Performance
Avgang 2019: Lineage
Otto Ramstad looks at learning and how we learn in his master project in choreography.
Lineage draws lines between: the learning practices of experimental dance and somatic work, and ‘artistic genealogy’: a creative interaction with his Norwegian ancestors and the ways that their lives have been recorded, to learn about his Norwegian cultural heritage, which has been previously invisible to him. Lineage strings together these seemingly separate ways of gaining knowledge to think about what it was like to live in a body in rural Norway 100 years ago and ask how this effects how we are living in our bodies now. How have our embodied relationships to the ideas of ‘land’ and ‘nature’ been transformed in this time?
Otto’s great grandfather John Fredrikson Ramstad, a metal worker, was born in Skjåk, Norway in 1890 on Ramstadtrædet husmann farm. He immigrated to Minnesota in 1911. He died in 1984 when Otto was 9 years old. In May 2016 Otto came to Norway for the first time. He found the farm where his great grandfather was born and went there. Otto was the first family member to visit the farm since John visited the farm in 1948. Using his knowledge of experimental dance, Otto made a series of dances and videos on the farm and in the surrounding mountains as a way to build a relationship with the places to process and learn from the information that he was collecting. This research has led him to immigrate to Norway as a way to experience the cultural learning, of which his great grandfather experienced in 1911.
Lineage is cultivating a practice for the care and preservation of intangible cultural knowledge. Family genealogies are preserved in national archives and created in family stories. The dance and somatic practices of Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores, Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine, and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Body-Mind Centering are archived in, and transmitted through the bodies of dance practitioners.
Program:
Tuesday 2nd, April, Scene 5, KHiO
10:30-13:00 video installation
14:00-16:00 open studio practice
Wednesday 3rd April, Scene 5 KHiO
10:30-13:30 video installation
14:00-16:00 open studio practice
Thursday 4th April, Scene 5 KHiO
10:30-13:00 video installation
14:30-16:30 open studio practice
18:00 Lineage - solo performance (Booking is needed)
Friday 5th April, Scene 5 KHiO
10:30-13:30 installation
14:30-16:30 open studio practice
19:00 Lineage - solo performance (Booking is needed)
Workshop more info here
Saturday 6th April, Studio 4, KHiO
10:00-17:00 workshop (more info here)
Sunday 7th April, Studio 4, KHiO
10:00-17:00 workshop (more info here)
Monday 8th April, Scene 5, KHiO
10:30-13:00 video installation
14:00-16:00 open studio practice
17:00 Lineage - solo performance (Booking is needed)
Tuesday 9th April, Scene 5, KHiO
10:30-13:00 video installation
14:00-16:00 open studio practice
17:00 Lineage - solo performance (Booking is needed)
Concept/video/scenography/text/dance: Otto Ramstad
Composer/live sound: Andrea Parkins
Lighting design: Agnethe Tellefsen
Scenography dramaturgy: Carle Lange
KHiO Advisors: Snelle Hall and Amanda Steggell
External Advisor: Chrysa Parkinson
Dance practice collaborators: Olive Bieringa, Maura Gahan, Margit Galanter, Kristin Van Loon with Lin van Kaam, Natanya Helena Kjølås, Vivian Pakkanen
Video Documentation: Olive Bieringa
Contributing researcher and dramaturgy: Sidsel Pape
Contributing genealogy researcher: Sylfest Lykre
Production assistance in Skjåk: Live Visdal
Photo: BodyCartography Project
The project is made possible with support from KHiO, NORAM Fellowship, Oppland Fylkeskommune, Headlands Center for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Art, & the US Embassy in Oslo.
Special thanks to Eric Ramstad, Josie Winship, Emmett Ramstad, Gry Ramstad, Odd Ramstad, Gudrunn Ramstad, Per Roar, Torunn Helene Robstad, Bojana Cvejic, Katarina Skår Lisa, Thomas Prestø, Kyuja Bae, Suzanne River, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson.
Otto Ramstad, born 1975 in Minneapolis, is a dance artist who works with movement research to create performances, video work and installations for theaters, galleries, museums and different site and context specific encounters. He began studying Body-Mind Centering® in 1981 at six years old with his first dance teacher Suzanne River and is now a Certified Teacher of Body-Mind Centering® teaching internationally and works as the Educational Director of Somatic Education Australasia. He has a BA from Goddard College, Vermont, USA.
For twenty years he has collaborated with Olive Bieringa as BodyCartography Project. BodyCartography Project engages with the vital materiality of our bodies to create live performance that facilitates a re-enchantment of embodiment, relationship, and presence.