Alice Sheppard: Using Physically Integrated Dance To Re-Invent What It Means To Be A Dancer

Alice Sheppard

What comes to mind when you think of a dancer? For many it might be the image of a tall, long, and thin woman with her hair pulled back into a bun. And this was the case throughout most of history. But in present day, the body types, skin colors, and preferred techniques of dancers are slowly diversifying. One creative individual who is working to change the dance narrative is Alice Sheppard.

Sheppard is an award-winning choreographer who creates in the realm of physically integrated dance. Physically integrated dance is a branch of the Disability Culture Movement. It recognizes and celebrates the first-person experience of a disability as a social phenomenon through literary, artistic, and other creative means. Most importantly, physically integrated dance and the Disability Culture Movement are rejections of the medical model of disability: disabilities are not illnesses that need to be cured. Physically integrated dance is incredibly inclusive and embraces dancers’ unique disabilities and experiences to create something revolutionary. 

Traditionally, dance as an excellence excludes disability. To be a good dancer, one must have precise control over every inch of their body. Most say the “best concert dance” is performed by those who are able-bodied to the highest extreme. But Alice Sheppard is working to change this. Sheppard is a wheelchair user, and she uses this experience to create movement that “challenges conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies.” Her wheelchair serves as some form of a constraint. In this case, the constraint is physical. As we learned in class, constraints aren’t always negative. Her disability, the disabilities of others, and her use of a chair allow for new pathways to be used for generating movement. Her wheelchair is an extension of her body, and this is clearly seen in the vastly creative ways in which she moves across the stage. The “constraint” of a disability is necessary for new pathways to be developed and for revolutionary movement to occur. (Disabilities might only be considered constraints because they are not what society considers to be “normal.” “Normal” is a social construct.)

Doesn't this requires the same control and technicality "normal" dancers utilize??

One of Sheppard’s most notable choreographic accomplishments is DESCENT. This piece “celebrates the pleasure of reckless abandon.” It’s also a rejection of what dance and beauty are “supposed” to look like while celebrating all that a disability can be. The dance utilized a large architectural ramp as well as crazy production and lighting design. And not only was there a musical score, but there was live music, too. Throughout the piece, the sounds of Sheppard and fellow dancer Laurel Lawson’s bodies interacting with each other and the diverse surfaces beneath them are clear. “Dance can be a soundtrack of music: wheels, feet, crutch tips, the hum of a power chair, or the sound of bodies moving together” (Alice Sheppard).

"Over the course of the next hour, I will launch my body up, down and around the curvaceous plywood structure of our set. Bathed in the stunning projections of our lighting, video and projection designer, Michael Maag, I will sit on its peak, dive into its underworld and join my dance partner and collaborator, Laurel Lawson, as we move from wheelchair to floor, platform to valley, pushing, pulling, intertwining ourselves until the final moment when together we leap for the edge."

(Alice Sheppard, New York Times).

Alice Sheppard & Laurel Lawson in DESCENT

Sheppard and Lawson also showed audiences the pursuit of “wheel joy,” which is when the pleasures of wheeled movement are achieved when chairs produce sharp and precise turns. Their movements both necessarily utilize physics but appear to defy gravity at the same time. Equally important are the moments when Sheppard and Lawson dance without their wheelchairs. “The movements do not represent triumph over disability. They do not shore up myths about independence. And, even when Sheppard and Lawson dance without their wheelchairs, they do not scorn the wheelchair” (Dance Magazine). 

Sheppard dreams of a “broad and sustainable landscape for disabled artists.” She works with several organizations that are working to make dance and the arts more inclusive. Sheppard is an advocate for those who are traditionally excluded from the artistic narrative. Through her domain of dance and choreography, Alice Sheppard proves to all dancers and audiences that disability does not make one incomplete.