Are you passionate about helping grow audiences for dance and live performance, audiences that include the Blind and Low Vision community?
Dancemakers Guest Curators Arts Assembly are hosting an introductory workshop for dancers and embodied performance artists to familiarize themselves with the foundations of audio descriptions for dance & movement practices.
This workshop will take place on August 8th (exact schedule to be determined), in downtown Toronto.
Participants will receive a $100 honorarium for their time, and the possible opportunity of practicing their new found skills as a whisper guide for a performance in August 2025.
Please note: registration is limited and submission of this form is not a guarantee of participation. Confirmation emails will be sent to selected participants prior to workshop dates.
Artists
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).
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
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.