Kinetic Light Announces New Allways Program
Company:
Kinetic Light
KINETIC LIGHT ANNOUNCES NEW ALLWAYS PROGRAM
-- Access Workshops for Artists, Arts Organizations, and Event Organizers --
March 15, 2021 (Los Altos, CA) – Kinetic Light, the acclaimed disability arts ensemble, announces its next ALLways access workshop for artists, administrators, event organizers, and arts organizations. The next workshop will take place on March 25, with additional classes offered throughout 2021.
The ALLways method is Kinetic Light’s holistic, equity-based approach to access, born out of years of research, development, experimentation, and practice. The ALLways method extends far beyond legal compliance and physical access, aiming for artistic and aesthetic equity in art making, event planning, community outreach, and marketing.
These classes, led by Kinetic Light’s Laurel Lawson, are online, hands-on workshops for participants with a wide range of experience levels with disability and accessibility. Lawson takes participants through cultural and artistic access principles, introduces tactics, techniques, and technologies, and makes space for participants to apply these principles to their own work and share with others. Individual sessions are specialized around different topics and attendee goals.
“Out of all of our recent work, I am perhaps most proud of ALLways,” comments Alice Sheppard, Kinetic Light Artistic Director. “We strive in our own work to create the most aesthetically and artistically equitable experiences, and those approaches are constantly evolving. When we collaborate with fellow artists, presenters, museums, funders, and others in the field, we require that these collaborations are accessible, too. After years of one-on-one conversations, trainings, and teachings, and now -- led by Laurel Lawson -- we have debuted ALLways.”
“Access works. Access brings in new audiences. It is not a checklist; it is a promise and a culture. Access is hospitality,” says Lawson. “In these workshops we explore the why and the how of access. It’s been a pleasure to share this space with artists, funders, administrators, curators, event managers, and educators and to deepen their understanding and action plans.”
EVENT DETAILS
ALLways Workshop for Small-to-Midsize Arts Organizations
March 25, 2021 2pm-5pm PT/5pm-8pm EDT
Prices range based on individual or organization size.
Access: the workshop will include ASL, CART, and audio description for visual elements
Additional Information and Registration: https://web.cvent.com/event/10bded21-2d2f-4016-ac7e-fc184e4a3719/websitePage:f5f1940b-980e-4398-96f6-3b681ef5e4a3
Contact Laurel Lawson at laurel@kineticight.org with questions.
Workshops will be offered throughout 2021; sign up for Kinetic Light emails for alerts.
ALLways research and access workshops are supported, in part, by the Ford Foundation.
ABOUT LAUREL LAWSON
Laurel Lawson is a dancer, choreographic collaborator, designer, and engineer with Kinetic Light. She is the primary costume and makeup designer, and, in collaboration with Top End Wheelchairs’ Paul Schulte, designed the wheelchairs that she and Alice Sheppard use in performance. She is also the product designer and lead for Audimance, the company’s approach to audio description for dance; technology development lead; and the leader of Kinetic Light’s ALLways access programming.
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.
Lawson’s choreography is marked by intensive partnering and grounded technique. Bringing the nuance of disabled artistry, she creates work for all ensembles including nondisabled, disabled, and physically integrated companies. She weaves together abstract and concrete themes with overarching mythological inspiration, with focus on engaging and immersive audience experience, and her work was recognized with a 2019-20 Dance/USA Fellowship to Artists.
Beyond the studio, Lawson is the CTO and co-founder of CyCore Systems, a boutique engineering firm which specializes in solving novel, multi-realm problems of all sizes. 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. Lawson is also a member of the USA Women’s Sled Hockey Team.
ABOUT KINETIC LIGHT
Founded by Alice Sheppard in 2016, Kinetic Light is a project-based ensemble, working at the intersections of disability, dance, design, identity, and technology. Through nuanced investment in the histories, cultures, and artistic work of disabled and/or Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), they promote intersectional disability as a creative force and access as an aesthetic critical to creating transformative art and advancing the disability arts movement. Kinetic Light artists include Alice Sheppard, Laurel Lawson, Michael Maag, and Jerron Herman.
Kinetic Light is the first U.S. dance ensemble led entirely by professional disabled artists. A Bessie Award -winning artist, Sheppard has been traveling the world dancing professionally for over a decade, performing with such companies as AXIS Dance Company from Oakland, CA, and Marc Brew Company in the UK. Sheppard appeared on the July 2018 cover of Dance Magazine, the first disabled artist to be featured since 2003. Laurel Lawson, Kinetic Light dancer, choreographic collaborator, and technology lead, is a dancer with Full Radius Dance, a sled hockey athlete, and a software engineer. Lawson was honored with a 2019-20 Dance/USA Artist Fellowship, made possible with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Michael Maag, an accomplished lighting designer and disabled artist, has served as Resident Lighting Designer at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) for over 15 years; he was also pivotal in the building of OSF’s new accessible outdoor stage. Jerron Herman joined Kinetic Light for the company’s newest work, Wired (now in development); he is an interdisciplinary artist who creates through dance, text, and visual storytelling. For more information visit kineticlight.org.
