BodyCartography’s mission is to engage with the vital materiality of our bodies and minds to create live performance that facilitates a re-enchantment of embodiment, relationship, and presence. We create performance in urban, domestic, wild, and social landscapes. Our work is rooted in experimental dance, somatic and socially engaged practice, and public art.

Since 1998 Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad and collaborated to create performances, installations, films, workshops, talks, festivals and curatorial projects around the world presented by institutions such as the Walker Art Center, Performance Space 122, American Realness, Movement Research, TBA/Portland Institute of Contemporary Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA,  Lyon Opera Ballet, Lyon, Cinedans, Amsterdam, South East Dance, UK, Polish Public Television, Footnote Dance Company, Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand amongst others. 

Their work is features in many publications including the first two books about site dance internationally: Site Dance, the Lure of Alternative Spaces published by University of Florida Press and Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance published by Routledge and the recently released Te Ao Live: Experimental Dance Aotearoa NZ in the Early 21st Century.

In 2019 Bieringa and Ramstad became the directors for Somatic Education Australia’s first Body-Mind Centering® Somatic Movement Educator program in Melbourne, Australia. 

Their work lives in the permanent collection of Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand. Recent performances have taken place at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Weisman Museum, Minneapolis, the Performance Arcade Festival, Wellington, and Kulturetaten’s SAMMENonGATA commission for Schous plass, Oslo. They are artists in residence at the Norsk Teknisk Museum 2020-2021.

Olive Bieringa (NZ) trained with Judson Church choreographers at the European Dance Development Center in the Netherlands where she acquired a BA. She has an MFA in Performance and New Media from Long Island University, NY and is a Certified Teacher of Body-Mind Centering® and DanceAbility®. She has collaborated with numerous artists and has appeared in the work of choreographers Deborah Hay, Yoshiko Chuma, Sara Shelton Mann, Karen Nelson, Jennifer Monson, Eva Karczag and Stephanie Skura. 

Otto Ramstad (USA) holds a BA in Dance, Improvisation, and the Moving Image, from Goddard College and is a Certified Teacher of Body-Mind Centering®. He has been featured in the work of DD Dorvillier, Miguel Gutierrez, Shelton Mann, Karen Nelson, Lisa Schmitt, Scott Wells, and Kitt Johnson. Ramstad’s solo work has been performed in Norway, Denmark, Finland, England, Paris, New Zealand, Italy, NYC, around the USA. He is a recipient of an Archibald Bush Fellowship Artist 2006. He holds an MA in Choreography from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHIO). 

Recent Direction, Production, Performance

2021 closer in collaboration with Footnote Dance, Performance Arcade, Wellington, New Zealand 2020 Lineage, Oslo International Teater Festival,  2019 TOGETHERING, Kulturataten commission for Schous plass, Oslo,  Lineage at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Follow at Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand 2018 action movie & Lineage at Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, felt room at Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Performance Arcade, New Zealand, Follow, Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand 2017 action movie at Art Shanty Projects & Performance Arcade, New Zealand, Black Box, Oslo Lineage & felt room Perlman Teaching Museum, Carleton College, Northfield, MN, Lineage at Art Shanty Projects 2016 closer, Performance Arcade, New Zealand, Art Shanty Project, Minnesota, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, action movie at Vital Matters Dance Festival, Lineage at Riff Talks, School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Northampton, Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, TILT, Fargernes, Praxis Festivalen, Dansenhuset, Oslo, Norway, Vital Matters Dance Festival, Southern Theater, Minneapolis, Dance for Syria benefit, Phoenix Theater, Minneapolis 2015 closer, Minnesota Museum of American Art, Intangibles collection/Walker Shop, Northern Spark, City Hall, Red Eye Theater and many other locations across the Twin Cities Super Nature, New Moves Festival, Kelly Strayhorn Theater, Pittsburgh, Dance Place, Washington DC Low, for Footnote Dance, Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland, New Zealand, Jump, SDSU and CSUSM, CA, Untitled (working title), SDSU and CSUSM, CA 2013 Untitled (working title), Choreographers Evening, Walker Art Center, Symptom, CounterPULSE, San Francisco, Super Nature, American Realness/COIL Festival, Abrons Art Center, Performance Space 122, NYC, Storefront Theater, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs 2012 Super Nature, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 2011 Symptom, COIL Festival, Performance Space 122, NYC 2010 Symptom, Intermedia Arts and Performance Space 122. Mammal, Lyon Opera Ballet commission, Les Subsistances, Lyon Jump & Hello Nervous System, Philadelphia Dance Project. 

