Dear colleagues, here are two events in NYC later this week: Wednesday and Thursday, at the NYPL Dance Division at Lincoln Center. Maybe you'd like to join me? Link for first event: https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2023/05/03/cripmad-archive-dances-participatory-workshop Link for second event: https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2023/05/04/petra-kuppers-eco-soma-methods-tuning-our-worlds 1. Crip/Mad Archive Dances Participatory Workshop Date and Time Wednesday, May 3, 2023, 6:30 - 8 PM End times are approximate. Events may end early or late. Location Dance Division - 2nd Floor Reading Room Stacks New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center <http://www.nypl.org/locations/lpa> <https://www.nypl.org/> Event Details This event will take place in person at The Library for the Performing Arts. Register <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cripmad-archive-dances-participatory-workshop-tickets-495344297127> [image: Hettie Barnhill, a queer Black woman with curly hair, Petra Kuppers, a queer white woman of size with a shaved head; and a young community participant, all finding sanctuary in color, based on Vincent van Gogh’s Asylum Garden painting, as part of a Crip/M] In this special participatory performance, disability culture activist Petra Kuppers and her guests invite audiences to search for disabled and mad dancers in the archive. The event will take place within the stacks of the Library for the Performing Arts, using movement, storytelling and divinatory methods to explore connections to disabled dance ancestors. Gestural memories ground the experience in old and new lineages, help to honor chosen family, and offer embodied transmissions of knowledge. Participants can choose their level of engagement, including being a witness with no need to move if not desired. The session is grounded in disability culture values. Petra Kuppers (she/her) is a disability culture activist and a community performance artist. Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods, and uses somatics, performance, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. Her latest academic study is *Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters* (University of Minnesota Press, 2022, open access). Her third performance poetry collection, *Gut Botany* (Wayne State University Press, 2020), won the 2022 Creative Book Award by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. In 2022, she was named a Dance/USA Fellow. Kuppers is Artistic Director of The Olimpias, an international disability culture collective, and she co-creates Turtle Disco, a somatic writing studio. She is the Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Image Description: Hettie Barnhill, a queer Black woman with curly hair, Petra Kuppers, a queer white woman of size with a shaved head; and a young community participant, all finding sanctuary in color, based on Vincent van Gogh’s Asylum Garden painting, as part of a Crip/Mad Archive Dance. All three people reach toward the yellow battery of Petra’s disability scooter. Behind them, the fake grass of an installation extends toward the gray building and tall windows of Lincoln Center. Credit: Kate Freer Assistive Listening and ASL ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Second Event: 2. Petra Kuppers: Eco Soma Methods: Tuning into our Worlds Date and Time Thursday, May 4, 2023, 6 - 7:30 PM End times are approximate. Events may end early or late. Location Library for the Performing Arts, Bruno Walter Auditorium New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center <http://www.nypl.org/locations/lpa> <https://www.nypl.org/> Event Details This event will take place in person at The Library for the Performing Arts. Register <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/petra-kuppers-eco-soma-methods-tuning-into-our-worlds-tickets-495359131497> [image: Petra Kuppers, a white queer disabled cis woman of size with yellow glasses, shaved head, pink lipstick and a black dotted top, smiles up to the sky, arms outstretched, embracing the world. Her mobility scooter’s handlebar is visible at the bottom of the] <https://www.eventbrite.com/e/petra-kuppers-eco-soma-methods-tuning-into-our-worlds-tickets-495359131497> Petra Kuppers’ 2022 book *Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters* is a “poetic field guide to witnessing community performance, offering a substantive revision of arts-based methods” (Lori M. Esposito). Join Petra for a talk in which she trains a disability culture lens onto contemporary performance, investigating co-experienced embodiment in unequally distributed power fields. Eco Soma proposes an art/life method of sensory tuning to the inside and the outside simultaneously, a bodymindspirit method that opens toward ethical cohabitation with human and more-than-human others. Using both video examples and gentle participatory observations, let’s explore together what this can mean for us as witnesses of our own lives. Image Description: Petra Kuppers, a white queer disabled cis woman of size with yellow glasses, shaved head, pink lipstick and a black dotted top, smiles up to the sky, arms outstretched, embracing the world. Her mobility scooter’s handlebar is visible at the bottom of the image. She is in front of a multicolored wall: purple, pink, yellow and orange. Credit: Tamara Wade Assistive Listening and ASL ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Petra Kuppers she/her Anita Gonzalez Collegiate Professor of Performance Studies and Disability Culture Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of English Language and Literature University of Michigan Artistic Director of *The Olimpias* and co-director of *Turtle Disco* Performance/Dance <https://sites.google.com/view/petrakuppers/> Poetry/Fiction <https://petrakuppersfiction.wordpress.com/> *Eco Soma: Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters <https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/eco-soma>*. UoMinnesotaP, 2022 Gut Botany, <https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/gut-botany> Wayne State UP, 2020 (ASLE Creative Book winner 2022)