INCLINATIONS: a dance film short

INCLINATIONS began as a moment of ‘crip’ play. Alice Sheppard and Danielle Peers finding themselves on a 90-foot ramp on “social street”: the main entrance of the Kinesiology building at the University of Alberta. After a lifetime of climbing awkward, ugly ramps hidden away behind buildings with barely enough room for one chair user, this wide-open slope-scape sent us both literally somersaulting over the rails in our wheelchairs for nearly an hour.

Drawing on Sheppard’s work more broadly, the disabled body, enabled by the ramp, becomes a source of creative movement. Dancers can move in ways that they cannot move on flat surfaces and the ramp itself becomes an artistic object, transformed albeit temporarily into an environment that reveals connection, trust, beauty, and desire.

Choreographed, directed and shot from disability perspectives, this dance-on-video delves into the playful connection enabled where disability, community and ramp meet, as well as the institutional histories and discordant inclinations that lurk just below the surface.

Access Info

Audio Description: Yes.

As creators of film who live disability as a culture and aesthetic, we are committed to creating audio descriptions for our film. We hire voice artists and writers that are deeply integrated into our creative process and approach audio description as it’s own equitable experience of the film.

Funding

Canada Council for the Arts, Disability Dance Works, LLC and The Human Performance Fund – Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation, University of Alberta.