“dancing st. elizabeth’s” Workshop
November 3 @ 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
This is part of the 2024 Disability Arts & Culture Gathering, a weekend of disability culture arts-based research and community building centered on twin inquiries of environmental and interspecies gentleness, mad memory, and archival intermedial/technological play.
From the organizer: We are happy to welcome people joining from elsewhere. All Gathering events unspool in crip time, with rest and relaxation practices built in, from fireside hang-outs to watercolor/drawing playtime.
“dancing st. elizabeth’s” Workshop
with Alexis Riley and Ali Pappa
Come immerse yourself in the archives of disability art! Together, we’ll explore “The Rorschach Ballet,” a dance piece created by disabled people held at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in 1957. After witnessing a video of the dance, we will then work together to create an improvised performance of our own, using our bodies and movements to play with projections of shadow and light. We’ll conclude with some time for quiet writing, doodling, and shared reflection. This workshop is open to all. No previous experience or skill required.
Alexis Riley (she/they)
Alexis is a white disabled psychiatric survivor and interdisciplinary artist-scholar from Shawnee and Osage Land (colonial West Virginia). Grounded in disability culture and rooted in feminist praxis, their work blends practice as research and applied theatre methods to center mad bodies as sources of pleasure, connection, and care. Her current performance series, The Mad Memory Project, applies this focus to the archives and spaces of medical incarceration. Recent writing and creative projects have been featured in Theatre Topics (2019), QT Voices (2022), Liminalities (2024). Alexis is currently a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow/Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan.
Ali Pappa
Ali is an Austin-based musician, improviser, and arts administrator. They are a neurodivergent, disabled, trans non-binary person of color, and are naturally drawn to creating and performing works that reflect these lived experiences. These days, Ali leans into crip-time, focusing on his health, healing from burnout, and taking projects and collaborative experiences at a pace more in line with his values as a disabled anticapitalist. Their collaboration with Alexis Riley received a B. Iden Payne award for the University of Texas at Austin’s kin song: ode to disability ancestors, a virtual performance ritual.
