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| TX: 01.07.03 - SADLER'S WELLS STAGES ITS FIRST AUDIO DESCRIPTION OF DANCE |
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PRESENTER: LIZ BARCLAY BARCLAY In theatre visually impaired people can grasp quite a lot of the action from the actors dialogue and if there's an audio description available it fills in the gaps. But what about pure dance? How can you describe what's happening on stage and still leave enough space to enjoy the music? Last week Sadler's Wells provided an audio description for a flamenco performance. It was a first for them and a first venture into pure dance for the arts charity Vocaleyes, which specialises in audio description for theatre productions around the country. Our reporter Claire Marsh was at the performance to assess how it went. FLAMENCO DANCING AUDIO DESCRIPTION They raise their arms and weapons up in defiance towards the voice. Then slowly they sink back down, looking at each curiously as if to question what has gone before. MARSH Andrew Holland is an audio describer from Vocaleyes, a company that provides a live description of every art form from dance to opera for the visually impaired. Here he describes the end scene in Fuenteovejuna, a 90 minute dance by the Spanish National Dance Company. AUDIO DESCRIPTION One man leads the way, beating the ground with his staff and the villagers start a stamping procession back to the fields. FLAMENCO SINGING MARSH It's the first time Vocaleyes has described a pure dance production at Sadler's Wells. Usually audio describers such as Andrew are helped by the actors' dialogue within the production, so describing 90 minutes of just dance has its challenges. FLAMENCO SINGING HOLLAND We went to see the show in [indistinct word] to start with but we also talked to the director about how to approach it and talk about some of the dances and do a bit of research into flamenco and some of the other dances so that we had an idea again of where they come from and what their meaning might be. And then you sit down and work with a video to describe the dances and you have to get to know the piece very well, you have to get to know the music very well because a lot of what you're trying to do is to time it so that you're not talking through some important pause and so that you can be heard when there are trumpets playing. And you have to try and fit the description to make the pace of it sympathetic to what's happening on stage. MARSH Andrew and his colleague, Louise Fryer, divide the dances up between them - where Louise's soft voice is used for the lyrical love scenes, Andrew describes the more confrontational scenes. HOLLAND Although we have a script sometimes that scripting will be quite tight and things will be very regular but there'll be other moments when, for instance, a dancer is doing a sort of solo turn when the dancer will do something different every night and effectively they have got a certain amount of time and they are there in the moment expressing what they're expressing at that moment. And so in those instances you have to effectively be doing it live. FLAMENCO DANCING AUDIO DESCRIPTION He looks down on Frondoso, gestures to him. Frondoso stands, their bodies twisted in opposite directions, they stand shoulder to shoulder, one arm extended. They step away from each other, hands circling, as they twist their bodies, step up close. Frondoso stretches - arms wide like a bird - lifting one leg to balance storklike, [indistinct words]. MARSH People with visual impairment welcome such attention to detail. Ray Foster is blind and says without it the dance would have meant nothing. FOSTER The description was superb, absolutely superb, it really was. I could feel tears in my eyes at times, it was really very moving, couldn't have enjoyed the show at all without the audio description because other than that it was just 35 dancers making a lot of noise by stamping their feet. A wonderful sound but the audio description just made it so much more informative and you understood what was going on, they explained the dance patterns, for example, when the bolero was being done they said a sequence of three steps with the emphasis on the third, when the tango was being danced it was a sequence of four steps with the emphasis on the fourth and then the eighth, you know, so you could actually follow the footwork by just listening to the audio description. FLAMENCO SINGING MARSH This was an experiment for Sadler's Wells and albeit a successful one there won't be another audio description until next March when the Northern Ballet Theatre will be performing Midsummer Night's Dream. CIGMAN We certainly try our best to make the building as accessible to visually impaired people and to make things like large print formats available in the things that we produce. MARSH Naomi Cigman is the access officer. CIGMAN Audio description is a big undertaking and if we had a strong following for that, that is something that we could think about but at the moment it's the early stages and we're just sowing the seeds of the idea amongst people. MARSH Members of the audience praise Sadler's Wells for leading the way but said the real demand was for describing classical ballet, such as Tchaikovsky 's Nutcracker. In the meantime for just 90 minutes the audio describers gave an insight into the world of dance and it was gratefully received. CLAPPING BARLCAY Claire Marsh reporting. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 91热爆 is not responsible for external websites |
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