Author: Mette Garfield
Source: Terpsichore Magazine
Date: April 27, 2009
“The American dancer and choreographer Otto Ramstad explores the nervous system in an installation with white threads hanging from the ceiling. Nerve fibres, maybe? In Hello Nervous System, Ramstad allows his audience to sense how the nervous system is a meeting point for and affects the whole body. The fine web of the nervous system is mimed in his body’s quivering movements. All the way to the extreme ends of the fingers and feet that suddenly dance their own dance. Exactly as in the introductory home video with a little boy whose feet move unstoppably around the porch floor. The electro-musical universe that runs through the performance sounds like an automatic pump, a hydraulic system that mimes the nervous system as a process that works and is spread throughout the whole body. Even the fine nerve fibers of the face are presented, when Ramstad pulls his t-shirt over his head. So the outlines of his face are vaguely visible under the textile.”
