Alice Sheppard
Bio
Alice Sheppard is a dancer and choreographer. Sheppard studied ballet and modern with Kitty Lunn and first danced with Infinity Dance Theater. She then joined and taught with AXIS Dance Company. She has since become an independent artist and collaborated with Ballet Cymru, GDance, Marc Brew, Full Radius Dance, Marjani Forté, MBDance, Infinity Dance Theater, and Steve Paxton, among others. Sheppard's work interrogates the intersections of disability, race, and gender and challenges conceptions of what disabled bodies can do.
(All information from Alice Sheppard's website)
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Video Description
The video opens on an empty hallway. The camera pans upward to an empty ramp with a metal railing running down the center as eerie music plays. A woman in a wheelchair lifts her arms and races down the ramp without touching the wheels of her chair. Three other dancers, also in wheelchairs, follow behind her and copy suit. At the bottom of the ramp, the dancers one by one grab the metal pole of the railing and pivot around it so they are moving up the ramp on the other side of the railing. In unison, the dancers wheel their wheelchairs up the ramp. The video then shifts angles and shows two dancers. While both are still in their wheelchairs, one dancer lies on their back while they help lift the other dancer to a position of balance atop the metal railing. The two dancers then race down the ramp, trading hand position on the metal railing as they do so.