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Conversations Without Walls: iele paloumpis & Alice Sheppard

April 16, 2021

Closed captions are featured in the video above.

An accessible PDF transcript of the conversation is linked here.

This Conversation Without Walls (CWW) was recorded on Tuesday, March 16, 2021 and first broadcasted on YouTube, Friday, April 9, 2021.

In this audio-only, captioned CWW, dance artist and choreographer, iele paloumpis, and choreographer and founder/artistic lead of Kinetic Light, Alice Sheppard, reconnect three months following their Fall 2020 Research Group Fellowship together at Danspace.

These two artists are new friends who share a mutual curiosity and affinity for each other’s work. In this conversation, facilitated by Danspace’s Associate Curator, Public Engagement, Seta Morton, Sheppard and paloumpis meet in an imaginary realm for a fictive morning walk on the beach. In a world-making gesture, they put down a path toward deeper listening, complexity, nuance, and care. In this CWW, paloumpis and Sheppard challenge post modern concepts of neutrality while uplifting dynamic disability culture and generative accessibility practice in sharing dance with audiences.

Included in this CWW

Current Projects

In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky (Choreographer and Director, iele paloumpis): This live, multidisciplinary dance performance, which decenters sight as the primary mode of experiencing dance, was set to premiere at Danspace Project in May 2020, but has been postponed due to COVID-19. Director, iele paloumpis, along with collaborators Marielys Burgos-Meléndez, Seta Morton, Alejandra Ospina, Monica Rodriguez, Ogemdi Ude, Krishna Washburn, and Marýa Wethers, have embarked on a podcast project to begin again. https://inplaceofcatastrophe.com/

Kinetic Light (Founder & Artistic Lead, Alice Sheppard): Alice Sheppard is the founder and artistic lead for Kinetic Light, a project based ensemble, working at the intersections of disability, dance, design, identity, and technology to create transformative art and advance the intersectional disability arts movement. https://kineticlight.org/

Key Concepts

Disability culture.
Accessibility practice.
Nuance and complexity as legible to audiences.
The concept of “neutrality” as insidiously valorized within the canon of Postmodern dance history. “Neutrality” as an oppressive and impossible idea, rooted in white supremacy and ableism.
Deep listening and witnessing.

Key Questions

When does the performance begin? When does access begins?
How is access considered in an invitation to audiences?
As a part of performance, access, and disability culture, how can audience members care for performers and artists?
How can the artist/audience relationship become more centered around mutual care?

iele paloumpis is a dance artist, herbalist, astrologer and end of life doula living in Canarsie/Munsee territory in Lenapehoking. As one of only a handful of visually impaired choreographers creating contemporary dance in NYC, iele is conducting vital research into effective methods of providing quality audio description for dance – especially as it relates to improvised movement. they have a particular interest in making dances that offer multiple points of access and participation – by enlivening all the senses and allowing ample room for collective consensual choice-making between collaborators and audiences during performance, but also within the rehearsal process itself. All of iele’s work is rooted in kinesthetic awareness, trauma-informed griefwork, and ancestral re-membrance practices that reflect fragmented lineages across queer, trans and crip aural histories, alongside their Greek, Anatolian and Irish-American diasporic bloodlines.

iele comes from a long line of mystics, and is grateful to have studied with many teachers who have influenced their path. Under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield and Jeffery Bullock, iele received a BA in Dance from Hollins University in 2006. As an end of life doula, they have received certifications from Valley Hospice, Mount Sinai’s Palliative Care Institute, and Deanna Flores Cochran’s Accompanying the Dying program between 2014-16. iele has practiced Tarot since 1995, most recently with the mentorship of Eva Yaa Asantewaa. In summer 2014, iele studied herbology with Rosemary Gladstar, and more recently iele has deepened their connection to ancestral plant medicine across the Mediterranean & SWANA regions with guidance from Layla K. Feghali & SWANA Ancestral. Following in the footsteps of their Anatolian ancestors, iele is mostly a self-taught astrologer, though studying the teachings of Demetra George on Traditional Astrology has been particularly impactful. iele will always be a student of the more-than-human world, and is in endless gratitude to the forests, mountains, rivers, stars and animal-kin who offer so much wisdom.

As a disabled, trans, queer survivor from a working class background, iele empathizes across multiple axes of oppression and brings this awareness to their work as an artist, educator, doula and intuitive healer. www.ielepaloumpis.com

Alice Sheppard, A USA Artist, Creative Capital grantee and Bessie Award winner, Alice trained with Kitty Lunn and Infinity Dance Theater. She then became a core company member with AXIS Dance Company. Alice creates movement that challenges conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies. Engaging with disability arts, culture and history, Alice’s commissioned work attends to the complex intersections of disability, gender, and race. Alice 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.

Alice is the founder and artistic lead for Kinetic Light, a project based ensemble, working at the intersections of disability, dance, design, identity, and technology to create transformative art and advance the intersectional disability arts movement.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and such journals as Catalyst and Movement Research and Performance Journal.