Photos by Karl-Heinz Mierke

Lineage: Circling the Line 

What passes between generations? Between countries? What settles in our bodies, shaping how we move, feel, and imagine? How have our embodied relationships to ideas of land and nature transformed through time, and how do these shifts live on through us?

What is family, and who are we kin to in this place?

Otto and Rowan work together with family lineage as both material and method. Through dance, voice, image, and shared authorship, they explore embodied ways of understanding what it means to be human in a time of rapid ecological, cultural, and social change. Their personal histories become portals into universal questions of inheritance, difference, and belonging. It invites audiences to reflect, listen, and imagine new forms of kin.

Work in progress performances

Tanzhaus-temporär, Kassel, Germany, October 2024

This is 50 minute  work in progress included dances and videos we have made in the last years. We worked with Olive Bieringa as a guest director and Carle Lange as a scenographer.

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.

Prøverommet, Hordaland Kunstsenter, Oktoberdans, Bit-Teatergarasjen, Bergen, October 2024 

++ Blackbox May, 2024

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

++ Blackbox Teater June, February 2023

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

Scenehuset, December 2023

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

Spleis, Scenehuset,  December 2022

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

Lineage, full show, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, 2020, Oslo Teater Festival

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.