Alice Sheppard

Bio

Alice Sheppard is a British choreographer and dancer. Before discovering dance, Sheppard worked in academia, teaching English and Comparative Literature. She eventually became of a member of AXIS Dance Company and would go on to form Kinetic Light, an artistic coalition created in collaboration with dancer Laurel Lawson, and lighting and video artist, Michael Maag. In her work as a dancer and choreographer, Sheppard challenges and expands the notion of disability and explores the possibilities of movement. Of her practice, she states: “I begin with my body, as it is with my wheelchair, as it is without my wheelchair, as it is with crutches, and even with crutches and chair together. My crutches and chair are not tools that compensate for my impairment. Nor are they simply devices that I use for traveling across the studio. I understand all these starting points as embodiments that have different movement possibilities. The lope of a crutch feels to me as elegant as that of a gazelle; the push of a chair creates a glide akin to skating; a roll on the floor creates grounded-ness and a different understanding of the spine. I want to draw out the expressive capacity of disabled bodies and minds by acknowledging and actively drawing on the movement of impairment. I integrate mainstream dance vocabularies into the unique movement of each dancer. As my work develops, I seek roots for each piece in what I know of disability art, culture, and history.” This month Sheppard will debut Descent, an evening-length dance work that tells the story of Venus and Andromeda, as brought together by Rodin.