kinesthetic learning, thinking through the body, Laban Movement Analysis, human centered design, audience engagement, light, sculp ture, user experience, cognitive development, function/expression, psychology, dance, nature of technology,gesture-recognition, event design and planning, mangagement and direction, dance, film, editing, sound, embodied technology, distributed performance, interactive design, cross-cultural collaboration, socio-cultural arts programming, creative placemaking, site specific performance, installation, anthropological artist, choreography, visual arts, image, sound design, time-based media, experimental film, storytelling
“Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be part of.” ~Geri Weitzman
Top 40 Under 40 Business Insider Hampton Roads
Musrara Israel International Festival Artist
Hampton Roads Cultural Alliance "Allie" Award
Virginia "Exemplary Program & Pinnacle Event"
Bogliasco Foundation Fellow
Culture Hub NYC (micro)Residency Artist
Henry Luce Scholar
Fulbright Scholar
US Embassy Research Grant
InLight Richmond People's Choice Award
Chicago Dance Bridge Artist
Links Hall Link-UP Residency Artist
Dance Omi International Residency Artist
Summer Stages Dance Choreographic Fellow
Lemelson Illinois-Technology Innovation Finalist
Kate Neal Kinley Fellow
Moe Family Dance Award
Artist.Scholar. Mover. Maker.
Renata Sheppard
Art is a vehicle for preserving, honoring, and challenging humanness in a technology-driven world. I shift between paradigms: costume is sculpture, scenery performs, audience becomes actor, folding and refolding expectations and roles to build an art form that reflects the pulse of real-life spontaneity and behaviors.
I collect my choreographic ingredients across discipline: re-contextualizing and juxtaposing light, body, material, architecture and technology in a concentrated hyper-reality of emotion, flesh, and spectacle, a cross-breed of performance and installation. I weave fragments of technology, old and new, analog and digital, into my playground: the dialogue between body and its environment.
My work lives as dance for stage, sculpture for gallery or public spaces, and film/video art. I use body, light, paper and place to tell my story.
Life is choreography, a living sculpture.