A movement workshop exploring the use of integrated access tools like audio description as choreographic material led by practitioners and access workers, Maggie Bridger and Alison Kopit.
Participants will be guided through creative movement exercises that focus on audio description not just as an access tool to be applied after the fact, but as a core part of the choreographic process. This workshop is for all who are interested in movement and access practices. All bodies, minds, and experience levels welcome.
About Alison
Alison Kopit is a queer and disabled access worker, access dramaturg, and movement artist based between Chicago and New York City. Alison’s access dramaturgy practice approaches access as central to the creative process, and integrates access into all levels of a performance. Access dramaturgy credits include Ryan J. Haddad’s Dark Disabled Stories (Spring 2023, produced by the Bushwick Starr, presented by The Public Theater), Maggie Bridger’s Radiate (Winter 2023, Chicago Dancemakers Forum & Links Hall), Dan Fishback’s Dan Fishback is Alive, Unwell & Living in His Apartment (December 2024, Joe’s Pub) and Ryan J. Haddad’s Hold Me in the Water (April 2025, Playwrights Horizons). She co-directs the Pay Rate for Access Workers Now (PRAWN) project, which advocates for greater standards of pay for access workers through research and consultation with cultural spaces.
She was awarded the Michael Feingold award for Dramaturgy in the 2023 Obie Awards and was an Action Movement Play resident at Movement Research in November 2024. She holds a PhD in Disability Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Learn more about Alison at alisonkopit.com
About Maggie
Maggie Bridger is a sick and disabled dance artist, fiber artist, organizer, and scholar interested in reimagining pain through the creative process. Maggie is a 2022 City of Chicago Individual Artist Program grantee and has held artist residencies through High Concept Labs, the Chicago Cultural Center's Learning Lab, Synapse Arts, and Chicago Dancemakers Forum. Her work has been shown at Elevate Chicago Dance 2022, The Art Institute of Chicago, Cottey College, CounterBalance, and The Plant, among others. Most recently, she premiered a new version of her ongoing work, Radiate, as part of The Steppenwolf’s LookOut series. She is a co-founder, along with collaborator Sydney Erlikh, of the community-run Inclusive Dance Workshop Series and a founding member of Unfolding Disability Futures, a local collective of disabled performing artists.
Maggie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois, Chicago where she is conducting archival and ethnographic research in service of her dissertation project, Dancing With/in Pain. Her writing has been published in the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, Le Sociographe, The HowlRound and the Journal of Cultural and Literary Disability Studies.