Kinetic Light: DESCENT

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Zoellner Arts Center

Descent

Laurel Lawson, a white person, balances above Alice Sheppard with arms spread wide, wheels spinning. Alice, a multiracial Black woman with coffee-colored skin, opens her arms wide to receive her in an embrace. A starry sky fills the background, and moonlight glints off their wheelchair rims. Photo Jay Newman/BRITT.

Kinetic Light, an innovative disability arts ensemble, is globally acclaimed for its immersive, accessible approach. Led by disabled artists, the ensemble creates, designs, and performs work that is a thrilling blend of movement, light and sound. Their creations speak to and emerge from disability aesthetics and culture. This connection to the rich traditions and contemporary conversations of disabled artists in all artistic fields makes Kinetic Light's work a powerful, intersectional creative force.

Kinetic Light's DESCENT is presented in partnership with Touchstone Theatre and their community arts initiative Festival UnBound OCT 3-6.

DESCENT explores the pleasures of wheeled movement and reckless abandon. It is performed on a custom-designed architectural ramp installation with hills, curves, and peaks. Combining dance, architecture, design, and technology, this work challenges cultural assumptions of what disability, dance and beauty can be. Inspired by the sensual writings and art of French sculptor Auguste Rodin, DESCENT gives the mythological characters of Venus and Andromeda new life as interracial lovers. Voted as 2018's most moving performance by the readers of Dance Magazine, DESCENT is "An ingenious set of ramps [that] serves as a canvas for projections of stars and seas, and as a surface for wheelchair motion with the gliding grace of ice dance," according to The New Yorker.

**Per Kinetic Light's touring practices, masks are required for this performance. For the safety of the performing artists and audience, all audience members, ushers, and staff are required to be masked upon entering the venue and throughout the performance. Thank you to Lehigh Valley Health Network for their support.

Access: This performance is expected to include haptic interpretation of sound scores; ASL interpreters; audio description through Kinetic Light's Audimance app; expanded accessible seating; tactile lobby experiences; sensory kits; a quiet space; and exit and entry welcome during performances. Please call the box office at 610-758-2787 x0 for ASL and haptic seating. Thank you to The Dexter F. and Dorothy H. Baker Foundation for their support.

Kinetic Light's DESCENT is presented in partnership with Touchstone Theatre and their community arts initiative Festival UnBound, OCT 3-6.

To register for a workshop, (masks required) visit Touchstone's website.

Integrated Dance Workshop Level 1

WED OCT 2

Location: DeSales University

All welcome, no prior experience needed

Dance DESCENT

WED OCT 2

Location: DeSales University

Experienced non-disabled and disabled dancers

Inside Disability Arts + DESCENT

SUN OCT 6

Location: Zoellner Arts Center

Kinetic Light's Artistic Director Alice Sheppard opens up about the world of DESCENT: sharing choreographic and access to practice, plus behind-the-scenes artistic info. Space is limited. Register on Touchstone's website.