Hometown: A small village in the United Kingdom --rural, changing, picturesque and quiet. The sort of place that comes to mind when you say, “English village.”
Current city: I divide my time between the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City
Age: 45
College and degree: Ph.D in Medieval Studies from Cornell
Website: http://alicesheppard.com/
All of the dance hats you wear: Dancer, choreographer -- occasional lecturer.
Non-dance work you do: I support selected disability rights and arts organizations by working on vision and mission dialogues.
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Describe your career and dance life...
5 years after college: I was in graduate school, about to finish the Ph.D. in Medieval Studies. I had no idea my field could even exist; I wasn’t disabled. And I wasn’t thinking about art and dance.
10 years after college: I was an assistant professor of English and Medieval Literature at Penn State. I was not a dancer. For most of this time, I wasn’t disabled. Then, things changed.
I first began to imagine the possibility of dance by disabled people at Emory University. I had recently become disabled and I was struggling to find myself, my body, and my way back into the flow. I decided to attend the 2004 conference on disability studies and the university—nominally as a way of scoping out the field. There was an arts component to the event; disabled dancer Homer Avila was performing. Homer danced with a fury and passion that left me, left many of us, gutted. Afterwards in the bar, I engaged him in a conversation about art, disability, loss and wholeness. He dared me to take a dance class; I accepted casually. Six weeks later, he was dead. I had had no idea. I began a journey towards dance as a way of honouring our conversation. Over a year later, I was awarded tenure at Penn State; I resigned and accepted the offer of an apprenticeship with AXIS Dance Company.
The story of how I became a dancer has deep political significance in the world of disability and dance. Homer taught me about the wholeness and beauty in disability. He taught me about the power and beauty of a disabled body. He taught me that disabled dancers do not have to work from a position of loss or lack; we can start—as all dancers do—with the bodies we have. I did not realize at the time how radical Homer’s ideas were. They were to me, as an academic, a logical expression of disability studies in the dance world. I did not know then what disabled dancers face when we choose dance as our way of living and being in the world.
What’s on your calendar for 2015?
2015 is a big deal for me. It’s the moment when a lot of the seeds I cast to the wind in 2013 and 2014 are taking on lives of their own. They’ve somehow rooted and started growing in all kinds of unanticipated directions. I’m a little scared. Last year, I ran myself dry; I could not have taken on a single new thing. Then, suddenly, the new year came and, well, I will be busy in 2015.
Some of the things that will be happening: For the past couple of years, I have been able to work with Marc Brew in a UK-based project. Marc created "Full of Words" for AXIS Dance Company, and I was lucky enough to meet him and dance in his work while I was there. When I left AXIS, I was able to continue our connection. In 2013-2014, I was able to dance with Ballet Cymru and GDance in a site-specific project that began at Hidcote Gardens in 2013 and ended at the Wales Millennium Centre in 2014. Funding pending, there will be a chance to dance in new projects in different places --not going to jinx it by naming names and mentioning it.
I will be spending more time in Atlanta with Full Radius Dance. Last year, I was invited in as a guest artist when a company dancer was no longer available; this year, I will be dancing in a new work. I’ve really been enjoying the process. I will go to Atlanta several times over six months to rehearse and to participate in the city’s dance celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
But the biggest news is the work that I will be doing outside these guest artist contracts. I am currently collaborating with Chicago-based dancer and performance artist, Baraka de Soleil. Together, we have founded ShepparddeS -- a duet company whose work emerges from our understandings of the intersections of race, disability and dance. More later -- our website is still under construction, as they say.
What are your strengths as a performer?
Let me begin to answer that question by thinking about what other people say. Usually, people commend me on my technical ability, my raw strength and grace, and my fierceness. Without wishing to be churlish -- a compliment is a compliment -- I often wonder how much of what they are seeing has to do with me versus their expectations of what a disabled dancer is or can do. Because audiences are, for the most part, not familiar with how dance by disabled people can work, they tend not to have experience in understanding what is “normal” and what is truly “unique” or “individual.” So many people come in with open hearts and minds, but their experience and contact with disabled people has been more informed by common expectation and social practice. For these people, the strength, power, and virtuousity of disabled performers hits hard against their understandings of disabled people as pitiful, weak or needing help.
