Eco Somatic readings, conversations and movement centering disability and LGBTIQA+ ecologies of pain and joy with the environment. Featuring Stephanie Heit, Petra Kuppers, Krishna Washburn, Taja Will, and moira williams.
Where: Online Zoom Meeting / Zoom Registration link HERE
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A tree filled image with a close up of two trees and their large textured bark. Between the two trees a hand from the forearm down and palm forward spreads its fingers. It looks like a ghost hand that is filled with the surrounding forest life. The entire background image is heavily saturated with almost neon reds, pinks, yellows, blues, greens and purples. On top of the glowing forest is white text saying: Eco Somatic readings and conversations: disability ecologies of pain and joy with the environment. Stephanie Heit, Petra Kuppers, Krishna Washburn, Taja Will, moira williams. Online April 26th 6-8pm EST/5-7pm CT/3-5pm PST. Access Menu: Access Doula, Participation Guide, AI Captioning, ASL. To the right of the access menu in white letters: Hosted by CULTURE PUSH www.culturepush.org
Please contact moira670@gmail for more accessibility information requests and needs, thanks!
ARTISTS:
Stephanie Heit is a queer disabled poet, dancer, teacher, and co director of Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space on Anishinaabe land in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She is a Zoeglassia Fellow, and the author of PSYCH MURDERS (Wayne State University Press, 2022) and The Color She Gave Gravity (Operating System, 2017). Stephanie is an active member of the Olimpias; an international disability performance collective. She co-directed the Asylum Project (2015-2019); an experimental and community practice investigation into the many meanings of asylum. Stephanie is bipolar, a mad activist, and a shock/psych system survivor. Link to Stephanie’s website is HERE.
Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a disability culture activist, a wheelchair dancer, and a community performance artist. Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods. She uses eco somatics, performance, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures.
She teaches at the University of Michigan as the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture, with her tenure homes in the English and Women's and Gender Studies Departments. She is also an adviser on the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College.
She has been engaged in community dance and disability culture production since the late 80s (first in her native Germany, then in Wales, UK; Aotearoa/New Zealand; and then in the US). She continues to lead workshops internationally, in these forms as well as in disability-culture adapted social somatics.
When her chronic pain does not allow outer movement, she writes. Her third performance poetry collection, Gut Botany, was named one of the top ten US poetry books of 2020 by the New York Public Library, and it won the 2022 Creative Book Award by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Petra also writes speculative fiction (short story collection Ice Bar 2018), and academic books (latest, 2022, open access: Eco Soma: Joy and Pain in Speculative Performance Encounters).
She is the Artistic Director of The Olimpias, an international disability culture collective, and co-creates Turtle Disco, a somatic writing studio, with her wife, poet and dancer Stephanie Heit, from their home in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on Three Fires Confederacy Territory, colonially known as Ypsilanti, Michigan.
A link to Petra’s website is HERE.
Krishna Christine Washburn is an artistic director and instructor for Dark Room Ballet, and co-directed the Telephone Film. She has an M.Ed. from Hunter College, a BA from Barnard College, and is certified by the ACSM in biomechanics. She speaks regularly on self-audio description and educating blind/visually impaired dance students.
Image Description: Krishna in a wearable art piece by artist Ntilit. Krishna is seen from the side, with hair braided, her eyes covered with black and white cups, and her arms bent, one close to the body and one in front of her face, both wrapped by small dark pillows that are filled with small bells and crinkle balls (inside unseen).
Taja Will (they/them) is a non-binary, chronically ill, queer, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee. They are a performer, choreographer, somatic therapist, consultant and Healing Justice practitioner based in Mni Sota Makoce, on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe. Taja’s approach integrates improvisation, somatic modalities, text and vocals in contemporary performance. Their aesthetic is one of spontaneity, bold choice making, sonic and kinetic partnership and the ability to move in relationship to risk and intimacy. Will’s artistic work explores visceral connections to current socio-cultural realities through a blend of ritual, dense multi-layered worldbuilding and everyday magic.
Taja is a recent recipient of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, in the dance field. Their work has been presented throughout the Twin Cities and across the United States. Including local performances at the Walker Art Center Choreographer’s Evening, the Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks, the Radical Recess series, Right Here Showcase and the Candy Box Dance Festival. They are a recipient of the 2018 -19 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, administered by the Cowles Center and funded by The McKnight Foundation. Will has recently received support from the National Association of Latinx Arts & Culture, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council.
Taja ground their work in indigenous solidarity and decolonization as a means to undo white and able body supremacy and its pervasive relationship to capitalism. They are committed to working for healing and liberation of Black, Indigenous and people of color and radical care work for folks with chronic illness and disabilities. A link to Taja Will’s website is HERE
moira williams (they/them), is a disabled Indigenous artist, cross-disability cultural activist and access doula; co-creating and weaving disability justice together with crip celebratory resistance and environmental justice. moira believes in access as art and “access intimacy” as an attitude needed to push beyond the limitations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Their often co-creative work leads with disability, stemming from the understanding that deep-rooted cultural changes must be made in arts and environmental spaces and practices to become accessible. One part of affecting change is by placing disabled artists and activists in positions of influence to shape culture from within. Another part is acknowledging that entering positions of power is not the end goal. Instead, the end goal is to co-create an active culture where power positions no longer exist.
They are currently an Access Doula and Cross Disability Culture activist at Culture Push, NYC. moira’s on-going work with water focuses on access intimacy and water intimacy as ways forward to accessible waterfronts. In 2021, as part of Works On Water’s Tending the Edge, moira engaged NYC’s disability communities along with NYC’s Department of City Planning and the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. As part of this, moira created an online and in-person Disability Cabaret on an accessible boat and a new practice of extended comment deadlines to support comments from NYC’s disability communities. We celebrated the new practice, an accessible bathroom, and ourselves on an accessible boat! A link to moira’s website is HERE.