Little by little, the world of culture is opening up to the needs of different audiences, including the visually impaired. Audio-descriptions of audiovisuals or tactile guided tours in exhibitions and art centers are becoming more and more common. But it is still strange to imagine this applied to the performing arts, more specifically, to dance.
How to make a dance performance accessible to visually impaired people?
Manuel Caravaca Martínez is an audio-descriptionist. He has worked doing audio-description scripts for audiovisual pieces, among them: El buen patrón, Si yo fuera rico, Mientras dure la guerra Recently, he landed in the world of performing arts through Aptent Soluciones and the Accessible Theater project. Among his latest works is the live audiodescription of flamenco shows. From Sherezade, from María Pagés, y “Ariadna, al hilo del mito”, from Rafaela Carrasco.Although it is a complicated job and not yet sufficiently widespread, Manuel is enthusiastic about the impact that a good audiodescription can have on the listener. He knows, first hand, that this experience can be a gift for the soul. It is giving back to blind people a right they have been deprived of. It is to build again that channel that connects people with the catharsis of the scenic arts. And not only the users of audio description are beneficiaries, but also the art of dance itself finds new fronts, new audiences and new readings of the same piece.
For a person who is not familiar with this measure, how does audio description work?
We try to bring the world of culture closer to the blind public, in the most pleasant way possible. An audio description can be more objective or more subjective. That is to say, to name in a technical way what happens on stage or to make use of metaphors and go deeper into the emotional aspect. For me, the ideal is a mixture of both tones. Talk about the plot and explain the steps in a simple way, also using the corresponding nomenclature.
It requires technical knowledge on the part of the audiodescriber, then.
We do an impressive task of documentation. In my first flamenco show, I had a dancer who gave me master classes. When it comes to audio description, you have to use technical terms, but the ideal is to accompany them with an explanation of their execution, through metaphors and similes. For example, ”flap your arms imitating the movements of a bird”. With this particular metaphor, one person who attended and with whom I was able to talk told me that, for the first time, she had understood this movement. Another factor to keep in mind during audio description is the music, the live sound. You should never step on the dialogue or the voice over. Demasiada información puede resultar agobiante.
There is a necessary work of empathy.
Of course. Nowadays, there is no rule, as there is in the audiovisual field, to audio-write dance. We have to put ourselves in the spectator’s shoes and make it as pleasant as possible. We have always been told that there is no room for literature in audio-description, but I think that sometimes it is necessary to resort to a more emotional than technical language to transmit what happens during the choreography.
Is the user experience usually satisfactory?
Normally, blind audiences have very low expectations. They don’t know what they are going to find, and then they are surprised by the experience! I remember a man who was a flamenco connoisseur and lent the earpiece to his companion. With the audiodescription, she had managed to understand flamenco steps that she did not understand. This is achieved if there is good preparation. We need to have access to videos of the piece, go to rehearsals, document ourselves and know how to defend ourselves with improvisation.
What other ways are there to bring the performing arts to the visually impaired?
Touch tours are the most immersive you can find. They are the best way to introduce the blind audience to the work, they have that pre-show approach and they can be in contact with the dancers, touch the props, talk to them. But the big companies rarely allow this.
When we do audio-description, we make a previous audio-introduction with basic information about the play. Some companies send audio-synopsis so that people can find out about the play and decide whether they are interested in attending or not.
I suspect that this will be another problem: how to publicize this alternative.
The first thing to do is to disseminate this measure within companies. Generally, it is the creators themselves who decide to apply audio description to their pieces in order to add to accessibility. On other occasions, the service is contracted by large festivals, also due to accessibility policies. Last year’s edition of the Mérida Classical Theater Festival was the first time that dance pieces were audiodescribed. In many places the possibility is still not considered. That barrier needs to be broken.
How can we make further progress on accessibility issues? What are the pending tasks?
More research, more feedback and more awareness. We need to know how the attendee feels, what works and what doesn’t work for them. We are pioneers with this type of shows. We still have to adjust some aspects. But, for that, we need to have more accessible shows where we can put all this into practice.
