for the benefit of our viewers who are blind or visually impaired we are including audio description to introduce the program's key visual elements today the laura flanders program features two choreographers alan shepard founder kinetic light and elizabeth streb founder slam streb lab for action mechanics footage illustrates the disability arts work of alice shepherd artist activist academic shepherd whirls gracefully in wheelchair she performs with other dancers they speed down ramps in their wheelchairs partner in intimate poses and so were through the air in archival footage laura flanders father appears on stage sitting in it our next guest is doing just that in stunning ways blowing open old ideas about bodies and beauty and movement motion with her visceral performances that feature light dance and technology including we'll check technology and crutches her name is alice sheppard formerly a medieval studies professor she's now a choreographer dance around the founder of kinetic light an artistic collaboration with technologists laura lawson and lighting and video artist michael mag alice welcome if you had to stop but i'm not going to ask you to do in a word but your passion what is your passion at this moment in your art i am actually enjoying the physical experience of it as a moment of actual to gather enough but i think but i fear and i want to share with you it's an incredible feeling that finding that being in that is what i'm looking for right now where you shared the joy mythology but a whole lot more than that i mean never has velcro strapping sounded so sexy yes you want to describe it a little right so a lot of the time as rota uses reuse straps both to be able to complete the kinds of movement we do and we invert and we roll in the slide but there's also a moment with strapping is political for us in the sense it becomes about sexuality and that moment all of if you really extrude to be able to invite people into the world a disability and into disability culture and into the kind of things that you don't necessarily know if you're not disable but i was going to say most important this is a moment for the disabled audience as well and for us to really be with each other and in the secrecy of knowing that this is what it is so yeah you didn't mention the going at enormous speed down high ra getting in and out of the building but not necessarily the pleasure of movement in and out of the building not necessarily the pleasure of the architecture of the building so i'm thinking about ramps as these kind of architectural spaces and i push my father was a wheelchair user down and up many many ramps and the issues of inclusion when i was coming up in the sixty's and seventy's were very grave interestingly he performed on broadway twice and got a lot of reviews many many years most of which never mentioned he was in a wheelchair which was at the time people's idea of being not not mentioning it we're in a very different period we well we are we are we are all over the map there are some parts of our culture though still struggling with what is the polite world what to say and how do we mention it do we mention it do we look the other way how do we even think about that image do you shoot the wheelchair do you photograph that some parts of the world are still wrecked wrestling with this and other parts of the world are like well i'm here i'm disabled but it's not it doesn't define me and it's not who i am and you can see me as a person and there are other parts of the world this is the pop i'm most interested in is th you're looking at my hands of my arms you missing half the work so partly the the the world i'm interested in is not about do we have inclusion we don't have full and equitable and just inclusion but the conversation is ging around that now to think about what does it mean to have different kinds of equitable participation equitable experience which is more than the language of inclusion and that's where i want to go in my son not to be on you alone in this what's the context in which you're operating i am not certain fortunately so this is a very important moment i think media representation tends to pick out one person and will name one person but i'm not alone busy i actually am part of a movement of people coming at this from film from theater from policy from dogs and i'm also part of a legacy that goes back to the civil rights movement and that world that you were mentioning back in through the sixty's all the way forward to what we are now so i'm here now but as you go through all the materials the there is a movement of us so would you say it's a it's fair to compare  that with the black arts movement is there now a disability art movement is that a movement is that the right i hope so i mean but here's the thing i mean i think labels get added retroactively on retrospectively so i would say in some ways there's so i believe you know one thousand and fifteen years from now somebody will say this is a renaissance of disability arts but as we are in it right now it's a it is a movement but on like other movements it want to be over normal cruelty of a normal patriarchal religions what's the damage that you think ideas of the normal have done when it comes to art and our bodies and motion and movement and all the stuff you think about all the time the normal i often say how people do or do and don't get the opportunities to be on stage and it also circumscribes the recognition of work by disabled artists as art so for me you know i could be in the space constantly trying to undermine or i could just set up again and start in this different space and ask the question not how do i do the normative but what is here what is present what can we work in and around what do we  and then have that feedback quids you have challenges though i heard you talking about trying to work with motion capture technology it's been interesting for people to don't know motion capture that's the kind that tries to line little dots up to represent your body and create almost like animated representations of people dancing or whatever right so we went through this kind of motion capture experience and had twice i have been very different kinds of embodiments and have watched the data you can capture the role of data which is so the data you know the algorithm tried to crunch the body back into the patterns that it knew and instead of getting representations of me it got this kind of crunch thing that was not me and so it's it's it's no patterning was actually remaking my body and i'm like that's not representation that's you know that's actually of a show you talk and a lot of people talk about a disability perspective what does it how does it change things and what things does it change and can all of us get a disability perspective oh i wonder i wonder ok who you know i don't think you can i mean so i don't think you can of is something that is both a combination of how you take in the world how you experience the world and the risks search we lived in the lived experience of being in the world and the research and you can like for me you might make the world only fifty five and a bit for you why you might think about where the placement of architecture and shelves and you might create the physical space but broadly perspective is also about the way you interact with people in the space so i always joke that like on the streets the st thing i see of you if i'm looking down is your shoes i know people by their shoes but i also see an awful lot of belizean but that's because that's what i see at that height and so i think that  the perspective is and and developed over time and it interacts with what we know what we've read from the outside world you can get an understanding but from the inside world yeah it's from it's from internal knowledge but lived experience you have a long list of things you don't want me to talk about yes let's talk about the things we didn't want to talk about about why ok why is it not helpful to talk about all of the things that people love to talk about when the wor almost always begin every interview story is the narrative is what is it the the constant accounting of what happened to you and sometimes nothing happens sometimes you know you were born with a disability but the constant idea is that somehow disability has to be explained you have to get your diagnosis and then