Otto Ramstad’s Lineage looks at learning and how we learn. It 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 and 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, 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.

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

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.