Performance-in-Place:
An Evening with Kinetic Light
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
7 to 8:15pm EST
This event was held on Zoom
Group photo Kinetic Light Artists. Photo by Robbie Sweeny. [Image Description: In this photograph, Alice Sheppard, Laurel Lawson and Michael Maag are all sitting in their wheelchairs in profile. Alice leans onto Laurel who is leaning onto Michael. They are all smiling.]
The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation presented a virtual event with the artists and collaborators of Kinetic Light, a leading disability arts and dance ensemble and 2020 grantee. For Performance-in-Place, the artists of Kinetic Light shared choreographic moments and rehearsal insights, and conducted a conversation about their mission, vision, and story. Kinetic Light is the only U.S. arts collective entirely led by disabled artists; Alice Sheppard (artistic director/choreographer/dancer), Michael Maag (video/lighting/projection designer), Laurel Lawson (dancer/choreographic collaborator/technology lead), and Jerron Herman (dancer/choreography collaborator) joined for this virtual event. The collective is currently developing their latest work, Wired, an immersive, aerial experience that traces the gender, race, and disability histories of barbed wire. For more information on Kinetic Light, visit kineticlight.org.
The event included a discussion with Kinetic Light, led by Rubin Foundation's Executive and Artistic Director Sara Reisman.
Access Information: This presentation included live ASL interpretation and captioning. Video clips were audio described.
Click here to read a transcript of the event
Click here to read the chat section of the event
Click here for the audio descriptions for each video presented during the event
Click here to read the credits for DESCENT and Wired
Bios
Alice Sheppard is the Artistic Director of Kinetic Light, a leading disability arts ensemble. Sheppard studied ballet and modern dance with Kitty Lunn and made her debut with Infinity Dance Theater. After an apprenticeship, Sheppard joined AXIS Dance Company, where she toured and taught in the company’s education and outreach programs. As an independent artist, Sheppard has danced in projects with Ballet Cymru, GDance, and Marc Brew Company in the U.K. and Full Radius Dance, Marjani Forté, MBDance, Infinity Dance Theater, and Steve Paxton in the U.S. Her choreography has been commissioned by Full Radius Dance, CRIPSiE, and MOMENTA.
As a Bessie award-winning choreographer, Sheppard creates movement that challenges conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies. Engaging disability arts, culture, and history, she is intrigued by the intersections of disability, gender, and race. In addition to performance and choreography, Sheppard is a sought-after speaker and has lectured on topics related to disability arts, race, and dance. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and in academic journals. alicesheppard.com // kineticlight.org
Michael Maag is the video, projection, and lighting designer for Kinetic Light. Maag designs at the intersection of lighting, video, and projection for theatre, dance, musicals, opera, and planetariums across the United States. He sculpts with light and shadow to create lighting environments that tell a story, believing that lighting in support of the performance is the key to unlocking our audience’s emotions. Maag has built custom optics for projections in theaters, museums and planetariums; he also designs and builds electronics and lighting for costumes and scenery.
As a wheelchair user, Maag is passionate about bringing the perspective of a disabled artist to technical theatre and design. He is currently the Resident Lighting Designer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His designs have been seen on the Festival’s stages for the last 20 years, as well as at Arena Stage, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Florida Studio Theatre, and the Henry Hudson Planetarium, Albany.
Laurel Lawson is a choreographic collaborator, dancer, designer, and engineer with Kinetic Light. She is also the product designer for Audimance, the company's app which revolutionizes audio description for non-visual audiences.
Realizing that dance combined her lifelong loves of art and athleticism, Lawson began her professional dance career with Atlanta’s Full Radius Dance in 2004. She continues to work with Full Radius Dance as well as Kinetic Light and her independent practice. She is a 2019-20 Dance/USA Artist Fellow; Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists is made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Beyond the studio, Laurel is the CTO and co-founder of CyCore Systems. A noted public speaker and teacher, she speaks on a range of technical topics as well as on leadership and executive practice, culture and equity, and how to cultivate creativity and drive innovation. She is also a member of the USA Women's Sled Hockey Team.
Jerron Herman is a dancer. He is also a writer, moderator, and advocate for the arts; he has served on the Board of Trustees at Dance/USA since 2017. In addition, he developed and moderated a panel series of disabled artists called Access 2.0: Mapping Accessibility for the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. From 2011-2019 he was a principal member of Heidi Latsky Dance and also served as their Development Director from 2016-19. Jerron was a finalist for the inaugural Apothetae/Lark Play Development Lab Fellowship and was also nominated for a Fellowship in Dance from United States Artists. His latest works include Breaking and Entering with Molly Joyce at Danspace Project, Many Ways to Raise a Fist for the 29th Anniversary of the ADA at the Whitney Museum, and Relative – a crip dance party – for the disabled-led festival I WANNA BE WITH YOU EVERYWHERE at Performance Space New York. Jerron studied at Tisch School of the Arts and graduated from The King’s College. The New York Times has called him, "...the inexhaustible Mr. Herman." jerronherman.com