you have to explain how you arrived at the diagnosis and what the implications of this medicalization of disability is and it sets disability up as a medical situation something is wrong deficit and so that always has to be counted for in this kind of personal unrated way and never allows for an understanding of the disability as it embodied a whole experience that just is i often  doesn't how will that help you talk about whatever situation we're in right now if i'm at the post office and you want to know what happened to me let's go back to that representation question due to human rows recently wrote a report looking at media representations of people with disabilities and disabled people pick your language and she came up surprise surprise this population having the treatment that comes to so many marginalized groups which is they get to be villains or victims and the you said that the brits are doing things a little bit better the british yeah you and i share something to do with the british while they're doing better and if so what are they doing better or different because the cut the the government because of the social systems were able to think about funding and supporting individual artists somehow the of independent artists were funded there were performances that was funded for groups and so by the steve fundings and all of these places you could begin to gnash together a culture of disability not the same culture by any means but maybe i should say culture has a disability and that gave space for different languages about this ability and you know i'm not going to say the u k not that we're doing it right because of course there are many ways in which things are all full but i will say that the language and the kind of casual representation i mean i remember once as a child of four ident of a will to use a radical  couple seconds somehow by thinking about how to get people into the space and the terms on which they wanted to be included so both are important not just the representation of one but the terms by which somebody wants to be resident represented in the art that they make the change the culture of expectation around disability there's a growing awareness that disability is more than the circumstance of the body and that it can and does positively contribute art intersectionality just to be a diversity my goodness in new york the recently opened this public art thing eight that i bet as well looks to me as sort of like a temple to stairs and it's almost made was every time everyone says to me yes but there's an elevator a though because it's just about can you get to the top this is the problem with inclusionary and compliance rate is thinking right inclusionary thinking compliance kind of thinking is the elevator that will get you to the top participate tree cultural and instead of thinking is about what is the experience of being in the art itself you touched on earlier but we often ask our guests what's the story you would like the future to tell exploded across the united states across across the world that there was a rising wave and suddenly the way just kept going and that disabled autism culture makers were recognized from your lips to the world i was shepherd is the full meaning all across the country atlanta san francisco elsewhere this year you can find more information at our website what it's somewhere on your blog collette you move as you dream of moving and taught you even how to fly that's a lucky situation of people who live near slam the strip lab faction mechanics in williamsburg brooklyn slam is the home base of action architect elizabeth's tribe who believes everyone can fly in that fashion the pursuit of flight changes people can also change a neighborhood as you'll see i should say i'm pretty damn fond of a strap and slam a little bit with my partner of many years but those who don't know her i'm happy to introduce you to get the next segment offers interviews with elizabeth str slim staff members and students footage shows their activities inside their large high ceilinged garage here people of all ages climb tumble fly and fall using silks loops trip pieces mats bars walls and trampoline action is a vestibule initially for the invention of extreme action and also the invention of hardware because without hardware or without instruments for action you can't really get off the ground and actually and his face actually enter a new temporal universe and go faster harder higher sooner it's also a place where everybody is invited into it the art is the us center of this building so when we all walk in we're walking in because of the our yard is what employs everybody the art is what stirs the mind of everyone the art is what draws the children and so the art is the epicenter and from that art  we all find our place if a person wandered in here had no idea who we were they would walk in and possibly see people hanging with silk so hoops or swinging on the flying trapeze and doing flips  getting caught or just swinging and doing knee hangs watching the strap extreme action company experiment with different pieces of equipment there's a plexiglas wall over there that we hook up and make rigid and then they'll see people people they're understanding and they key just really really well and i i always feel like i can talk to them and it's just i learned about the job fair for as i told my friend when i saw s beautiful a peson i had many years ago that if you're going to fly and you're not an insect you gotta land landing is in a certain way way more important than flying flying is beautiful and gorgeous but our way amel like you know one hundred and seventy dollars pound body just hitting flat bluntly on to the ground shakes the building and it's just a profound activity to be willing to do that you know when we're bounded in action and passion and you know wild crazy dreams the community is reinforced and i think it's stronger our bonds are stronger i think you know we care so much about not just the person but having them actualize their dreams and i find that you know that we don't we don't really have that often in this society i think we're very you know into keeping order you know and making sure that kids know how to follow the rules and so this is a breath of fresh air you know and it's a breath of fresh air for everyone because you know it's it's contagious the metrics of success that slam which got developed over the fifteen years is really the notion of the invention inventing extreme action what is a move no one's ever done before what's a piece of hardware or an instrument of action that can get you to higher higher places altitudes and i think that this place has also developed a technical laboratory for usually young men but young women to to figure out how to have theatrical skills to be able to hang people to be able to hang equipment to be able to move in the most important value performance the safety of all of the performance people a skill set that i've learned is basically like carpentry and building not only plywood and you know wood but  trust in metal objects i've learned that when you do bring in stuff you have to make sure that it's strong and sturdy and you have to use the proper equipment because the do you use the incorrectly but mean then you could you know damage somebody get to that you know that that that perfection you know it was i see them different now what is what exists right here is something that should be replicated elsewhere because what it is is it allows different people to enter a room and drop everything that they came in there with and i think in this room is the example for humanity it's house humanity should be set up we don't go in prejudging each other we don't go in taking each other down we going to uplift each other at all times and that's something that once you leave out of these doors you might not find three answers my big dream is to to have a demonstration of strength extreme action to hit the world the same way that nascar did in monster trucks did and rodeos and westerns and rock n roll i want that i want that kind of action to be same kind of public that we're manifesting here it's lamb i wanted to know that anyone to walk by this garage door immediately just felt welcome to walk in and how do you figure out how to construct an energy where the person gets curious and somehow for some reason they walk in