Magpie Music Dance Company History 1995-2005

Improvisation in a Magpie Music Dance Company performance (1995-2005) was not the antithesis of choreography or composition; it was how the choreography’s and compositions were made, out of practice both in the studio setting and the newness of a real time improvised performance. A Magpie Music Dance Company performance was about the experience of being there, you were participating in the event and thus, in a sense, the work.
Magpie was spearheaded by Katie Duck in Amsterdam in 1995 with dancers Eileen Stanley, Vincent Cacialono, Martin Sonderkamp, Sharon Smith, Michael Schumacher and Masako Naguchi with musicians Michael Vatcher and Mary Oliver and with light designer Ellen Knops. Magpie was formed in direct response to a need the artists had to re-consider and re-present Improvised performance within a contemporary context in the Netherlands and, as the work developed, internationally.
Several of the founding group members were lecturers or former students at the school for new dance development (SNDO). The School had a rich history in the study and practice of improvisation with specific connections to the American Judson Church movement. The work had become isolated within a community of dancers specializing in contact improvisation and improvisation methods. In Amsterdam and within the larger context of contemporary dance, improvised performance, as an explicit choreographic approach was underdeveloped. The artists involved with Magpie Music Dance Company wanted to develop the work in a contemporary context and re-look at improvised performance as a fundamental choreographic approach to a live event.
From 1995 to 2000 the Magpie artists practiced privately in rehearsal studios and publicly in performances with Katie Duck as the main project co-ordinate. The company presented a monthly series in their Amsterdam base at the Fijnhout Theatre, Melkweg theatre, Panama and OT301 cultural centre and did extensive tours nationaly and internationally exposing the work to a broad range of cultures, viewers and contexts. Every performance combined different artists from the Magpie collective.
From 2000-2005 Magpie toured the Netherlands with publicly funded projects around themes related to collectivist site specific performance and public interaction: Fingers in the pie / PI-PIED / BLINK / and Magnamedia. In 2005 they celebrated 10 years of performing nationally and internationally with the "10 years in a blink" festival which took place at the Bimhuis and OT301 cultural centre Amsterdam gathering together all artists who had worked with Magpie Muisc Dance company as well as other key practitioners in the field of improvisation. After the "10 years in a blink" festival, Katie Duck decided to change the single focused company into an umbrella company (Magpie Umbrella) so that she could support the independent art initiatives that had grown out of the Magpie Music Dance company work nationally and internationally.
Magpie Music Dance Company created high quality performance events but it also inspired dancers and musicians to use improvisation as a normal part of how they create and discuss their work. Over the ten years the company existed under the leadership of Katie Duck, the aim was to inform artist, funding bodies and critics within the dance and music fields how the word improvisation needs to be de mystified and placed as a normal part of how contemporary performance arts are taught, created and practiced today.

Videos of Magpie Music Dance Company