CPPM – LÄBU Festival, vol. 2, ep. 1

The Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre’s (EAMT) MA programme in Contemporary Physical Performance Making (CPPM) is of particular interest to me, as it allows us as audience members to join emerging artists on their journey of creative development over the course of two years, through lectures, open classes, and performances. The 2025 Tallinn Fringe Festival occurs at the midway point for the current cohort, resulting in the second volume of LÄBU: a collection of solo shows organised into seven episodes over the course of two weekends. 

Episode one, featuring Zhenyan Ding, Elar Vahter, and Leah Gayer, is staged in the black box of the EAMT theatre building, the lobby area casually reconfigured with extra seating, tables laid with bunches of bananas and high heels strewn about, and a toilet installed at one of the stairwells’ entrances. Course leader Jüri Nael introduces the performances by explaining to the non-native speakers that läbu suggests, in Estonian, a post-party mess; these are more works in progress, but representative of where the student-artists are in the middle of that mess-making.

The first show is professional ballet dancer Zhenyan Ding’s “Humana”, a surreal examination of clothing, identity, and secondhand struggles. In previous performances, I’d noticed both his immense, intense physicality as well as his playfulness in group settings; here that manifests in a blend of balance and form, a controlled collapse that defies and redefines gravity. With the help of light, sound, and a few costumed assistants, Ding’s uncanny motion illustrates a shifting formality around self-presentation, a combination of costume and comedy that reminds us the only thing really separating human from animal is a pair of properly worn trousers. 

Blending poetry, set design, sweeping music and personal charm, we see many sides of the performer, with movement happening on multiple levels within many styles of dance. His show wraps with a spoken interlude both casual and incisive as he breaks bread before us, with his clothes sitting correctly even as the man does not, examining the role of tech in how we learn other places and ourselves. He is as engaging in this segment as he is remote in the opening, silly and serious, thoughtful and speechless.

There is an intermission before the next show, during which the audience is brought back out to lobby while the stage is reset, the space filled with conversations about art and school and travel. The next performance starts before long, with Elar Vahter’s “M&M: The Myth and the Man”. Entering the black box, we find the space transformed, with the performer curled, foetal and nude, on a pallet suspended from the rafters, a cloud-like duvet on the ground as he floats above. There is a brief moment where an apparently drunk man enters to join the audience, then is cautiously removed by the staff – is he part of the show, I wonder, because one can never tell with performance art – but his leaving is peaceful enough as the spectators visibly relax. 

Vahter begins the piece by asking audience members to cover him with the duvet and set the pallet in motion, transforming it into a swinging bed as we are brought into a dream of drums, the artist climbing from the platform to contribute to a soundtrack of chanting, circling, and spinning, a meditation on strength and power and history. Estonian is the language of this show, as we witness the spectre of Kalevipoeg haunting the sleeper’s psyche, monstrous, human, and soft. The heavy, reverberating sound halts abruptly with a sudden alarm, and the awakening of the dreamer into the “real” world, with its smart phones and social media advice of top tips for men to start their day, according to an English-speaking AI-generated voice offering guidance and expectations to be their best. 

We follow Vahter through reflections on youth and memory, clothes and gender, with costume changes and chattiness creating borders around different perceptions of what it means to be a “correct” man: anger, strength, protection. These visions of masculinity include sports, beer, and social controls, and the question of the drunk man really comes into play here as Vahter cracks open and distributes beers to audience members. We’re shown “man” as both grown and childish, riffling through recollections of camping trips and feats of strength, looking at issues relating to alcohol, suicide, and the stigma around asking for help. The scenarios switch between realistic to archetypal, dreamy and atavistic. A segment describing individual “normal” men makes me question whether he’s reading job-hunter profiles, dating apps, or obituaries. The uses of the pallet swing are incredible, adding levels and motion, and the late addition of a chainsaw adds the sense of smell to the potent blend of poses and posturing, landing at a place where we reflect on the room for queerness amidst and amongst all these influences and interpretations.

A second, longer break takes place as another stage reset happens – the show is running late, but we’re assured that the next episode (number 3, offsite) will wait for the attendees of this show to be escorted to the next venue. First, however, is Leah Gayer’s piece “Bog Roll”, evidently the inspiration for the lobby’s set design.

We join the artist as she blowdries her hair centre stage next to a toilet, wrapped in a bathrobe and speaking to a father whose presence is represented by text projected against the curtains behind her. As they banter about past meals and future plans, showcasing the familiarity of family and intimacy of shared spaces, things suddenly tip from gross-out body humour into tragedy. Sound design is its own character here as we watch the ball slowly drop for the daughter, and the family bathroom becomes hospital, night club, nightmare, morphing through time as a centered space, holy and profane, a confessional and an escape.

Gayer’s piece is rich with props, projections, and puns both verbal and visual. She weaves a watery tale with dreamlike spirals and gritty realism, layering and uncovering herself in scenarios of keeping it together and falling apart. Grief dances like a furious bird and slapstick papers over deeper wounds as she seeks to “stop the overflow” in ways both literal and figurative. A final segment is a genuine deep dive into the health and safety of waterworks, and aerial rope performance underscores her simple yet impactful physicality. 

The CPPM cohort continues its LÄBU collection this weekend, with the second half of the students presenting their solo shows in the Kanuti Guild Hall this weekend. The 2025 Tallinn Fringe Festival wraps next week on 18 September, with a variety of performances from dance to comedy to circus performance throughout each of the coming days.

Author: Laurie

Laurie likes alliteration, ambiance, and lists with three things.