Tag: Katie Duck

Lets call it early spring

This year is starting with some heart-warming program I’d like to invite you to.

After the well-received performance Subjects of Position, a piece of Zwoisy Mears-Clarke presented in the first days of January at Tanztage Berlin, Sophiensaele, I have the pleasure to invite you to the following highlights I collaborate in:

Next week already there is Sounddance encounters in Dock11, a project of Jenny Haack I am so eager to support. The performances are 1-4th of February, each evening a different double or triple bill.

In the beginning of March Abandon Human will be played in Dock11, 3rd and 4th of March. This is a heart to heart Project with Katie Duck and Sharon Smith, a rock show about being a woman.

Over time the soundtrack of Stranger has been released by Gabor Csongradi, and the kind supporters of our Indiegogo campaign could receive their digital copies. One song can be listened to here.

Last, but not least, Stranger spoiler is out there, a short summary of what has been cooking on stage last February. You are very welcome to see it!

Abandon Human

This performance of Katie Duck and Sharon Smith is a joined venture of two women who are survivors, mothers, who love and carry on, who go deep in feelings and yet running the distance. In fact this is a performance of three women, two of which are mothers, three of which dressed in bikini for the show, as a tribute to a fourth woman.

Coming to think of which, the show is a performance containing plenty of women, who wrote songs without ever getting credited for, who were or are moms regardless of being thanked, who weren’t or couldn’t be moms,    who were the invisible hand, who were not ashamed of their feelings, their bodies, their roles…

  • Concept, creation and performance: Katie Duck, Sharon Smith
  • co-creation and lights: Emese Csornai

As Sharon Smith writes:

The inexpressible is contained inexpressibly in the expressed.
The title was a combination of ‘abandon ship’ and some sort of ‘you can’t run away from yourself’ reality check. Somehow, ‘being human’ is what we are stuck with.
The curse of the human must be all these feelings.
Having a child is a most vivid, unbearable emotion…  Irretrievable loss. You cannot put them back in, once they have torn themselves from your belly via vagina or scalpel, they set in motion a certain grief… a slow, life-long, death-looming loss. They leave you and leave you and leave you. And that is your job. To help them do just that.
The love is so strong that you can deal with their shit, their piss, their selfishness and their hatred… of you.
Katie and Sharon have daughters. It’s a woman thing. They have shared a friendship that has grown into family feelings over twenty years. This work seemed to explode all that, all those… feelings… all over the stage.
A soundtrack contains the action. It is haunted by female song writers who we love shamelessly and who we want to be in the room with us. There are others, but of course there is not enough space or time in one room (however grand) to include all the awesome women who wrote songs that speak through us and to us, in the work… in the life.
The performance took place at Dock11 in April 2017.
More information at: http://abandonhuman.com/
Photographs of the performance by Izabela Pacewicz-Wysocka

Light and performance

This workshop is to encourage dancers, choreographers and performers to bring their practice with real time performance towards a meaningful collaboration with light designer.  Real time performance is a challenging art-form. When it is dealt with sincerely, inclusive of light design, real time performance elevates the live theater to it’s highest potential. This demands from the performers a high level of openness and collaborative capabilities, and an increased capability of decision-making. Such high exposure of presence cannot be accompanied with a mediocre staging. It is necessary to include stage lighting as a potent and equal element of play. This workshop will include discussions with Katie Duck and myself about language and technical options with light design, alongside session work in the theater with light design. In these sessions, can take opportunity to place our practice viewing from the public view point, sitting with me on the board and in physical creations with light in the theater space. Feedback and discussions will revolve around shifts, effects and tension that are interactive between light, body, performance.

April 8 and 9 2017 (Saturday and Sunday) 11:00-15:00. Dock 11

€120 Two days, €70 One day. Register: katie@katieduck.com

More information on Katie Duck’s site