workshop and performance
laboratory
Montag, 12. April bis Freitag, 16. Arpil 2010, 12 - 18 Uhr
Monday - Friday, April, 12 - 16, 2010, 12 am - 6pm
-IMPROVISATION-
Katie Duck has been teaching workshops internationally since the mid 70’s alongside her professional career as a performer and choreographer. She integrates her current research making each workshop completely unique. She draws from her experiences in live performances, music collaborations, as a director and choreographer. She has lead two companies over the past 30 year; Groupo based in Italy - Magpie Music Dance Company based in the Netherlands.
Over the past 10 years her workshops have been titled “Improvisation” in order to emphasis her views on theater as a live art form reflective of how she executes her own professional performances. Her research is placed in practice with lectures containing her recent interest in brain studies and film. (see research materials below - see duck projects.
Katie’s workshops are aimed toward all dancers, performers and musicians. She does not aim to provide a technique or style for how one conducts them-self in a live performance. Her work is relevant for any performance situation without discrimination for levels or performance platforms. She does ask that anyone who chooses to study with her have an intense interest in the work and is willing to experiment and take risks with the material she offers.
Her warm-up and exercises emphasis how the eyes and the ears work in co ordination with movement, sound and exposure to gathered crowds altering our perception of time, space, feelings and emotions. Improvisation sessions revolve around the terms pause, flow, exit, choice and presence with discussions articulating play, memory and intuition.
Her aim is to provide a situation where artists can practice together and grow in confidence toward public performances with an objective to clarify that improvisation not the antitheses of choreography or composition but rather the way choreography and composition can be executed. She promotes to her students that the mental connection to the practice of improvisation can be accessed weather they are doing set or open framed performance pieces and that the definitions of what improvisation within art practices mean today need to be reflective to advances in brain-studies and technology.
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alongside with a piece developed with the participants of the workshop during the week
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Katie Duck
Born in Oxnard California (1951), Katie Duck is a dancer, choreographer and teacher. She began performing in plays and musicals as a teenager, attended the University of Utah as a modern dance major and then joined the Salt Lake City Mime Troupe touring in the United States and Europe. (1973-6).
She left the United States in 1976 to live in Amsterdam, Holland and toured throughout Europe as a performer in solo productions, in productions with Carlos Traffic, Jango Edwards (friends roadshow) and in improvisations with Amsterdam music artists Ernst Reijseger (cello), Tristan Honsinger (cello), Sean Bergen (sax) and Michael Moore (sax). She changed her name to Katie Duck while touring her first solo in Europe “duck play” in 1976.
In 1979, she moved to Italy where she formed the company GROUPO. She toured through out Europe with her one-hour productions Rutles, The Orange Man, Brown eye Green eye and Mind the gap and participated in free lance improvisation collaborations with Julyen Hamilton, Kristie Simpson and Steve Paxton among others. In 1986 she accepted a senior lecturer position at Dartington College of Arts teaching for the theater department as head of the choreography course. In 1991 she accepted a part time post at the AHK Hooge school voor de kunsten dance departments in Amsterdam teaching movement research, improvisation, composition and technique.
Throughout her career she has worked with music artists who share her passion for live time performance and the integration of music, text and dance within compositions for performance. She has performed in duet and in ensembles with music artists Han Bennik, Andy Moore (the EX) and many others. Katie created the Company Magpie Music Dance Company in 1995-2005 in Amsterdam to reflect her work with improvisations musicians. Magpie toured in Europe, the USA, Asia and Scandinavia and received national funding from 2002-2006 for tours within the Netherlands from the Nederland fonds voor the podimkunsten. In 2006 she evolved Magpie into an umbrella organization, Magpie Umbrella.
Katie has initiated numerous dance and music improvisation on-going events in her three bases Holland, Italy and England. In her current base Amsterdam. Her initiatives include a yearly Improvisation festival at the Frascati Theater (1994-9), a monthly improvisation series at the Fijnhout Theater (1992-3), the Muiderpoort Theater (1994-9), The Melkweg Theater (2000-2001) and OT301 Cultural center (2002-2006).
By 1988 she discovered the internet evolution and created an international focus group for email announcements, a youtube presence with her home videos and continues to encourage artists to build their internet presence as part of their creative work.
She has been organizing workshops in Amsterdam since 1995 at the studio seven in Amsterdam first under the title PIA and now under the title Magpie Umbrella. She presently runs an improvisation summer course and workshop series in Amsterdam and is the tutor and stage coordinator for the SNDO choreography department and improvisation teacher for the Modern Dance department at the AHK Hooge School voor de kunsten. She continues to direct, perform (Duck Projects) and conduct her workshops touring yearly in Asia, the USA, England, Scandinavia and Europe.
Fee: 200 EUR
www.felixruckert.deschwelle7 members 150 EUR
registration:
Jan Boeschoten xs4jan@gmx.de
SLEEPING: We can host up workshop participants in our special sleeping cocoons in the studio. The cost is 10 EUR a night per person.