Installations

2019 Lineage and felt room; on paper prototype, Oslo National Academy of the Arts 2018 felt room, Performance Arcade, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Weisman Art Museum 2017 Lineage, video installation, 96 minutes, Perlman Teaching Museum, Carleton College, 2014 Super Nature, TBA, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art
2013 Super Nature, Chicago Rooms, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs
2012 Super Nature installation, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Karas Gallery, Kiev 2011 Mammology, Bell Museum of Natural History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 

Video Works 

Lineage, 2017-2019 96 minutes Undertide, 2014 10 min Something for Myself 2012 5 min, Entreterritorios 2008 20 min film + 16 screen installation, collaboration with Marila Veloso, Brazil/Argentina Small Dance 2007 1 min, featuring Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson 

Curatorial Projects

2018-2021 PRAXIS Oslo 2015-2017 Future Interstates Performance Series Cowles Center 2016 Vital Matters Dance Festival, Southern Theatre, Minneapolis 2012-2014 Public Art St Paul’s City Art Collaboratory 2009 Choreographers Evening, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 2008 – 2010 + 2016 SEEDS|Earthdance, arts and ecology festival, Earthdance, Massachusetts

Fellowships and Funders

Fond for Utøvende Kunstenere, Kulturrådet,  Oslo Kommune, Marin Headlands/Alumni New Works, American Composers Forum, Creative Exploration Fund, National Dance Project, American Composers Forum, National Performance Network Creation Fund and Forth Fund, CEC Artslink, McKnight Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Moore Family Foundation, St Paul Public Art, Multi Arts Production Fund/Rockefeller Foundation, Arts International, Bush Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Forecast Public Art Works, Lions Foundation, Wellington City Council, The Performing Arts Foundation of NZ, Creative New Zealand, San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Fund, CASH/ Hewlett Packard Foundation

Recent Awards

2020 Oslo Kommune Diverse Stipendium 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Art 2013 City Pages Dance Company of the Year

Recent Residencies

2020-2021 Norsk Teknisk Museum, Oslo 2018 Weisman Art Museum Collaborative Studio, Minneapolis 2017 Winona Sate University, Carleton College 2016 Marin Headlands, Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson residency Bennington College, VT and Earthdance, MA 2014 Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota 2013 Soap Factory 2012 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis 2011 Bell Museum, Minneapolis, Impulstanz, Vienna, Studio 206, Minneapolis 2010 Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, Florida, Les Subsistances, Lyon 

Recent Commissions

2018 Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand 2017 Winona State University, Carleton College, Minnesota 2016 Carleton College, Minnesota, Footnote Dance, New Zealand, Young Dance, Minneapolis 2014 Footnote Dance, Touch Compass, New Zealand 2012 Young Dance, Minneapolis 2010 Lyon Opera Ballet 

Collaborations

2018/19 Carle Lange’s LiveReMake, Oslo National Academy of the Arts 2016 Chloe Lum/Yannick Desranleau, St Cloud State 2015 Intangibles Project, Walker Art Center 2014 Though I Destroyed My Body Doing It, a short film with Works Progress 2013 Station to Station, Doug Aitken, Union Depot, St Paul 2013 Domestic Integrities, Fritz Haeg, Walker Art Center 2009-2012 Emmett Ramstad and composer Zeena Parkins for 1⁄2 Life, Symptom and Super Nature 

Recent Publications

2021 Resisting Extinction excerpt, Love in the Covid Chronicle website 2020 Otto Ramstad’s Lineage, Vis Journal online 2019 Te Ao Live: Experimental Dance Aotearoa NZ in the Early 21st Century, 2019. Print. Under Seeing: An Approach to Feeling and Sensing Performance. Contact Quarterly, Vol. 44 no. 1 Winter/Spring 2019, Vis Journal  2018 “BodyCartography’s closer.” Kramer, Michael J. Theater Magazine. Space, body, and movement: An interview with BodyCartography Project’s Olive Bieringa, Te Papa website, BodyCartography Project – Still Crazy After all the years, Radio New Zealand 2016 Meandering Methodologies, Deviant Disciplines — Four Years of City Art Collaboratory. Ed. Shanai Matteson, Public Art Saint Paul, Saint Paul, Minnesota. 2016. Print. 2015 Moving Sites – Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance, Routledge, 2011 Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternate Spaces, University of Florida Press. Full bibliography available at https://bodycartography.org/category/press/