CENTERING EMBODIED COLLECTIVITY:

Dr. Alice Sheppard, Dr. Debra Levine, and Dr. Michael Stein have a conversation to explore disability art and aesthetics rooted in radical collectivity, and the language that shapes culture.

Open to the Harvard community. This live virtual event is presented by Harvard Dance Center, supported by the Office for the Arts, and in partnership with the Harvard Law School Project on Disability.

---

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dr. Alice Sheppard

Alice Sheppard is the Artistic Director of Kinetic Light, as well as a choreographer and dancer in the company. Accepting the outcome of a dare, Dr. Sheppard resigned her tenured professorship to train with Kitty Lunn and Infinity Dance Theater. After an apprenticeship, Dr. Sheppard joined AXIS Dance Company where she became a core company member, toured nationally, and taught in the company’s education and outreach programs. Since becoming an independent dance artist, Dr. Sheppard has danced in projects with Ballet Cymru/GDance, and Marc Brew Company in the United Kingdom. In the United States, she has worked with Marjani Forté, MBDance, Infinity Dance Theater, and Steve Paxton. As a guest artist, she has danced with AXIS Dance Company, Full Radius Dance, and MOMENTA Dance Company. Dr. Sheppard has also performed as a solo artist and keynote academic speaker throughout the United States.

A USA Artist, Creative Capital grantee, and Bessie Award-winner, Dr. Sheppard creates movement that challenges conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies. Engaging with disability arts, culture and history, Dr. Sheppard commissioned work attends to the complex intersections of disability, gender, and race. She was a 2018 AXIS Dance Company Choreo-Lab Participant made possible with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Her choreography has been commissioned by producers from KQED and UCLA as well as physically integrated companies such as CRIPSiE, Full Radius Dance, and MOMENTA Dance Company. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and such journals as Catalyst and Movement Research and Performance Journal. 

Alice Sheppard and Kinetic Light are Fall 2020 Harvard Dance Center Visiting Artists. 

Dr. Debra Levine

Debra Levine is Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer on Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard University since 2018. She received her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University and her MFA in Theatre from Columbia University. Her current research interests focus on translocal imaginaries in transnational and global performance, trans-disciplinary performance, disability arts and culture, social practice art and digital humanities performance scholarship. She has written extensively on AIDS activism and queer demonstrations of care during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and her research traces the ethics of AIDS activism through historical and contemporary art, performance and protest practices. Before coming to Harvard, Dr. Levine taught in the Drama Department at New York University, at Barnard College, and, most recently, was an Assistant Professor of Theater at New York University Abu Dhabi. She is the recipient of the 2017 ASTR/Cambridge University Press Prize, and has contributed book and catalog essays for artists Vikram Divecha, Lola Flash, and Trajal Harrell. She has published in TDR: The Drama Review; Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory; GLQ; Disability Studies Quarterly; Theater Research International; E-mispherica, the Journal for the Hemispheric Institute of Performance; Movement Research Journal; Studia Dramatica; the Walker Art Center’s Walker Reader; and NYU Skirball Center’s Indefinite Article.

Dr. Michael Stein 

Professor Michael Ashley Stein is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School since 2005. Considered one of the world’s leading experts on disability law and policy, Dr. Stein participated in the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; works with disabled peoples’ organizations and non-governmental organizations around the world; actively consults with governments on their disability laws and policies; advises a number of UN bodies and national human rights institutions; and has brought landmark disability rights litigation globally. Professor Stein has received numerous awards in recognition of his transformative work, including the inaugural Morton E. Ruderman Prize for Inclusion; the inaugural Henry Viscardi Achievement Award; and the ABA Paul G. Hearne Award. His authoritative and path-breaking scholarship has been published worldwide by leading journals and academic presses, and has been supported by fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation and Research, among others.

Dr. Stein holds an Extraordinary Professorship at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights, is a visiting professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, and teaches at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School (where he became the first known person with a disability to be a member of the Harvard Law Review), and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Professor Stein previously was Professor (and Cabell Professor) at William & Mary Law School, taught at New York University and Stanford law schools, and was appointed by President Obama to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.