The National Center for Choreography-Akron Unveils 2025 Knight Choreography Prize Recipients

The National Center for Choreography-Akron has named choreographers Alice Sheppard (New York, NY/Los Altos, CA) and Laurel Lawson (Atlanta, GA) of disability arts company Kinetic Light as the latest recipients of the $50,000 Knight Choreography Prize. Made possible by Knight Foundation, this award is designed to support the artistic experimentation and career longevity of choreographers in the United States. Each year the award honors a living choreographer or artist collaborative whose body of work is distinguished not only for their artistry but also for their originality of thought and impact.

The award celebrates choreographers who provide significant contributions to the dance field, expand audiences for dance, and ensure the artform has a prominent place in U.S. culture. Kinetic Light will receive an unrestricted cash award of $30,000, plus $20,000 in programmatic support over two years, to be co-designed with NCCAkron.

Founded in 2016 by Sheppard, Kinetic Light is an internationally-renowned disability arts company known for ambitious, immersive multimedia performance works that emerge from disability culture and are centered in Kinetic Light's signature approach to aesthetically and artistically equitable access. Laurel Lawson is a choreographer, designer, and artist-engineer; they lead Kinetic Light research and development initiatives in tech, access software and product development, and access education curriculum Access ALLways. Alice Sheppard is the Artistic Director of Kinetic Light as well as a choreographer, dancer, arts researcher, writer, and sought-after speaker.

"Alice and Laurel, together with Kinetic Light, have made tremendous waves across the disability arts, dance, access, design, and technology fields," says Christy Bolingbroke, Executive/Artistic Director of NCCAkron. "They have an intentional and inventive approach to world-building through disability arts, tech R&D, administrative practices, and the accessible experiences they create for audiences. At NCCAkron, we often say 'everything is choreography,' and Kinetic Light truly exemplifies that principle."

Kinetic Light's repertory includes DESCENT (2017), Under Momentum (2018), the aerial work Wired (2022), the virtual reality experience territory (2025), and The Next TiMes (2025), created in collaboration with Kinetic Light artists and collaborators including Michael Maag, Jerron Herman, Kayla Hamilton, Tatiana Cholewa, Colin Clark, Kiira Benz, and many others. Brian Seibert of The New York Times notes "Kinetic Light, a disability arts ensemble whose work is made by and for disabled people, has an ethic and aesthetic of access that is exceptionally thoughtful and thorough." Emily Watlington of Art in America shares "Kinetic Light allows disability to transform everything about the working process and the product."

"Kinetic Light's work emerges from the intersections of artistic access, disability aesthetics, and disability culture; it is connected to the rich traditions and exciting contemporary conversations of disabled artists in all artistic fields," shares Alice Sheppard, Founder and Artistic Director of Kinetic Light. "This award enables us to deepen and expand. Our work is possible due to the contributions of the entire Kinetic Light team, and we are grateful."

"We are honored to receive this award in recognition of Kinetic Light's choreography of performance, which in addition to dance encompasses design, access, tech, research, product development, and audience experience. Access is multifaceted and ever expanding. Access is art," comments Laurel Lawson, Kinetic Light Access & Technology Lead.

About the Knight Choreography Prize

With an initial investment of $5 million from Knight Foundation, NCCAkron was established in 2015 to address research and development opportunities in dance. This nonprofit organization has become an intellectual matchmaker between national choreographers and the robust cultural ecology in and around Akron, OH, as well as operating as a hyperagent for dance across the national landscape. Over the past decade, NCCAkron has worked with more than 800 dance artists across 100 U.S. cities. In 2022, Knight Foundation invested an additional $1.5 million to establish this annual unrestricted cash and programmatic award for choreographers and sponsor it in perpetuity.

The Knight Choreography Prize is designed to support the artistic experimentation and career longevity of choreographers in the United States. NCCAkron intends for the award to provide essential time and space for the creative process, for research, and for rigorous play and positive failure. NCCAkron commits to co-create activities and residencies with artists as equal partners and promote equity in the arts by elevating underrepresented voices that are a valuable part of the 21st century dance ecosystem and the future of the artform.

NCCAkron invited dance artists, dance stakeholders, and NCCAkron alumni across the U.S. to nominate a choreographer for this award. An NCCAkron committee then selected five artists from that nomination list, based on established criteria, and those artists were invited to submit application materials. The final selection committee comprised NCCAkron alumni, board members, and Knight City artists. Miami-based choreographer Rosie Herrera was named the inaugural recipient of the Knight Choreography Prize in May 2024, and Shamel Pitts (Brooklyn, NY) received the second award in October 2024. Hereafter, the Knight Choreography Prize is announced once a year, in the Fall.

Laurel Lawson (any pronouns) is a founding member and Access & Technology Lead for Kinetic Light. Choreographer, designer, and artist-engineer, they lead research and development with initiatives such as Audimance, the company's app which revolutionizes audio description, and novel artistic haptic experiences. Lawson brings decades of experience in product design and facilitative leadership to access and technology work. Their work with immersive embodied experience platforms lives at The Choreodaemonic Collective, where they co-lead a collective of artist-technologists. Lawson's work has been recognized with a 2019 DFA Fellowship, made possible with funding from the Doris Duke Foundation, a 2023 Creative Capital Award, and a 2025 Jacob's Pillow Lab residency. Lawson is also the CTO and co-founder of CyCore Systems, a systems engineering consultancy which specializes in solving novel, multi-realm problems of all sizes for a global clientele.

Alice Sheppard (she/her) is the Founder and Artistic Director of renowned disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light. A UCLA Regents Lecturer; United States Artists, MacDowell, and Disability Futures Fellow; Creative Capital grantee; and Bessie Award winner,Alice creates movement that emerges from her understanding of disabled expression, seeking to find the maximum expression of disability in all her different embodiments. Engaging with disability arts, culture, and history, Alice's commissioned work attends to the complex intersections of disability, gender, and race. In addition to performance and choreography, Alice Sheppard is an independent arts researcher whose dance and disability writing has appeared in The New York Times, peer-reviewed essay collections, and such academic journals as Catalyst, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, and Movement Research Performance Journal.

Image Description: A close up of Alice and Laurel suspended in the air, arms outstretched and clasping each other’s hands. Alice is a multiracial Black woman with coffee-colored skin and short curly hair; she wears a shimmery deep red costume. Laurel is a white person with cropped hair; she wears a shimmery gold costume with thick black shoulder straps. The dancers are upside down and horizontal at the same time, their wheels shining and facing out. Photo Robbie Sweeny.