articulation of the body in motion, blending technical training with creative exploration. The workshop is open to dancers interested in pushing beyond styles and engaging in a versatile, hybrid physicality.
The Mozambican dancer and choreographer is the artistic director of the dance company which bears his name. Horacio Macuacua develops projects that aim to go beyond established forms. Flexibility of mind and availability to catch the moment translate movement instantly into compositions that are complex and elaborated, displaying depth and playfulness, darkness and light. Each composition is a journey to reinvent and transform within the parameters of meaning. He has carried out his projects: COMUM, Canais, Orobroy, Stop! (1st Prize and Puma Creative Prize at Danse l’Afrique Danse Festival 2010), Smile If You Can!, Fighting room, Convoy, Paradise is not in the sky! and Theka.
The inflexibility of the established paralyzes the movement, dims the ingenuity, casts a shadow over surprise. But life force makes us adaptable, it gives us the opportunity to transform space and to translate energy into matter, matter into its own evolution. The outline of the spontaneous is blurred to disappear, the margins of the predictable are softened and we know the interrogation point that questions the automatic response. The body allows us to transcend. Horacio proposes a highly physical work that demands attention, interest and intensity rather than a certain technique level, challenging the potentiality of each dancer to push the limits of body imagination and expression further to discover new and surprising possibilities.
The workshop evolves with what the group offers, as the ability to create and compose physically needs training and attention as well as technique or style. Through the group process the participants learn from each other through acceptance and transformation, collaboration and observation of their own dance and of the whole group. Afro-Fusion combines several energetic styles with influences from traditional dance forms from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Caribbean and South Africa as well as Western dance styles. It is a motivating, physically demanding dance class that combines movements to different genres of music and is great fun.
Multi-award-winning Alleyne Dance is a unique and powerful company that blends Caribbean, Hip Hop and Kathak, within a contemporary dance context. The choreographic language focuses on rhythms and textures with movement that is athletic, fast paced and dynamic, with infusions of lyrical and fluid motion. Founded in 2014 by award-winning sisters, Kristina and Sadé Alleyne, the company strives for high quality and excellence in our three main objectives: Performance, Participation & Development.
Dynamics Rhythm & Texture emphasises strong, complex floor-work sequences and technical movement exploration through articulation, spirals, breath, and improvisation rooted in physical intention. The workshop aims to cultivate dancers’ creativity, musicality, and performance quality, encouraging honest, intentional choices driven by passion and strength.
Afro-Fusion combines several energetic styles with influences from traditional dance forms from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Caribbean and South Africa as well as Western dance styles. It is a motivating, physically demanding dance class that combines movements to different genres of music and is great fun.
Marko Fonseca
Marko Fonseca (Costa Rica) is the director of the independent dance company Los INnato, founded in 2009. Trained at the El Barco Conservatory, he has worked with companies in Costa Rica and Europe, including Los DenMedium and ADN Dialect. Los INnato has created over 25 works and toured extensively across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. His current work focuses on research and collaboration, and he teaches in-PRACTICAL [identification of the other], a practice that merges movement arts, martial arts, and partnering work. The company has received multiple international awards for works such as Kitsch, matchPoint, Etérea, and NO/nato, including prizes at SóLODOS en Danza Costa Rica and the Burgos–New York International Choreography Competition. Fonseca has developed his work through international residencies and was co-director of La Machine International Street Festival (2015–2023). He currently directs the Revés International Training Platform and the Full Out Urban Dance Festival.
Camilla Melani
Italian-born dancer and choreographer Camilla Melani trained at IFPRO in Paris before joining the Junior Company Cobosmika. With a strong foundation in classical and contemporary dance, she quickly directed her research toward floorwork and partnering, deepening these practices as both physical and expressive tools. She began creating her first works at a young age, presenting them at festivals and in international performance contexts. She is currently working as a performer with the Kafig Company, directed by Mourad Merzouki, and with the Dyptik Company, led by Souhail Marchiche and Mehdi Meghari. At the same time, she develops her own projects through the Circe Company, based in Toulouse, creating performances, workshops, and choreographic projects both in France and internationally.
The teaching method Identification of the Other is a training technique based on martial arts—especially Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu—as well as different forms of physical training dynamics. Its aim is to understand the basic principles of human movement and to establish different types of connections with others.
It is a method characterized by a functional, step-by-step, and pedagogical approach, offering experiences that facilitate results. It includes a series of exercises designed to prepare the body and to address the difficulty of movements involved in developing the “trick” in all its learning dimensions: emotional, intellectual, and physical–mechanical.
This training focuses on technique and is adapted to optimize strength, coordination, muscle tone (zero point), energy, instinct, awareness, leadership and followership, as well as connection between partners—building trust and effective communication.
The goal is not for it to become merely the execution of an acrobatic move, but rather how to “dance” that skill and express it, so that form and content are properly connected. The flow of physical communication depends on an awareness of shared balance.
Rakesh Sukesh is an Indian contemporary dancer, choreographer, and teacher based in Europe, internationally recognized for his refined movement language and thoughtful choreographic voice. Originally trained in India, Sukesh expanded his career in Europe, collaborating with renowned choreographers while developing his own artistic language. His work blends contemporary dance with influences from Indian movement traditions, martial arts, and somatic practices.
His choreographic creations explore identity, migration, memory, and human relationships, combining technical precision with emotional depth. Sukesh teaches internationally, focusing on movement awareness, partnering, and creative exploration, encouraging dancers to connect technique with personal expression.
The method, developed through years of research, observation, and adaptation to contemporary times, integrates breathing, movement, emotion, thought, intention, and environment to enhance humanity in its most authentic form. It offers a safe and honest space to explore and acknowledge both personal weaknesses and strengths, using them through reflection and continuous development.
It is an interconnected system that uses movement as a foundation to create, face, and play within situations of crisis, expanding bodily vocabulary and individual awareness. Inspired by practices such as breathing, meditation, and the internal mechanics of yoga—combined with movement and the philosophies of Kalaripayattu—it offers a holistic approach that awakens the senses and enables control of external stimuli, fostering self-management and a deeper connection with oneself.
Yasser D’Oquendo is a contemporary dancer and performer recognized for his strong physical presence and expressive movement language, developed through an international career across Europe and Latin America.
Trained in contemporary dance and performance practices, his work often explores identity, physical memory, and the relationship between body, space, and emotion. Throughout his career, he has collaborated with numerous choreographers and companies, participating in stage productions, festivals, and international touring projects.
Alongside his performance career, D’Oquendo is actively involved in teaching and transmission, sharing his practice through workshops and creative processes focused on physical awareness, movement research, and performative presence.
His work stands out for its emotional intensity, precision, and capacity to connect deeply with audiences through movement.
Program Overview
The D’Oquendo Method, created by Yasser D’Oquendo —a dancer, choreographer, and teacher with an international career—, is a movement approach that integrates technique, body awareness, and animality. Its purpose is to provide practical tools to connect with the body in a holistic way, expand expressive potential, and discover the transformative power of instinct.
This method emerges from many years of professional experience in contemporary, folkloric, modern, and classical dance, and brings together technique, breathing, body awareness, and improvisation to guide each person toward authentic, deep, and fully present movement.
The D’Oquendo Method proposes a way of inhabiting the body through listening and organicity, awakening the expressive power that resides in each individual. A dance that is not only performed: it is felt, embodied, and transformed into a living presence.