AeriALL
AeriALL is a collaborative project that creates aerial dance and performance for all bodies. It all started when Alex had an inquiry about harness based dance and Helen started envisioning. Since November 2023 Helen and Alex have been building a creative partnership with the goal to bring Alex / Glamputee’s performance into aerial forms.
About AeriALL
Alex and Helen are collaborating, researching and innovating aerial dance to create live performance work that is accessible, both to Alex / Glamputee and audiences. Alex Locust, a queer bi-racial above the knee amputee is learning aerial forms, including rope and harness vertical dance, aerial silks, and aerial hoop/lyra with Helen Wicks as guide, coach, and thought partner. We plan to have a public showing of AeriALL July 26 & 27, 2024 at Project Artaud’s SPACE 124. This is the first step towards a larger body of work that aims to create space for disabled artists to use the otherwise difficult to access aerial form to tell their stories and perspectives in the future.
We are investing in equipment, education, training/teaching time, and month-long residency rehearsal rental at SPACE 124 July, 2024. Additional costs include props and lighting, and artist pay.
Alex (he/she/they) is a Black-white biracial, queer, disabled drag artist whose work is a love letter to their expansive queerness, Black excellence, and crip magic. They point to disability justice artists and activists as their North Star, celebrating the truth that embodiment looks good on every body and collective access is essential to queer liberation. Alex hopes to serve as a possibility model for other disabled, queer babes wanting to get on stage and share their shine. Recently crowned Butch Queen 2023, Glamputee’s drag is all about revelry, flamboyantly hopping into the hearts of the Bay Area drag scene with silly and sultry solo performances and bombastic, vibrant group numbers. Additionally they earned a spot in the ODC QTBIPOC Space Residency to invest in their performance practice and relishing the opportunity to play in the air with Helen as a collaborator, coach, and thought partner. They were featured in the cast of Detour Production’s devised, immersive theater shows We Build Houses Here and Twilight Aristocracy. Alex currently is the Program Director for the Emerge Fellowship at the Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University as well as in their eighth year of business as a disability justice workshop facilitator.
Helen (she/her) is a choreographer, performing artist, and educator. She brings 12 years of experience with aerial vertical dance and 25 years of acrobatics and diverse dance training and practice to the collaboration. She is the Artistic Director for a fiscally sponsored project, Helen Wicks Works (HWW), a company that aims to bring spellbinding circus-informed aerial dance to diverse multi generational audiences. Helen is currently focusing on expanding her teaching and choreographic practice to support disabled performing artist, Glamputee, to access the aerial forms with adaptive aerial rigging and specialized instruction and support. She has experience performing with Bay Area based renowned aerial dance companies, Zaccho Dance Theater, Flyaway Productions, and others since 2014. Her own choreographic work has been presented at Herbst Theater, Z Space, Bay Area Discovery Museum, SPACE 124, ODC, and more. Helen currently is the Arts Specialist at The Nueva School and holds a BA in Dance and BA in Psychology from Bard College.
