Tony De Maeyer
actor and Biomechanics instructor
Tony de Maeyer is a Belgian film and theater actor. He studied at the Koninklijk Vlaams Conservatorium in Antwerp with Ivo Van Hove and then continued to train for years through workshops, among others with Luk Perceval, Minako Seki, Enrique Vargas, Thierry Salmon and many others.
In 1996 he meets Gennadi N. Bogdanov in Berlin (lecturer in Biomechanics at the former GITIS in Moscow). This is the beginning of an extremely intensive collaboration that allows him to embrace the Biomechanics of Meyerhold in practice. De Maeyer is probably one of the few actors worldwide who has taken the perfect assimilation of the Biomechanics principles into his acting, both on stage and in film. For many years De Maeyer has been teaching and leading workshops in Biomechanics at theater schools in Germany and abroad, such as the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin, the Academy of Performing Arts Baden-Württemberg (AdK), the University of Music and Performing Arts (HMDK) in Stuttgart or the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz, as well as private drama schools in Germany. As a Biomechanics expert, he has been engaged for many years in state theaters (Theater Aachen, Theater Münster, Theater Heidelberg, Volksbühne in Berlin...), as well as in theater ensembles to artistically supervise theater productions and train and familiarize them with the principles of Biomechanics and body in motion.
Biomechanics
with Tony De Maeyer
The fundamental rule of Biomechanics is very simple: the whole body participates in every movement.
Vsevolod E. Meyerhold
The international intensive Biomechanics workshop led by the Belgian Biomechanics expert Tony De Maeyer
(former student of G. N. Bogdanov) adresses to all actors/performers who want to discover the ethics and principles of the Biomechanics developed by the Russian director V. E. Meyerhold in the early 20's.
In this workshop actors/performers will acquire a greater understanding of their material and learn how to improve their means of expression on stage with a contemporary approach of the Biomechanical principles.
The training includes a compendium of exercises to build and improve the physical constitution of the actors and to rehearse the principles of motion analysis and construction. Attention is focused on the play of balance, rhythm, space and perception of one's own body, as well as on the musicality and poetic expressiveness of the body in motion. Consciousness of form, spatial coordination, body control, rhythm and musicality, but above all eccentricity and the grotesque, i.e. the search for extreme physical conditions, are important features of the Biomechanical acting culture.
INTENSIVE WORKSHOP
17 - 21 August 2020
10 AM - 3 PM
Dance Theatre Ljubljana