Magdalena Ptasznik is a choreographer and performer. She graduated in choreography from the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam and in sociology from the University of Warsaw. In 2007 she qualified as contemporary dance instructor completing a course at the Mazovia Culture and Arts Centre in Warsaw.
She has participated in workshops run by Meg Stuart, Ria Higler, Robert Steijn, Lisa Nelson, David Zambrano, Ivana Muller and Bojana Kunst, La Ribot, Xavier Le Roy, Igor Dobricic, and Rosalind Crisp.
Her solo pieces, exercises for a Hero (2009) and surface.territory (2011), have been presented in the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, Portugal and Poland (at Stary Browar in Poznań, and during the New Dance Festival in Warsaw, the Interdisciplinary Fringe Festival in Wrocław and the International Dance Theatres Festival in Lublin). Ptasznik has also created choreographies for other dancers, namely entilted film stills#1-11(2010) or secrets (2011). She performed for Deborah Hay, La Ribot, Chiyo Ogino, and Anna Nowicka.
In 2011 she was selected to take part in the DanceWEB programme taking place as part of the Impulstanz festival in Vienna, and Meet the Next Generation taking place in conjunction with the eXplore Dance Festival in Bucharest.
In her work, Ptasznik focuses on developing her artistic language and on choreography. In 2012 taking part in the Solo Projekt programme of the Art Stations Foundation at Stary Browar in Poznań she created the piece surface.territory. In 2013 she took part in the NRW Tanzrecherche residency in Bielefeld, where she launched surfing together with dramaturge Eleonora Zdebiak.
The piece was premiered in May 2014 at the Art Stations Gallery in Poznań.
As choreographer she is interested in creating circumstances, frameworks, boundaries within which unique body compositions may occur, and in exploring how they are perceived and experienced. She is interested in compositions defined by the uniqueness and actuality of given time and place. She is interested in the material quality of the reality its permanence, impermanence, changeability and instability. She treats performance as a practice happening in given time and going beyond narration. In her view, an important part of choreography is the way the performer gets involved in it, how the material is approached and performed in conditions that change with each presentation.
In her body practice, Ptasznik uses somatic techniques, release, Body Mind Centering, body weather, and elements of Tai Chi.
She is co-founder of Centrum w Ruchu (2013), the first association and studio established and managed by Warsaw-based independent choreographers.
http://magdalenaptasznik.wordpress.com
