First Post Hellos!

Hello, I’m Alice Sheppard, choreographer, dancer, and artistic lead of Kinetic Light. You may remember me as a blogger who wrote under the name of wheelchair dancer. (Yeah, that was way back when.) At that time, I wrote anonymously about disability, dance, race, travel, gender, wheelchairs, … whatever, really.

I’ve been a professional dancer since 2006. I’ve been a company member with AXIS Dance Company and Infinity Dance Theater. I’ve also danced with Marc Brew Company, Gdance/Ballet Cymru, and Full Radius Dance Company. My most recent commissions are from CRIPSiE, Full Radius Dance Company, and MOMENTA Dance Company. I’ve done some solo work and given a number of university performance lectures (this one is a fave).

This space is for my new dance project, Descent From Beauty, and the collaborative company that is making this work: Kinetic Light. I will be writing notes and ideas about the process of creating the dance itself, the joys of working with my collaborators, Laurel Lawson and Michael Maag, and the ideas behind the project as a whole.

Some of my posts will be short; I’m thinking of them as postage stamps, places where I can record and send ideas. Others will be longer, more complicated grapplings with the ideas in the piece, the process of making it, and the challenges of being an artist, etc. etc.

I’m looking forward to being able to introduce you to the three of us and to our other collaborators: Sara Hendren, Yevgeniya Zastavker, and their students at Olin College.

This is a new journey, and I am really happy to share it with you.

Please join the conversation in the comments, on Twitter, and on Instagram. We’ve been using the hashtag #ramprodin and you can also follow us individually. Alice is @wheelchairdancr; Laurel is @llcycore; and Michael is @longred.

We look forward to talking with you,

A

Image Description: The artists of Kinetic Light sit in a line on the ramp. Alice, a light-skinned black woman with multi-coloured curly hair, sits in her wheelchair on the left. She smiles and leans forward into Laurel’s back; Laurel, a curly red-haired white woman, sits in her chair in the middle; she smiles and leans forward onto Michael’s shoulder. Michael, a white man with glasses, long white hair, and beard, sits in his chair on the right. He leans back into Laurel.