{"id":142517,"date":"2025-05-18T17:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T17:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/dancing-with-ghosts-seattledances\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T17:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T17:41:10","slug":"dancing-with-ghosts-seattledances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/18\/dancing-with-ghosts-seattledances\/","title":{"rendered":"DANCING WITH GHOSTS | SeattleDances"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Allie
Photo by Michelle Smith-Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At her April twelfth displaying at Base: Experimental Arts + Space in Seattle, Allie Hankins invited her viewers right into a ghostly realm the place reminiscence, expertise, and physicality collided in an uncanny trend. Presented as an \u201cEntry Point\u201d for her residence at Base to develop the solo <\/span>By My Own Hand, Part 4: MELODY<\/span><\/i>, this work-in-progress preview was an eerie and deeply private meditation on dying and presence in each religious and technological methods.<\/span><\/p>\n

The set features a desk draped in a blue tablecloth that includes a large-scale line drawing of a human face. At the start of the efficiency, the entire desk begins to slip diagonally downstage, turning into an animated hang-out in its personal proper. Disembodied recordings of Hankins voice start to play because the desk makes its method middle stage. Her recorded laughter begins to combine with the sound of her reside amplified cackle as, from beneath the desk, she pulls the tablecloth off, and divulges she is the \u201cghost\u201d on the mic haunting it. This tableau set the tone: objects wouldn’t stay inert in Hankins\u2019 world\u2014they might be charged and altered along with her interactions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Allie
Photo by Michelle Smith-Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stacks of cassette tapes, many handheld tape recorders, and some amps and lights on stands are arrange strategically onstage. Hanging from the sunshine grid above, microphones dangle like ghost traps from the film <\/span>Ghostbusters<\/span><\/i>. One of the cabled mics hangs simply inches above a tape recorder and stack of cassettes. Hankins interacts with this stuff methodically, recording her voice, pausing to bop and reply to the soundscape she creates, chatting with the viewers as she adjusts objects on stage. Hankins continues altering and looping her voice all through the piece. At one level she spells out the phrase \u201cghost\u201d into 5 separate units again and again. The repetitious nature of the recorded voice distorts time\u2014previous, current, and future selves collide in a sonic corridor of mirrors. At one level she says, \u201cWe all have a ghost inside of us.\u201d It was greater than a poetic chorus\u2014it was a name to motion as she activated her physique, voice, and the assorted objects surrounding her to make the invisible tangible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This dance with sound was extra than simply auditory\u2014it turned sculptural. Hankins reorganizes the tablecloth with the enormous face, situating it on a lightweight stand on stage. This new ghost floats upwards as she raises the peak of its base, doubling the face in measurement and presence. Later, she started utilizing one of many hanging mics like a pendulum, letting it swing backwards and forwards. Little by little, she knocks over a precarious tower of stacked cassette circumstances, turning trigger and impact into one thing rhythmic and revelatory. Another second of mic pendulum motion created a form of suggestions set up. Tones have been created because the mic repeatedly swung backwards and forwards previous an amplifier, showcasing an intentional sonic \u201cproblem\u201d that turned a music to bop to.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Allie
Photo by Michelle Smith-Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hankins\u2019 strategy to composition\u2014as one thing sonic, bodily, and reactive\u2014was deeply choreographic, even when no physique moved onstage. I ponder, too, in regards to the choreography of her singing voice (her voice is singular and powerful, paying homage to early Kate Bush). At the post-showing Q&A, Hankins says, \u201cComposing sound on machines feels like choreography because it\u2019s spatial and temporal.\u201d This sentiment rang very true throughout a bit the place she danced in response to the swinging mic\u2019s suggestions \u201csong\u201d\u2014a duet with the artifact of amplification itself. Her swiftly shifting limbs echo the identical traces and arcs of the swinging cable, however she additionally seems to be into the viewers as if we’re part of the dance. Is she imagining and dancing with the ghosts within all of us?<\/span><\/p>\n

MELODY<\/span><\/i> isn\u2019t solely about ghostly machines. It\u2019s additionally a uncooked self-portrait. \u201cIt is a solo. It is a self-portrait. It is an autobiography,\u201d she famous in the course of the Q&A. There have been moments of vulnerability, humor, and beneficiant absurdity that made the work really feel deeply lived-in. At one level, Hankins screams into the blue tablecloth (now wadded up on the stage), her voice muffled and redirected as she crouches and slides her head throughout the ground in a dance of frustration. At one other second, she makes use of a Whirly Tube toy as a sound supply, its excessive pitched tone taking up the house as she twirls it passionately above her head, singing together with the tone. These components didn\u2019t intention for readability\u2014they reveled of their absurdity.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Allie
Photo by Michelle Smith-Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At one level, Hankins spoken textual content immediately addresses the temporality and mortality of artwork itself: \u201cMany parts of this piece are no longer with us. They\u2019re dead. Now this piece is haunted too.\u201d This self-aware framing is an invite to consider our personal relationship to our sounding our bodies and the methods we file and have a tendency to the reminiscences, aka ghosts, within us.<\/span><\/p>\n

With her razor-sharp wit, skillful expertise use, and fascinating dance vocabulary, Hankins blurs the traces between performer, sound artist, and ghost hunter. There\u2019s an suave chaos at play in her work\u2014an embrace of idiosyncrasies and absurdities that renders it alive. Her give attention to analog processes looks like a insurrection in opposition to digital sterility. In that insurrection lies a radical invitation to face mortality and reminiscence in a mischievously tender method.<\/span><\/p>\n

Allie Hankin\u2019s Base Entry Point residency displaying<\/span><\/i><\/a> occurred on April 12, 2025. By My Own Hand, Part 4: MELODY<\/span><\/i> will obtain its full premiere in Portland in July. <\/span>alliehankins.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[ad_1] Photo by Michelle Smith-Lewis At her April twelfth displaying at Base: Experimental Arts + Space in Seattle, Allie Hankins invited her viewers right into a ghostly realm the place reminiscence, expertise, and physicality collided in an uncanny trend. Presented as an \u201cEntry Point\u201d for her residence at Base to develop the solo By My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":142519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2077,9875,511],"class_list":{"0":"post-142517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dance","8":"tag-dancing","9":"tag-ghosts","10":"tag-seattledances"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showbizztoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}