Disability and Ecology Performance Exchange (D.E.P.E.) Lab
About
Each invited participant will initiate opportunities for the group, sharing questions and ideas that come from their own practice. DEPE’s 2024 guests are vital contributors to the reimagining of Disability within the fields of dance, art, academia, and disability studies.
Envisioned by Victoria Marks, DEPE aspires to support the growth of a creative/research-based community advocating for perspectives informed by diverse corporeal experiences.
DEPE represents a continued commitment from UCLA to center Disability Studies as a powerful interdisciplinary methodology in nearly every field. DEPE builds on Marks’ 2019-2023 UCLA Dancing Disability Labs (DDL’s). Each year, DDL’s cohort of Lab participants contributed considerations and frameworks for the labs that followed. We are thankful for these insights and contributions.
DDL and DEPE build on Marks’ choreographic practice of convening “Action Conversations”- a structure that brings groups of people together, often with different lived experiences, to engage in movement and discussion. “When we move together, engage in play together, the conversation changes” says Marks. Past “Action Conversations” have included teen mothers and an older generation of women in rural Bellows Falls VT; Veterans in a Los Angeles Combat Rehab program together with dance artists; and UCLA Fraternity and Sorority students together in a discussion of the unspoken texts of “hook-up” culture. 10 Questions, a variation of Action Conversations, (2018-2022) brought together artists, activists, scholars, and scientists in public forums to engage questions like: How do we remember? How do we love? How do we forgive?
SCHOLARLY & ARTISTIC CONVENING
The structure of DEPE aims to support the individual and collective inquiries of every participant. DEPE will launch with a gathering at UCLA from July 8-15, 2024. Throughout the week inquiries will devote attention to the relationship between bodies and the environment.
Inquiry formats may include conversations, studio experiments, and writing prompts to name a few possibilities. While the convening is brief, we aspire to capture artifacts of these exchanges, encouraging ideas to circulate outward amongst colleagues and students.
Seeking to align disability justice with creative and research practices, DEPE is committed to the project of providing an anti-racist, anti-ableist, gender inclusive, anti-ageist, environment for all, and to support belonging for a diverse community of artists and scholars. DEPE is working closely with Embraced Body: India Harville and JJ Omelagah, who will work with us as access and equity facilitators as we plan, and throughout our convening.
An informal public sharing of findings is scheduled for Monday, July 15 at Kaufman Hall’s small theater/studio. This small public sharing will be framed by the questions we have asked ourselves and the experiences we have undertaken throughout the week.
Please join the DS Labs Network to stay posted on updates for DEPE.
An informal public sharing of DEPE findings at Kaufman Hall. The public sharing will be framed by the questions and experiences of the DEPE participants.
Jinqiu Guan, a filmmaker, dancer, choreographer and scholar, has filmed the Dancing Disability Lab since 2019. She will return in July 2024 to film DEPE. Watch her short films for the Dancing Disability Lab in the DDL Video Archive.
Organizers
The Dancing Disability Lab has operated with support from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, UCLA’s Division of Undergraduate Education Initiatives, the School of the Arts and Architecture, and Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. This year’s DEPE Lab is receiving funding directly from UCLA’s office of the Executive Vice Chancellor, UCLA’s office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and the School of the Arts and Architecture.
Sponsors
