I have been teaching since I began to perform professionally in the mid 70’s. For me, teaching, alongside ones professional practice, is one and the same process. I do, therefore I teach.
Multidisciplinary Workshop
For professional or emerging performers. Students in Dance, Theatre, Music, and the fine arts who are curious about interdisciplinary collaboration.
Katie Duck is a renowned performer, teacher, and director known for her groundbreaking work in dance, music, theater, and performance art. Her multidisciplinary workshops are internationally respected for blending movement, sound, text, and visual elements in a deeply intuitive and experimental framework.
The central goal is to enhance real time composition skills and expand creative expression through:
-Physical improvisation
-Vocal/textual experimentation
-Sound and movement relationship
-Awareness of space, timing, and audience
-Collaborative ensemble work
While each workshop is shaped by the group’s experience and context, common elements include:
-Daily warm-ups that involve physical and vocal exercises to build presence and responsiveness.
-Improvisation scores (structured prompts or games) used to explore movement, voice, and interaction.
-Solo, duet, and group explorations using real-time composition principles.
-Interdisciplinary tasks, such as adding live music, text, or visual art to performance improvisations.
-Feedback & reflection sessions to refine awareness and artistic decision-making.
Katie’s teaching style emphasises:
-Intuition over impulse or technique
-Failure as a tool for discovery
-Humour
-Real-time decision making
-The body as an instrument of expression
-Listening (to sound, space, and others)
Notable Themes:
-The performer’s presence in the moment
-The role of chaos and order in creativity
-Feminist and political contexts in performance
-Autonomy and authorship in improvised work
Workshops are intense, playful, and laced with Katie Duck’s insistence to find humour in every dark corner of the work.
BODY BODY BODY CLASSES
Classes offered periodically through out the year in the Attic Studio Amsterdam on Thursdays and Fridays at 16:00 to 18:00. Open to all bodies. Leads towards improvisation sessions. Included in Katie’s multidisciplinary workshops as a warm up the body
Katie Duck is an experimental performer, choreographer, and teacher who has incorporated themes of early human development—including movement patterns seen in babies—into her body classes. Her teaching often references developmental movement patterns, which include the ways babies naturally explore and gain control over their bodies.
-How babies roll, crawl, sit, stand, and walk, emphasising the natural intelligence of these movements.
-Encouraging adult dancers to return to instinctual and organic ways of moving.
-Spinal undulations, floor work, and crawling may be explored to reconnect with foundational motor development.
-Emphasising how babies learn through touch, sound, and internal sensation. These sensory processes help dancers, performers and anyone who is interested in becoming more attuned to the body.
-Includes improvisation and play, which mirrors how babies interact with the world—with curiosity and without pretence.
Encouraging participants to “listen” to their bodies as a baby would without imposed technique or expectations.
The aim is to re kindle a curiosity for discovering movement, question what motivates you to move and “why” you choose to go one direction or another in any given creative situation.
“Dance is fancy walking”
“We forget that we have a body once we reach adulthood. Before that, it was the first thing we remembered as we woke in the morning glee full and proud that we learned to step out of our beds. We remember we have a body, we are reminded we have a body, we take detours in order to re-discover daily we have a body”
“The agility we have to orientate ourselves in space it is a gift. As we move through space, the chemical rush we receive to the brain enhances our perception of “Body Body Body”.
Teaching projects held in my base Amsterdam
Xmas Workshop OT301 – December 29, 30, 31 yearly
Improvisation Summer Course – Late August yearly
Multidisciplinary workshops Attic Studio Amsterdam Sundays 11:00-18:00 – announced monthly
Body Body Body Classes Attic Studio Thursdays and Fridays 16:00-18:00 – announced monthly
To keep up to date with my monthly classes and workshops in my Attic Studio Amsterdam, join my mailing list – katieduckmail@katieduck.com