Katie Ward
Montreal
An independent choreographer and dancer, Katie Ward lives and works in Montreal. In 2010 Katie created her most recent work Rock Steady which is slated for a short tour of France and England in 2012.
Katie has several other creations under her belt including Hawks and Doves, The Thrills: Wilderness Retreat and Collapsible Uprisings.
In 2008, along with Thea Patterson, Peter Trosztmer, and Audrée Juteau, Katie founded an artists group: The Choreographers. They have co created and presented their first two works: Man and Mouse and Oh! Canada at Studio 303 and the Darling Foundry in Montreal as well as in Halifax, in New York City at the Joyce Soho, St Johns NL and in Sherbrooke Qc.
Katie’s early performance education was with Winnipeg’s School of Contemporary Dance and Primus Theatre. Returning to Concordia University for part time studies she focused on dance composition with Silvy Panet Raymond, while pursuing side interests in visual art and art history. Other formative studies where with Ginelle Chagnon, Peter Bingham, Stephanie Skura and Chrysa Parkinson.
Katie has performed locally and internationally for emerging and established choreographers: Ruth Cansfield, Sarah Febbraro, Stéphane Gladyszewski, Dean Makarenko, Pamela Newell, Thea Patterson and Benjamin Read.
Artistic philosophy: I am interested in change – from slow, flowing shifts to abrupt cuts, mirroring the ways new thoughts arrive in our brains in flashes of emotion or slowly building over time. These fluctuations are neither negative nor positive but simply acts.
By working to create dark, delicate, playful, and rigid events in all of their glory and horrific magnificence, I endeavor to unleash flux: flux of perspective, flux of meaning and flux of composing elements. With this as my goal, all forms of expression are significant – from the banal to the intellectual, from commonplace to virtuosic.