We’re in the middle of a busy and ambitious season for Compagnie Katie Ward. March and April 2018 will be spent developing and finalizing a performance score for 25 spectators called Machine for Really Real Imaginaries. April, May and June are dedicated to developing a solo performance called Transactional Endorphin Self Image. Also in April 2018 CKW will bring a remount 2015’s Infinity Doughnut for a performance in Quebec City.

Project #1 - Machine for Really Real Imaginaries:

A group of twenty-five spectators come together in a room. As they enter, each spectator is given a score that assigns them a character. The scores guide spectators towards shared dialogue and actions. They will be the only performers, and for the rest of the performance, they will be guided by their scores. Following these performance scores, spectator/performers gradually form an ensemble; a temporary community that daydreams, recollects and visualizes shared imaginaries through the respective roles of each of its members. Characters such as Reality, An Argument You Had, Your Family, and The Things We Do Only As A Group, argue, predict the future, try to achieve consensus, become desirous, classify everything, introduce current topics, and move from the state of things as they actually exist towards a formation of new images, ideas, conceptions and visualizations. Slipping endlessly between reality and imagination, they put into operation the Machine of Really Real Imaginaries and become its constitutive components!

Project #2 Transactional Endorphin Self Image:

CKW is also developing a solo performance for founder/choreographer Katie Ward. This piece tethers her own representation of words to words spoken aloud. The goal is to be constantly engaging in the impossible task of embodying the meaning of a word, in an effort to retain an element of unpreparedness and/or unfamiliarity with the words used to avoid creating a language of movements. This will employ my imagination live.

Transactional Endorphin Self Image will continue to develop ways of spontaneously representing words and ways to activate spectators’ imaginations while playing with representation. Katie’s goal is to create a sense of the breadth and visualization of the formations and structures of exclusion and their concrete effect on the bodies - particularly the bodies of women.

Project #3- Infinity Doughnut:

This fun and participative piece is a 70 minute choreography for four dancers accompanied by original music. Infinity Doughnut sets in motion the phenomenon of interconnection, exploring the simultaneous evolution of the many internal and external relationships of a group. Performers and spectators are encouraged to give in to the flow of the show – to welcome change and spontaneity. The work proposes a state of sensitivity to variations of mood, spatial configuration and shifting interpretations.

The public is invited to sit on blankets that are spread out on the floor. The dancers wait - then begin to move, to incorporate small gestures that originate from the audience (a laugh, a cough…). From these gestures, choreography emerges and increases - swells and decreases – always changing shape. Some spectators are dragged on blankets, reinforcing the fact that each spectator experiences this performance from a different point of view. All perspectives are validated - and the presence of the viewer is within the choreographic language.

CKW's creation and development of new performance forms