^“If you’re a performer, manipulation is something you have to do,” says choreographer and dancer Allie Hankins. “I don’t think it’s negative. I’m not doing it maliciously. I’m not trying to make anyone do something they don’t want to do. I’m just trying to manipulate them into thinking that this is a good time.”

It’s an interesting admission for an artist whose latest performance work, By My Own Hand: Melody involves her on her hands and knees, laughing manically under a sheet, while degraded tape loops of long-ago recorded songs crackle ominously. Describing it sounds like a caricature of avant-garde dance. But when Hankins does it, it’s focused, funny, thoughtful, and—when you weren’t even paying attention—profound.

As one of Shaking the Tree’s 2025 Live Performance Artist Residents, Hankins will perform the latest iteration of her By My Own Hand series for three evening shows, July 11-13.

Hankins has been performing parts of By My Own Hand for three years and working on it for nearly eight. "I really thought it was going to be one solo, addressing these five tools," she sighs, in an interview with the Mercury. Back when she started working on it, in 2017, Hankins broke her onstage manipulations into five methods. Three, so far, have become shows: Ghosting, Transparency, and The Ache. Now, the fourth in the five-part series is Melody.

"I'll tell you my five tools of manipulation," Hankins said in Ghosting. They were: ghosting, transparency, the ache, melody, and saxophones.

"But we're not calling part five saxophones," she now says. 

Put perhaps too simply, the explanations of these tools are "acting a little mysterious," telling stories, nostalgia, and singing. Saxophones relates to her humor—itself being a joke that breaks the form.

If you saw Ghosting at Performance Works NW in 2022, or at On the Boards in Seattle, you will recognize some of the worn 20-second tape loops that are still part of Melody. Each iteration of the series carries the remnants of her former performances. Part two was choreographed by Takahiro Yamamoto, Lu Yim, keyon gaskin, claire barrera, and Linda Austin. Part five will be danced and performed by those same choreographers. This makes Melody the last part of Hankins' series that she will dance as a solo, and as it is the most focused on song, it has become her eulogy for the series.

"It's quite literal," she says of the theme. "People really like it when I sing, and I sing a lot in the show." Melody also showcases Hankins' increased skill with utilizing cassette recorders, both in making loops and in arranging the various independent machines (there are around 10 now) into layered soundscapes.

The distortion of the recordings over time allows the audience to project their own narratives onto what other stories might run inside By My Own Hand. It can take several listens to work out what Hankins was singing back in 2017, but a lot of it has to do with death or burying.

"Before I started this work, I read this essay ‘Female Spectator, Lesbian Specter: The Haunting,’ by Patricia White, which discusses the idea that the specter is lesbianism. My work really interacts with desire, generally, and queer desire certainly."

Hankins says she loves the way The Haunting (1963) was filmed, especially the idea that much of the actual haunting happens via disruption. "The way that Hollywood cinema was able to talk about or introduce lesbianism was to insert women into these paranormal situations, like their sexuality is the haunting. I can't say I'm explicitly referencing it, but that idea is always present for me."

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By My Own Hand, Part 4: Melody plays at Shaking the Tree Theatre, 823 SE Grant, July 11-13, 7:30 pm, $10-45 sliding scale, tickets here, watch By My Own Hand, Part 1-3 at alliehankins.com