I don’t want to be recognized as good or unusual in these ways. I would like people to see and acknowledge my integration with my chair and to recognize me for what I think is my best skill -- my ability to create a particular kind of space.
What do you love about performing?
The feeling of my body coming into a new realm. As I stretch into my first movement, my inner voice goes quiet, the world disappears and I am truly, utterly alive and present to myself and the other dancers on stage. It’s an exquisite feeling of being. So unreal and yet the most sensitive and alive reality in the world.
Taking class, training, and care for your body:
Yes. That. I am a disabled dancer; I am also an older dancer. I am an older, disabled dancer. Those are three separate things: I take care of all of them.
Taking care. I train with a trainer on land and in the water for rehab and strengthening work. We often go through my dance movement to make sure my mechanics are all right. I have to do this because although I am now a good advocate for my body, most dance teachers do not have a clue about how to teach, train or strengthen someone with a disability.
Classes. I take yoga and gyrokinesis for, well, everything. I also take ballet and modern classes, particularly when I am in New York. I don’t really know what I should be doing. There aren’t many of us at my age dancing full time with a disability. I’m feeling my way into it. For now, I can say that there’s something about dance class that draws me in. The breath before we all start the adventure of a phrase or exercise? The energy of a group working out how to stop and start together? The challenge of new movement? I don’t know.
I do at least one of these things 5-6 days a week, and then there’s rehearsal.
So many mainstream teachers seem to think that a dance studio isn’t really a place where disabled dancers can learn their craft. It is. It is. Even if a disabled dancer isn’t doing all exercises in the same way, we need to learn all the skills dancers use -- spatial awareness, muscle memory, performance presence, partnering, etc. etc. That said, I wish more teachers had experience working with disabled dancers and the courage to teach disabled dancers. We can work some of it out ourselves -- we have to. We are the experts in our bodies -- but that isn’t the whole story.
The stories I could tell -- one Bay Area studio asked me to seek permission of all of the teachers if I wished to be in their class. It wasn’t as if I was a beginner asking to take a professional level ballet class as my first class. I had several years of professional experience with AXIS and was trying to take an open level class for dancers of all abilities.
That same studio had one of the staff be present as a kind of guard, the first day I took class. I could not work out whether the person was protecting me, the other dancers, or simply there to stare. Needless to say, I haven’t been back.
Can you share about the process of getting into AXIS Dance Company? How many years did you dance with AXIS? What were some of the highlights?
Dancers, disabled and non, come to AXIS in a variety of different ways. Some come, as I did, through the classes and summer intensive -- I was offered an apprenticeship and then was accepted as a company member. Some come through an audition process. Some just send Judy their stuff, because they have a commitment to the company and its work. Judy is actively looking worldwide for dancers, particularly disabled dancers. If you see this and are interested, write to her.
I danced with AXIS for seven years, and it really was a fabulous, deeply formative experience. It wasn’t always easy. But I had the chance to work with some amazing choreographers and dance with dancers so good their work rips you open. What more can I say?
Current passions and curiosities:
Last year, I learned to ride horses. Smile. Huge smile. It’s an absolute privilege and joy to be able to communicate with these smart, sensitive animals. And the movement experience is like nothing else. I love it!
Final advice to young dancers:
I’m going to change a couple of things about that question and focus it to dancers with disabilities, young or not.
Older or younger you can have a meaningful life and career as a disabled dancer. If you acquire your disability later in life and want to start dancing, it’s not too late.
There are no easy pathways to becoming a dancer for disabled dancers; there are no well-known schools, teachers, tracks, programs. It’s all about the work you do yourself -- to find a studio, teacher, dancing friend, program or class. Get lessons when you can, see shows, watch dance videos on the internet, move when you can, figure your body out. Figure your body out; you are the expert on your body, chair, and assistive technologies. If there is no company near you, find a teacher who will teach you. Apply to the intensives of companies like AXIS Dance and Full Radius. Apply to dance programs if you can or if you are at a college, take a dance class.
One class can be life-changing, I swear!
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