Photos by Karl-Heinz Mierke

Lineage: Circling the Line (work in progress) 

What passes between generations? Between countries? What lands in our bodies? How have our embodied relationships to the ideas of ‘land’ and ‘nature’ transformed through time?

Otto and Uma Ramstad work together with matrilineal family lineage and extend this notion of family to ecosystems and mother earth to connect to audiences at foundational levels. As we share creative and embodied ways of processing what it is to be a human being in this rapidly changing time, our personal stories are portals into universal conditions of being connected to each other across time and through difference.

This collaboration is a continuation of Otto Ramstad’s research from Lineage, which was presented at KHiO 2019 and Oslo Internasjonale Teaterfestival 2020. With artistic genealogical research as a backdrop, he and Uma will move from looking at the past in the present to looking from the present to the future.

Tanzhaus-temporär, Kassel, Germany, Oct 2024

Circling the Line – work in progress

This is a work in progress composition with the dances and videos we have made in the last years. We brought in Olive Bieringa as a guest director and Carle Lange as a stenographer.

Spleis, Scenehuset, Feb 2022

Circling the Line – work in progress

This is the first dance collaboration between Otto and Uma. Uma designed the costumes and created the dagger props. The music was chosen together. Dance scores created together.

++ Blackbox Teater June, 2023

Circling the Line – work in progress

This dance was created by Otto and Uma. It uses scores adapted from Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores and choreography created from Dungeons and Dragons spells (DnD is a major interest of Uma’s). Otto edited together music from the RZA’s soundtrack from Ghost Dog and Uma wrote and performed the original song “Inside the outside” at the end of the performance.

Scenehuset Dec 2023

Circling the Line – Front Porch in the Sun song 

This is a performance of a song written by Otto’s father Eric Ramstad in the 80’s. Eric died in July, 2023 and Uma and Otto performed the song at his funeral. In this version they are joined by Otto’s mother Josie Winship on guitar.

++ Blackbox May, 2024

Circling the Line – work in progress

This performance was created by Otto and Uma. It uses two songs from Adrienne Lenker. The dance scores were created referencing Lisa Nelson’s Tuning Scores.

Bird Lady vs. the Galloping Gonads – animation

This hand drawn animation was made by my mother Josie Winship. It was made in 1970, before Otto was born. It shows her work with transformations with animations.

Lineage, full show, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, April, 2019

This is the first work of the Lineage series. It was created between 2016 and 2019 when it was shown as Otto’s final MA presentation at KHiO. It chronicles Otto’s process searching for his relatives, finding the land where his great grandfather John Ramstad was born. It was his first work using dance and somatic work together with ‘artistic genealogy as a method of artistic research to choreograph with. Videos by Otto, scenography together with Carle Lange, lighting by Agnethe Teleffsen and sound by Andrea Parkins.