Ultrasound Dance

Directed by Amelia Garretson-Persans and choreographed by Dana Dotson

Ultrasound Dance uses light, choreography and music to elevate the experience of watching an ultrasound. An ultrasound makes visible the invisible parts of the body. It can reveal secrets about a child before they are born or shed light on complicated internal problems.

As a parent of a child with an abnormal genetic code, artist Amelia Garretson-Persans has spent a lot of time transfixed by ultrasound images, powerless to interpret them but trying to nonetheless. Ultrasound Dance seeks to bring viewers into this intimate experience through a human scale representation of an ultrasound.

The staging of Ultrasound Dance will be of interest to those who are invested in contemporary art’s thematic elevation of formative, transcendent experiences that often go unrecognized in daily life, such as the moment when the body’s hidden world is viewed in a sonogram, or the revelation of a future child’s potential challenges. Many lives have been touched by experiences related to the themes explored in Ultrasound Dance, but these heavy moments are often marginalized; through this new experimental dance piece, we are granted the freedom of reflection and the challenge of re-confrontation with shrouded somatic memories.

Ultrasound Dance is presented by UNE Art Gallery Biddeford as part of its exhibition, “Light and Shadow: Motherhood, Creativity, and the Discourse of Ability,” on view through October 20. This piece is related to the artist’s short film, “Pizza Hu,” currently presented as part of this exhibition.

Conceived and directed by Amelia Garretson-Persans
Choreographed by Dana Dotson
Dancers: Dana Dotson, Jen Hoffer, Matea Mills Andruk
Original music by Michael Huff
Costumes designed by Dana Dotson and fabricated by Marie Immaculée Kabazo and Dana Dotson
Lighting design by Audrey Kastner
Ultrasound device created by Elana Adler
Event image by Hannah Rafkin

Artist Bios:

Amelia Garretson-Persans is an interdisciplinary artist based in southern Maine. She received her BFA in Studio Art from Concordia University in Montreal and her MFA from the Maine College of Art in Portland, ME. She has shown work in Maine, New York, Tennessee, Quebec and elsewhere. Her residencies include the Digital Narratives residency at the Banff Centre in Alberta, the Jenny Family Residency in Nova Scotia and the Stephen Pace House in Maine.

She is passionate about creative collaboration and community engagement and helped produce dozens of short films by directors with disabilities while at Bomb Diggity Arts (2014-2022) as well as a dynamic slate of public programming. She lives in Portland with her two children.

A lifelong dance enthusiast, Dana Dotson (she/they) is overjoyed to collaborate with Amelia, Jen, & Matea on “Ultrasound Dance.” Dana has an AA in theater, BA in studio art, and is currently pursuing her masters through UMF’s Counseling Psychology-Creative Arts program. They view dance as a connective thread that strings our holistic parts together and functions as a metaphysical conduit. She enjoys practicing aerial silks, dabbling in a myriad of art forms, & strives for intersectional advocacy.

Dana has taught yoga, gymnastics, and STEAM; and is grateful to have collaborated with Amelia on previous projects including; dancing in Ultrasound Dance/V1 (2020), choreographing Fairy Sighting (2021), and costuming for A Tincture of Time (2022). Her choreography style melds improvised and prescribed movement into dance narratology, offering the audience semiotic channels wherein their own interpretations and reactions emerge. Dana, Matea, & Jen have enjoyed realizing this piece rooted in Amelia’s work in “A Tincture in Time” & “‘Light and Shadow: Motherhood, Creativity, and the Discourse of Ability.” Archetypal symbolism & intimate contemplation synergize into visual personifications that consider somatic memory, honoring families, marginalization, & transcendence through the playfulness & ritual of dance. 

Michael Huff is a singer-songwriter from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His website is here.