MEGUMIEDA
Turning Your Story Into Movement:
An Autobiographical Workshop (Edition 3)
A 3-Day Workshop with Megumi Eda
For artists, movers, and anyone interested in exploring autobiography through the body.
No dance experience necessary.
Dates: September 2–4, 2026
Time: 11:00–17:00 (Presentation on September 4 at 18:00)
Location: EDEN Studio 190, Berlin
Participants: Limited to 14
Fee: Sliding scale: €200–260
Suggested contribution: €230
Info & Registration: megumiedart@gmail.com
Feedback from past workshop participants:
“You have a calming, but at the same time pushing energy , funny, serious, and very clear. You took time for everyone, and it felt like you were researching together with us.”
— Clara
“I have participated in many workshops across the city, but this was the first time one truly resonated with me so deeply.”
— Kaimé
“ People from very different backgrounds — even non-dancers — could all take part without feeling lost or bored.
That balance is rare and beautiful.”
— Giorgia
Welcome
This is the third edition of Turning Your Story Into Movement, and I'm delighted to continue growing this workshop alongside the people who have shaped it.
Whether you're joining for the first time or returning from a previous edition, you are warmly welcome. Returning participants may wish to revisit a story from a new perspective or begin with an entirely different one. There is always another layer waiting to be discovered.
In this autobiographical workshop, each participant creates a performance piece rooted in their own lived experience.
You don’t need to be a dancer to join — though dancers are of course are welcome! This workshop is for anyone who wants to reflect on their life, face their own story, or expand their creative approach to performance.
Since creating my autobiographical solo Fish áɪ lens (2025) in collaboration with choreographer Shintaro Oue, I have continued exploring autobiographical performance through a second work, YORIDOKORO – Silent Anchor (2026), created with composer and sound artist Reiko Yamada. Although both pieces are rooted in my own life, each has led me through a very different creative journey. Together, they continue to shape an evolving artistic inquiry into how lived experience can be translated into movement and performance.
At the heart of this workshop is the practice of translating your own story into movement. Rather than illustrating memories literally, we explore how emotions, images, sensations, and lived experiences can be transformed into abstract physical language. Through this process, participants discover movement that is deeply personal while remaining open, poetic, and resonant with others.
Over the past year, I have come to realize that my artistic practice and this workshop continue to evolve together. Every new performance informs the workshop, and every workshop, in turn, reshapes the way I create. They are not separate practices but part of the same ongoing artistic research.
After more than thirty years of performing around the world, this has become the work I care about most: creating spaces where vulnerability, imagination, playfulness, and honesty can coexist, and where our own stories become a source of creative transformation.
I hope you’ll join me.
— Megumi Eda
Photo Credit: Kai Bernstein
Thank you to everyone who participated in the first workshop. Markus, Ines, Natsuki, Giorgia, Clara, Kai, Yiota, Jana, Kaimé, Samar, Mayuko
Workshop Focus
Over three days, we will:
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We will warm up together.
Megumi will share some of the practices she uses in her own work, as an invitation to gradually enter a creative state. — opening new ways of accessing your body and mind.
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Shape your story.
Choose a specific episode, memory, or fragment from your life with guidance from Megumi (and your peers), decide what to emphasize, what to add color to, and what to let go.
(If you already have a story, you’re very welcome to work with it.)
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Create your own performance. (solo or group)
Fully immerse yourself in your story, create it, and present it. It won't just be fun, of course. It doesn’t have to be perfect — the goal is completion and personal accomplishment.
BIo
Megumi Eda is a dancemaker and filmmaker originally from Japan. She began her international career at the age of 17 with the Hamburg Ballet and went on to perform with the Dutch National Ballet, Rambert Dance Company in London, and Armitage Gone! Dance in New York.
In 2004, she joined Armitage Gone! Dance, appearing in over 20 new works as choreographer Karole Armitage’s muse. That same year, she received the New York Dance Performance Award (Bessie Award), and was named Best Performer by Dance Magazine in both 2009 and 2015.
In 2013, she met Yoshiko Chuma, a New York-based activist and conceptual artist—beginning a creative partnership that continues to this day.
Since 2012, Eda has expanded her practice to include filmmaking and video art, creating a multidisciplinary body of work that blurs the lines between stage, screen, and personal archive. Her recent works include Please Cry (2022), DIVINE (2023), and Fish áɪ lens (2025).
Her artistic exploration centers on three themes: multigenerational war trauma, being a woman, and institutional abuse within the dance world. Now based in Berlin, she is committed to fostering raw, autobiographical performance that uses the body as a vessel for memory, story, and transformation. Through deeply personal narratives, she aims to create work that resonates beyond the self—stories that speak to something larger, that touch on the universal, and that invite others to see parts of themselves reflected within them.
Who is this for?
You don’t need to be a dancer or have a finished idea—but of course dancers are very welcome! This workshop is for anyone who wants to reflect on their life, face their own story, or, for performers, to expand their creative approach to performance.
...And
the three days are held in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. At the same time, there is a clear time frame and a simple deadline.
🙂 One thing I believe is that pressure can help to focus and open space for creativity to emerge in ways you might not expect. It often allows the subconscious to appear in unexpected ways — sometimes even surprising yourself. Most importantly, it gives you the feeling of having created something that is truly your own.
So yes, there is a bit of pressure, but, my grandma used to say "tough love ❤️ " but it’s a playful kind. I invite you to experiment with it, stay curious, and not take it too seriously.