December 7-9 and 14-16, 2023 Part of NEXT FEST NW 2023: Rupture/Reverence Presented by Velocity Dance Center 12th Ave Arts | 1620 12th Ave, Seattle, WA

Performed and created by: Danielle Ross Sound Design: Juniana Lanning

Lineage (solo) is the latest iteration of a larger project including the ensemble work of the same title which premiered at PICA in 2023. This project was born out of the loss of dance elders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions lingered after their deaths: How does my dancing body hold the traces and ripples of theirs? How does remembrance or transfer happen through the ways that I now dance with, through, and for them? In this ensemble performance, we approached lineage as a site of complicated affects and ruptures, including grief, trauma, nostalgia, joy, and ambivalence. We enacted structures of looping, transmission, and remembrance as we navigated forms of collectivity which shifted as this dance unfolded. There were many people on this stage with us, and they flickered in and out of view and feeling. 

Lineage (Solo) is a performance of trace. It labors to be reflective of the archive — of people, dances, memories, and sensations — that were collectively built in the initial full length work. My solo body carries these specters: I play with what my physically unaccompanied body might call onto the stage as it moves through the people and places that are part of Lineage's archive. Sensations of the apparition are generated through its choreographies, sound design, and play with objects. This solo lives in the outer registers of perception, playing with the threshold of how we understand and confirm presence. In that way, this work also asks questions about embodiment and what we expect from it. How do we expect performers to show up fully onstage? What might sensations of disembodiment do instead? In its solo form, Lineage (Solo) explores the mighty ways that the leftover body might help us sense and perceive the whispers and hints of the collective archive of movers in our heritages. It asks us to take seriously the body as a container for traces, as leftovers, as fragments, and as a graveyard.

The footage below includes in-progress material from the rehearsal process. All clips were shot and edited by Ross.