Inspired by the loss of dance elders during the pandemic and the tenuous attempt to maintain connection through various registers of movement, this work investigates how dance, familial, and chosen lineages show up in our moving bodies. The work plays with the ways movement transfers and iterates across performers as they remain in motion. Performers enact structures of looping, transmission, and remembrance as they navigate forms of collectivity that shift as the dance unfolds. Lineage stems from considerations of dance elders and social and ancestral memory as it works with logics of transmission and slippage through performance. Throughout, we approach lineage as a site of complicated affects, including grief, trauma, nostalgia, joy, and ambivalence.

Performed June 1-3, 2023 at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art

Choreography and concept: Danielle Ross Performers: Muffie Delgado Connelly, Allie Hankins, Hannah Krafcik, and Emma Lutz Higgins Sound Design: Juniana Lanning Lighting Design: Brian Jennings

Photos: Sarah Marguier (above) and Chelsea Petrakis (below); Video: Kelly Rauer and Seth Nehil (editor)