How can we creatively grow audiences for dance and live performance audiences that include the Blind and Low Vision community?
Dancemakers Guest Curators Arts Assembly hosted an introductory workshop for dancers and embodied performance artists to familiarize themselves with the foundations of audio descriptions for dance & movement practices.
Participants practised their new found skills as a whisper guide for performances in the Summerworks Festival in August 2025.
Inspiration for this includes:
Artists
Arts Assembly
Arts Assembly is a not-for-profit, community-centric arts organization that emphasizes artistic collaboration.
Amy Amantea
Amy Amantea (she/her) is a white settler on the stolen lands of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-waututh first peoples.
Annemarie Cabri
Annemarie Cabri is a Senior Teaching Artist for the National Ballet of Canada and Canadian Opera Company, along with performing and creating opportunities for the growing Silver Swans® community as a licensee through the Royal Academy of Dance.
acCessibilIty
Is the venue wheelchair accessible?
Yes, the venue is wheelchair accessible including ramps into the building, elevators and wheelchair accessible washrooms.
Will the event be ASL Interpreted?
All live events will offer ASL interpretation (upon request). Please contact us to request ASL Interpretation.
Will the event be described for Blind and low vision audiences?
This workshop will teach participants how to described dance for Blind and low vision audience members (but the workshop will not be audio described).
In partnership with
A conversation about dance, access and archiving performance.
Arts Assembly and Dancemakers have partnered to host a conversation on dance access, in particular for the blind / low vision community. Arts Assembly’s recent series two part series The Longest Way Round is the Shortest Way Home will be explored through this conversation, emphasizing the process and possibilities of programming and supporting inclusive dance, performance and visual art practices.
This talk is the launch of Arts Assembly’s archive recordings of The Longest Way Round is the Shortest Way Home which was intentionally designed with dance descriptions by Andrea Cownden in consultation with Amy Amantea.
Inspiration for this work includes:
Artists
Arts Assembly
Arts Assembly is a not-for-profit, community-centric arts organization that emphasizes artistic collaboration.
Amy Amantea
Amy Amantea (she/her) is a white settler on the stolen lands of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-waututh first peoples.
Harmanie Rose
Harmanie Rose is a disabled dance artist living and working on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.
Jose Migeul (Miggy) Esteban
Jose Miguel (Miggy) Esteban is a dance/movement artist and educator based in Tkaronto/Toronto.
Sophie Corriveau
Sophie Corriveau has worked in the field of dance as a performer, choreographer, teacher, rehearsal director and artistic consultant.
Focusing on the necessary act of breath that bodies unconsciously choreograph is a way to reveal how bodies have been interrupted by eugenics insistence to “return to normal”.
Wheezy Breezy is a self-directed residency by dancers jes sachse & Sarah Wong welcomed by personal invitation through support in access & incubation during the 2023-2024 season by Arts Assembly.
Arts Assembly was chosen as one of the Guest Curators for Dancemakers Centre for Creation 2023-2024 season, and Dancemakers is excited to support Wheezy Breezy‘s further development and public presentation in the summer of 2024 in Toronto.
From jes and Sarah:
“Our collaborative research sits in the complexities of navigating our dance practices as disabled artists breathing through the ongoing pandemic. Focusing on the necessary act of breath that bodies unconsciously choreograph is a way to reveal how bodies have been interrupted by eugenics insistence to “return to normal”. Leaning into accessibility interrupts capital procedure by nurturing creative adaptation of one moment to the next. We are experimenting with dancing in relationship with the medical, with aesthetic, with public space, and with the improvisations of sonic accompaniment, looking to traditions of busking and jazz music.
As we move in step with grief, we make space for candid conversations of coexisting with ghosts, aesthetics of ease vs. effort, community and site-specificity, the found & the fallow. We find deep joy in the solidarity we have found in each other knowing in our creature-bodies that breathing is the circadian recalibration of the collective.”
Choreographers: jes Sache & Sarah Wong
Inspiration for this work includes:
Artists
Arts Assembly
Arts Assembly is a not-for-profit, community-centric arts organization that emphasizes artistic collaboration.
jes sache
jes sachse is an artist, writer and dancer who addresses the negotiations of bodies moving in public/private space and the work of their care.
Sarah Wong
Sarah Wong is an emerging writer, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada.
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