2018 Regular Workshops

The project met its demand and interest among the expats in Amsterdam. We broaded the audinece, found more interested people to join. Developed the deeper understanding of how to use acting techniques to build a workshop. We tried plenty of locations in Amsterdam: in the Oost, West, Center and even in the parks.

2019 - Launch of Long-Term Courses

In 2019, we launched our first official long-term programs under the title “Acting Techniques for Daily Life.” These intensive trainings—one lasting six months and another three—marked a turning point in our work.

The programs explored how the tools of the actor can support presence, adaptability, and expressiveness in everyday life. We grounded the practice in the tradition of psycho-physical theatre, drawing from the systems of Konstantin Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov.

Throughout the course, we worked with a wide range of themes, including:

• Imagination and Fantasy: Cultivating the actor’s imagination and learning where it can enrich daily interactions.
• Focus and Attention: Training concentration on stage and finding ways to apply it in real life.
• Emotional Memory: Tapping into past experiences to enrich expression and awareness.
• Breath, Voice, and Articulation: Exploring the power of the spoken word through vocal practices.
• Muscular Tension and Stage Presence: Releasing habitual blocks and developing an embodied sense of presence.
• Psychological Gesture: Using physical forms to access inner states and intentions.
• Memory of Physical Action  and Objectless actions: Learning through doing, connecting movement with memory and meaning.
• Tempos and Rhythms: Exploring timing, dynamics, and the musicality of expression.
• Partner Work and Energetic Exchange: Sensing, responding, and co-creating through movement and intention.
• Improvisation and Études: Engaging in creative structures that allow freedom, spontaneity, and deep listening.

These courses became a cornerstone of the project’s development, showing how theatrical tools can become life practices—accessible, transformative, and deeply human.

2021 - Trying Out the Online Format

When it became clear that social life wouldn’t return anytime soon, we tested a new format of gathering — online. We called these sessions “Awakening”, as they felt like waking up after a long quarantine sleep. We designed the workshops to suit the online format, using acting exercises, voice work, and individual body explorations to foster real connection, even through the screen. Despite being virtual, the three-month course turned out to be surprisingly warm and engaging.

2022 — The Year That Divided Everything

2022 changed everything—for the world, for our project, and for me personally.

As a Russian-speaking group, the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine hit hard. It created a rupture—both emotionally and ethically—that couldn’t be ignored. Many of us were directly affected, and nothing felt the same anymore.

In the spring of that year, we asked ourselves what we could do that would actually help. We decided to use what we had—movement, art, human connection. We started “Warming”—a series of supportive gatherings for people who had just arrived from Ukraine to the Netherlands. It lasted for three months and focused on dance, presence, and healing through simple, grounded movement. We took the most human, therapeutic parts of everything we had done over the past five years and offered it to those who needed it most.

We called it “The Thaw” because we hoped it would get warmer. We didn’t yet know how long this war would last or how deeply it would shape our lives moving forward.

That same year marked the five-year anniversary of our project. It was a moment of reflection. The structure began to shift—some collaborators stepped back, others moved in new directions. For me, something changed. I felt the need to move toward something more embodied and quiet—something that could really hold people during hard times.

That’s when I began my certification in Laban Bartenieff Movement Analysis. It gave me a new language for something I was already doing intuitively: using movement to support emotional and nervous system regulation, to stay connected, to survive.

This change set the tone for everything that followed. We closed the year with PROBA—a new workshop exploring character embodiment, but with a strong focus on inner experience, not just outer form. It was the first clear sign of the new direction we were stepping into.

2023 — Returning to Stories, Returning to Stage

After a long pause, Short Stories came back to life. In a way, only the name and the text remained the same—everything else had changed.

The process began in March 2023. What followed were six months of intensive rehearsals. But this time, it wasn’t about “returning to theater” as it was—it was something else. This was slower, more embodied, more attuned to the present. Rooted in the somatic and performative approaches I had been studying and integrating: Laban-Bartenieff movement System, movement exploration, and deep group connection.

The cast was new. The rhythm of rehearsals was different. The world was different. And so, the work that emerged from this process carried a different kind of life. Quiet, grounded, alive.

We weren’t simply “staging” stories—we were living through them.

After six months of building from scratch, we presented our performance in December 2023 at a beautiful venue in the heart of Amsterdam.

It was a full house—60 people in the audience.
11 amateur actors on stage.
9 tiny stories, each just a few lines long—stitched together by movement, presence, and imagination.

We wove them into one flow: from story to story, from one life to the next.
It was our way of saying: even the smallest things deserve space and breath.

2024 - Driven by the success

The success of our December 2023 premiere gave us the energy — and the courage — to keep going. This time, we wanted to bring Short Stories to a broader audience. So we decided to create an English version and expand beyond Amsterdam.

We welcomed new people into the cast and began rehearsals again — this time in the beautiful space of ICK Dans Amsterdam. It was a time of both deepening and opening: deepening the material we had already lived through, and opening it to new languages, voices, and contexts.

And then, it happened.

In June 2024, we performed Short Stories twice —

first at PolanenTheater in Amsterdam,
then at Het Zeehelden Theater in Den Haag.

Two very different cities. Two warm and engaged audiences.
Same stories — but told in a new language, with new bodies, for new eyes.

Alongside the performances, in late 2024, I launched the first Body Journey workshop series — three sessions exploring the body as a source of awareness, connection, and expression. Each workshop had a clear focus:


Self in a Body (sensing and grounding),
Body in Space (spatial awareness and orientation),
and Body in Action (impulse, expression, and storytelling through movement).

These sessions combined somatic work, improvisation, and creative exploration — not for performance, but for feeling more present, alive, and connected in the body.

This series laid the foundation for what continues in 2025: a deepening focus on movement as a resource — for actors, creatives, and anyone seeking to reconnect with their body. 

Where We Are Now

Today, “My Little Drama and Movement Lab” is the home for my movement practice — a space where people come to reconnect with their bodies, awaken dormant parts of themselves, and rediscover the power of expression beyond words.

I offer individual movement sessions, embodied acting workshops, and courses for performers and anyone longing to feel more alive in their body.