Crip Mad Archive Dances (Documentary, March 2024)

How do disabled and mad people survive, dance, insert their differences in a world full of stigma? How do we live through bodymindspirit experiences of alienation and pain? This experimental documentary charts disability culture archives, and embodied gestures of survival and creative expression. It draws on community with human and non-human others: media clips as performance gifts, archival footage from dance archives, environmental embedment and grounding in trees, water, desert and lakes.

Together, we dance, and spring our binds.

Please note:

This experimental documentary shares instances of medical incarceration, including insulin violence. It offers survivor testimonies of artful and agency-full reclamation.

A full audio-description track is available on SoundCloud, at https://on.soundcloud.com/bv9pE

The documentary uses 'crip' and 'mad' as in-group signifiers, aware of stigma and histories.

The Crip/Mad Archive Project: An Experimental Documentary

Direction, edit, and additional writing: Petra Kuppers

Community Media gratefully received from my collaborators

(in order of appearance):

moira williams

community dancers in the Astor Gallery, Lincoln Center,

New York City

Chanika Svetvilas

Kym McDaniel

Elisabeth Motley

Marina “Heron” Tsaplina

Robin Wilson, recorded at the Duderstadt Video Center, University of Michigan

Ysolde Stienon and Marina “Heron” Tsaplina

Desiree Mwalimu-Banks and Mikel Mwalimu-Banks

Alexis Riley

Naomi Ortiz

Stephanie Heit

AXIS Dance Company, with dancers Zara Anwar, Alaja Badalich,

David Calhoun, Anna Gichan, JanpiStar

Rebecca Caines and John Campbell

Excerpt from Dance On: Fred Benjamin, interviewer Billie Mahoney, produced by KCEN Channel 18 Kansas City Educational Network, 1980. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Jerome Robbins Dance Division

Photo of Vaslav Nijinsky in the Swiss Sanatorium’s garden, Courtesy of the New York Public Library Jerome Robbins Dance Division

With thanks to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division Research Fellowship and the Guggenheim Fellowship;

the ongoing support of the University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies; a Mellon Affirming Multivocal Humanities grant, and the many dance and history sites that have supported these investigations, playful engagements, and community gatherings.

Thanks to the guardians past, present and future of the lands we danced on:

the Anishinaabeg - The Three Fire Confederacy of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations, as well as the Wyandot Nation, when we danced in the area colonially known as Ann Arbor, Michigan;

The Lenape Nation, when we danced in what is colonially known as New York City.

We hope you will take up our movement invitations and that we can enrich our living disability and mad archives together.

An Olimpias Production @2024

Initial Screenings and Awards (selected)

April 2024: International Screendance Festival at the Salt Lake Film Society. Screening and interview.

April 2024: Innovations in Disability and Dance: Reaching Back, Moving Forward. Plenary presentation at the National Dance Educators' Organization day-long conference (virtual)

June 2024: Jury Award: Feature Documentary Special Mention, A&E/Accessibility and Environment Film Festival, Bristol, UK

June 2024: Crip/Mad Archive Dances: Brownbag Talk at the Huntington Library, Archive and Gardens

September 2024, Crip/Mad Archive Dances screening, Applied Theatre class, Eastern Michigan University

November/December 2024: Reflection of Disability in Art International Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece, University of Macedonia

November/December 2024:  Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema, Boulder, Colorado 

November 2024: Center for Mad Culture/Chicago: Crip/Mad Archive Dances screening as part of Dunning Exhibition Event Series

November 2024: Crip/Mad Archive Dances participatory performance lecture at Temple University, Philadelphia (in person)

November 2024: Crip/Mad Archive Dances Screening at 4th Space, Concordia University, Canada 

November 2024: Crip/Mad Archive Dances Screening as part of the Disability Arts and Culture Gathering, Michigan

December 2024: Best Artists Film Kat Award: Together! Disability Film Festival (virtual)