Artistic Practice

My current work explores themes of care, collective access, queerness, disability, and time travel. I create performance art, dance, and workshops as homes for social exploration.

A double exposure of Alison dancing on a rooftop at sunset.

Reverberations: Phase 1 (2023)

In the beginning of the year, I offered a dance to anyone who wanted it, and collected 28 people. I filmed a dance and posted it on Instagram each day. Each dance was for a specific person who had requested one. I never announced who each dance was for and told participants to experiment with feeling for something nebulous and finding new ways to sense connection. I invited participants to let themselves feel like they had a secret.

Kris Lenzo and Robby Lee Williams, two wheelchair dancers, dance together in a triangular space with an angled ramp surrounding them. A pond with greenery and a large painting are behind them.

Small Doses Dance (2022)

Under my direction and in collaboration, Robby Lee Williams and Kris Lenzo performed “Small Doses Dance” at Unfolding Disability Futures at The Plant in Chicago in June 2022. This piece explores disability futures in dance as grounded in sustainability and care, exploring what movement forms emerge when we focus less on what movement looks like and more about how we can move in ways that honor ourselves. In "Small Doses Dance," we demonstrate how making a phrase "smaller" in scale can allow us to hone in on the depth and nuance of our experiences. Once we find curiosity and somatic engagement in these "smaller," more sustainable movements, we realize they are powerful in their own right. The perspective shift of realizing that we are whole -- and our movement structures are whole and enough just as they are -- comes from disability justice practice. As we dance with these ideas, we unearth the ways that disability futures already live inside of us.

Direction and sound design - Alison Kopit
Dancers - Kris Lenzo and Robby Williams
Film and photography - Ralph Klisiewicz
Choreography and audio description - Alison Kopit, Kris Lenzo, and Robby Williams
Costumes - Salty Brown Femme

Alison crouches on a stone staircase with large boulders on each side. Her right arm extends out to the side with wrist bent, fingers angled skyward. She gazes at her outstretched arm. Her other arm is bent, with hand gently curled below her chin.

Care on the Breeze (2022)

In this piece, I use a score developed for providing distance-based care and connectivity through shared presence across spatial absence. In this score, dance is created as an act of care for one person. The dance itself occurs in a different place than the “audience,” but the audience member knows when the dance is happening. Therefore, the piece is in shared time, but not shared space. The work explores questions of care from a distance, isolation, loneliness, connectivity and presence in absence. In a dance context, what might it mean to witness without watching and provide and receive care in non-tangible ways?

 
Chun-shan (Sandie) Yi's two fingered-hand poses next to two handmade, pleated cloth masks. One mask has funny dog prints and the other has Frida Kahlo's portrait.

Masks for Crips (2020)

At the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chun-shan (Sandie) Yi and I found ourselves in conversations about the intersection of ableism and racism involved in the mask-wearing debate. At the same time, we began hearing about a need for masks for disabled people and their care teams in the Chicago disability community. Using disability justice organizing as an anchor, Yi and I combined our skils, and gathered together community volunteers to distribute and produce masks with us. Keeping crip art values in mind while also acting quickly in a time of crisis, we distributed masks to hundreds of disabled people and care teams in the Chicagoland area.

 

You Asked Me How I Am (2017-2018)

This project explores and disrupts social obligations and rules and brings attention to the ways that the question “How are you?” is usually a formality, as opposed to an invitation to engage deeply in another’s human experience. During this durational project, whenever someone asked me how I was, I handed them a business card that said “You asked me how I am. You’ve gained admission to my virtual museum.” The URL listed directed the user to a Google map that simply marked all the places I had cried in Chicago.

Alison stands arms and legs outstretched in an X shape. The background has colorful paper taped to the wall. Text reads "And maybe that's precisely why I love this bodymind."

QueerCrip Aesthetics: Performing the Score of Myself (2016)

This 16-minute short film used voiceover, dance, and visual art to represent the way that my queer and disability identities are related--and sometimes inextricable. A version of this piece was also performed as a live improvisational dance piece at the DisArt Symposium in Grand Rapids, Michigan in April 2017. I recreated the film set and I explored QueerCrip aesthetics through improvisational dance while the film played in the background.
Content Warning: This film contains audio footage of panic attacks.