By My Own Hand, Part 2: TRANSPARENCY

Allie Hankins’ performance series, By My Own Hand, threads together ideas of manipulation, suicide, sleight of hand, and self-reliance, and queers notions of autobiography and self-reflection. In Part 1: GHOSTING (2022), Allie populated the space with light, shadow, haunted objects, dancing, and songs. Soundtracked by five tape recorders playing echoes and reverberations of past performances, rehearsals, and experiments, the show was an excavation and repurposing of the performance’s shadow or ghost. In Part 2: TRANSPARENCY, this excavation continues as a series of solos choreographed by Linda Austin, claire barrera, keyon gaskin, Takahiro Yamamoto, and Lu Yim, and performed by Allie. Each of the five solos is composed of elements (choreography, props, songs) from Part 1, and each solo may replicate, distort, or exaggerate any parts of Part 1 that the choreographers wish. Through the slippery processes of deconstruction, distillation, resurrection, and re-membering, Part 2: TRANSPARENCY reveals an aftermath of contending methods of makers and shared histories of friends and colleagues and confronts notions of finality, authorship, and perception of self. Lighting Design by Allison Knight-Blaine.

Performed at New Expressive Works in Portland, OR in 2023.