Biographies

Stephanie Clemens began her dance studies when a neighbor, the great Adolph Bolm suggested to her mother that she begin to take classes with Lila Zali at the Highland Playhouse in Los Angeles. As a child she made her stage debut with The Ruth St. Denis Concert dancers and then continued her dance studies with Maria Kedrina, Michael Panieff, Robert Rosselat, Gene Marinaccio, and at the San Francisco School. She attended Juilliard in the late fifties; there her teachers were Anthony Tudor, Alfredo Corvino, Lucas Hoving, José Limón and members of the Graham Company. She has performed on the West Coast with The American Concert Ballet and The Cosmopolitan Opera Company and in the Midwest as a guest with Chicago Contemporary Dance Theatre. She is the owner and director of The Academy of Movement and Music in Oak Park and is one of the Co-Founder and former director of MOMENTA, a Performing Arts Company that has been actively involved in the reconstruction of works by Doris Humphrey. She appeared as a soloist with MOMENTA in New York and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., during 1989-90, performed a one-woman concert of St. Denis solos in summer, 1993, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in 1994 at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago. Since 1988 she has worked on reconstructions of works by St. Denis, Doris Humphrey and Eleanor King with Karoun Tootikian, Ernestine Stodelle, Letitia Ide and Eleanor King. She is a founding member and was executive director of the Doris Humphrey Society and is a founding member and director of the Tidmarsh Arts Foundation. She served on the board of the Oak Park Area Arts Council for more than ten years. In 2000, she received an award of recognition from the American Library Association for her efforts in producing six videos documenting the work of Doris Humphrey. In 2001, she was awarded a Award for Lifetime Service, received the Oak Park Area Arts Council’s Joseph Randall Shapiro award, and in 2007, an Arts Entrepreneurship award for Lifetime Service from Columbia College. Stephanie has served on the Dance Panel for the Illinois Arts Council and on the Awards Committee for the Chicago Dance and Music Alliance. In 2010 Stephanie acted as producer for MOMENTA for a one hour documentary on the life and work of Loïe Fuller. She has been active in working with MOMENTA to develop inclusive repertory for dancers with and without disabilities for the BOW Festival in 2006 and for CounterBalance since its early years at Access Living.

Ginger Lane began her dance training in Chicago with Edna McRae, and continued her training with John Kriza and Ruth Ann Koesun of , Gus Giordano, and dance faculty at the Interlochen Center for the Arts where she was awarded a dance scholarship. Ginger received her B.S. in Theatre and Communication from Northwestern University and performed and taught dance throughout the Chicago area for 35 years. Using a wheelchair since 1984, Ginger has collaborated and Biographies performed with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago and was a member of Dance>Detour, Chicago’s first mixed abilities dance company for ten years. She has been involved with MOMENTA since 2003, performing and choreographing, and, along with Larry Ippel, Anita Fillmore Kenney and Kris Lenzo, conducted workshops at the Academy for five years. As Coordinator of the Arts & Culture project at Chicago’s Access Living, the foremost Disability Rights Organization in the U.S., Ginger has produced, directed, choreographed and performed in the physically integrated dance concert, Counter Balance, since 2008, and retired last December from there after 31 years in her position as disability rights activist. In 2019 she was named Grand Marshall of Chicago’s Disability Pride Parade, and in 2020 was appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot to the Cultural Arts Council in Chicago. Ginger is the 2017 recipient of a 3Arts Award in Dance, and a UIC/3Arts Dance Fellowship. Ginger is a journalist for Splash Magazines, where she writes on dance and theatre.

Alice Sheppard trained with Kitty Lunn and performed with Infinity Dance Theater. After an apprenticeship with AXIS Dance Company, Alice became a core company member and toured nationally and taught in the company’s education and outreach programs. Since becoming an independent dance artist, Alice has danced in projects with Ballet Cymru/GDance, and Marc Brew Company in the United Kingdom. In the United States, she has worked with Marjani Forté, MBDance, Infinity Dance Theater, and Steve Paxton. Her choreography has been commissioned by CRIPSiE, and Full Radius Dance, and MOMENTA Dance Company. Alice is the founder and artistic lead for Kinetic Light, a project-based ensemble, working at the intersections of disability, dance, design, identity, and technology to create transformative art and advance the intersectional disability arts movement. A USA Artist, Creative Capital grantee and Bessie Award winner, Alice creates movement that engages intersectional disability arts, culture, and history to challenge conventional understandings of disabled and dancing bodies.

Kris Lenzo has been national champion in wheelchair basketball and wheelchair track several times. He first performed with MOMENTA in 2003 in Larry Ippel's Sharing the Moment. He has performed at Spring to Dance St. Louis (2009, 2011, 2012, 2013), Dance Chicago, Duets for my Valentine, Bodies of Work Festival of Disability Arts and Culture (2006 & 2013), CounterBalance, and almost annually at the Chicago Disability Pride Parade. Kris is a facilitator for MOMENTA 's EveryBody Can Dance! (EBCD) workshops and a 2015 3Arts awardee. Alana Wallace, Founder and Artistic Director, established Dance>Detour in 1995 to develop and promote artistic collaborations between artists with and without disabilities Biographies working together to explore dance movement as equals. She works to expand the concept of what dance IS and WHO can be involved. Wallace, an African-American woman, who contracted polio at the age of five, has always believed she was born to perform. She has found that the wheelchair is a beautiful accessory that affords her a unique opportunity to embrace and express dance. Wallace is a multi-faceted artist who, along with Michelle Obama, received one of ten Phenomenal Woman Awards at THE BLACK WOMEN’S EXPO Gala in 2008. Alana currently appears in the TV commercials for “Think Beyond the Label”— a national campaign to promote employment for people with disabilities. She is also featured in the newly unveiled edition of “WHO’S WHO IN BLACK CHICAGO,” as an accomplished community leader. Alana has collaborated in dance works with renowned companies such as Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Bryant Ballet, The Chicago Moving Company and MOMENTA. In 1998, she was featured in the Emmy Award-Winning PBS television documentary, “Dance from the Heart” hosted by Ben Vereen. She conducts movement workshops, lectures and performs nationwide. Thus, Alana proudly displays her artistry in dance, (as well as in singing, and acting) – as a testament to the talents and abilities of performers with disabilities.

Maggie Bridger is a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Department of Disability and Human Development and a dance artist working in disability dance. Her research and artistic interests center around disabled bodies in dance, with a focus on chronic illness, pain and the ways that disabled bodyminds are reimagining the creative process. Maggie is a co-founder and co-director of the Inclusive Dance Workshop Series at Access Living. She was awarded the 2019-20 Chicago Area Schweitzer Fellowship and her dance work has been performed at Access Living, Columbia College Chicago and Cottey College, among others.

Sydney Erlikh (MSEd) is a doctoral candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is studying dance and disability to create a multi-sited ethnography on mixed-ability dance groups that include individuals with intellectual disabilities. Sydney taught special education in alternate assessment classrooms for seven years in New York City and California, where she created dance opportunities for students. Sydney is a DanceAbility certified teacher and has attended the AXIS dance teacher training. She was awarded a 2019-2020 Chicago Area Schweitzer Fellowship with her partner Maggie Bridger, which lead to the creation of Inclusive Dance Workshop Series at Access Living in Chicago. Sydney currently serves on the NDEO dance and disability task force and has presented at conferences on using AAC in dance.