Katie Ward © Michael Feuerstack

KATIE WARD

PROJECT // Fluid Being Fluid World

BIOGRAPHY 

Katie Ward works from the traditional unceded territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe nations. She draws from the inner world of the self and an experience of change and flow connected to the world. Her works contain non-linear assemblages of forms, entities and rhythms, from score-led dance. In her work, audience-performer relationships are not static – inviting a lively spectatorship. She has developed stage dance performances, performance installations, spectator-led performances, a radio performance…she also facilitates workshops, practice sharing and mentoring situations.

Katie has presented her work in the UK, France, USA, Sweden, Québec and across Canada. With Marie Claire Forté, Katie is developing a dance practice called Vagabonding that aims to actualise participant ever-changing physical imagination – to produce a dance that constantly forms and re-forms itself. Katie holds a Master of Theatre Practices from Artez University, in Arnhem Netherlands.

Teachers — Katie is a student of Franco-Congolese dancer, choreographer, and writer Zab Maboungou, whose work revolves around questions of dance, lineage, and rhythm. Katie has studied with Niek van der Horst and Danielle Wagenaar who are well known and loved Dutch mime practitioners.

DETAILS OF THE PROJECT
The Katie of my youth was a tomboy – disobedient but polite, obsessed with witches and the Middle Ages. My non-conformist parents were committed to an unconventional lifestyle. These things – among many others – are found in the forms, intensities, techniques and traces of experience contained in my body.

To address my multiple identities, fluidity, traces of family, and externalization of my thoughts, I will deepen the practices that form my artistic approach my imagery-driven dance, and externalization of thoughts as I explore new practices (Dutch mime & gesture lineage) with my collaborators.

I will direct my exploration of dance and choreography towards marking and experiencing time by exploring phrasing and rhythm. I will create a choreographic space where these identities can coexist simultaneously or sequentially in performance as they activate an imaginary place.
CollaboratorsEmile Pineault, Maria Kefirova, Ame Henderson
Katie Ward © Erika Mitsuhashi