Christine Malec sits down with audio describer Rebecca Singh of Superior Description Services and dancer Annemarie Cabri to explore the “Art of Storytelling in Dance" before diving into the connections between joy and dance with Ramya Amuthan as Luminato 2023 prepares for Jean-Pierre Perreault’s Nuit.
Christine Malec sits down with audio describer Rebecca Singh of Superior Description Services and dancer Annemarie Cabri to explore the “Art of Storytelling in Dance" before diving into the connections between joy and dance with Ramya Amuthan as Luminato 2023 prepares for Jean-Pierre Perreault’s Nuit.
Christine Malec:
Welcome to episode four of the Radio LUMI podcast, Joy. I'll be speaking with a dancer and an audio describer about how we tell stories through dance. And how a blind audience can appreciate and understand this art form, which is generally a visual one.
Speaker 2:
So I've got my feet in what's called first position, so if you want to get down there. Yeah, I'll just do a couple of the feet. So see, my legs are turned out.
Speaker 4:
Oh, your heels are together. Okay.
Speaker 2:
Yes, heels are together and I should be squeezing my knees tight and my upper thighs are turning out and I've got...
Christine Malec:
As a blind person, you have to go out of your way to experience dance as a spectator. We can all bop around our living rooms to our favorite songs, so we know what it's like to move our bodies, but how do the pros do it? Can we as blind people ever truly know? My sense is that to be perceived fully, dance must be observed at a distance, and that won't work for us unless we have skilled audio description and we do. The field of describing dance is evolving as full of movement and innovation as dance itself. You'll be hearing the voices of professional audio describer, Rebecca Singh and ballerina and dance teacher, Annemarie Cabri as they move us through how we can understand dance more fully.
Rebecca, could you describe for us the vibe of ballet, like the aesthetics? So when we say that a contemporary dancer has ballet training, are there things we can infer from that based on what it's like to watch ballet performance?
Rebecca Singh:
I feel like ballet classes are like a real entry point for anybody exploring dance. So those are perennially popular. And I myself, at eight years old or however young I was, took some ballet classes and then did go on later to study a little bit more. And one of the things that I remember that I think helps give that flavor, the sense is that ballet comes from folk dance. It is on a timeline that begins with folk dance and moves towards contemporary dance, where stories are told in ballet or there are certain choreographies or sets of steps or movements that are relational to folk stories.
And that I think we can understand as having some kind of narrative. There's some actual meaning behind the dances and behind the individual choreographies or poses and relationship between dancers in ballet. So in terms of a vibe, often there is direct relationships between different dancers that can be observed, whether it's showing a "beautiful form or beautiful shape," whether it's making a grand entrance and seeming to glide across the stage. There's an aspect of athleticism that comes in as well, whether it's leaping incredible heights or stretching one's body in a split, standing on one leg and having breathtaking balance. All of these things are articulations that can be connected to some kind of relational narrative or aesthetic.
Speaker 2:
[inaudible 00:19:31] about a foot and a half between the two heels.
Speaker 4:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
Turned out position. Okay. And then third position is...
Christine Malec:
I'm really interested in the idea of telling a story through dance, and it's a bit hard for me to conceive of how a story is told without words. Can you help us to understand how movement of the body without words could convey a story?
Annemarie Cabri:
Yeah, so when we think of a story, has a beginning, a middle and end all different lengths, it has a tension or a high part in the story. And so we try to do that with our bodies. If you're doing a story with a character who... This is very simple, but who is sad, let's say. So you can through movement and feeling, make your body express sadness.
So right now, I don't know if you're reacting to my words, but your chest might be compressing or your head might be dropping that. If you think of that as the character doing something that is sad, we have gesture that helps. So the sad feeling would be put into the dance movements and steps and the music would create that feeling as well. And you would see the character maybe come up to another dancer and have what looks like a dialogue by using gesture. Let's say there's a part of the story where there's a big hurricane or something, so you might use a whole group of dancers to show a hurricane through the movement of it.
Speaker 2:
So I'm in my first position turned out and I'm going to open my knees like a book.
Speaker 4:
Beautiful. [inaudible 00:21:35].
Speaker 2:
And it's a movement so I go down, keeping the heels on the floor, and then I squeeze and push away from the floor, like I'm jumping to stretch.
Christine Malec:
Rebecca, taking the concepts of storytelling and of aesthetics as our pivot point, what can you tell us about contemporary dance? What does it look like from the observer's point of view? How does it differ or how have the concepts of aesthetics and storytelling from say, ballet, shifted towards what we see in contemporary dance?
Rebecca Singh:
In ballet, just to be really specific about the look of it, the style of it, a lot of straight lines, a lot of elongated body shapes, a lot of athletic movements that accentuate the actual body shape and moving to the contemporary, we break out of some of the rules about form and shape that are connected to ballet. And you can lean more into the athleticism. You can have different configurations of people on stage. There's less of a theatrical hierarchy and less of a tie to narrative. You don't necessarily need to have one person to focus on as the focal point as the person who is carrying a story. If there are 40 people on stage, those 40 people could be working together as a group as opposed to having one princess and her 39 ladies in waiting or something like that.
Christine Malec:
Annemarie, how much overlap would you say there is between a dancer and say, a mime artist, or a theater artist? Do those disciplines have an overlap?
Annemarie Cabri:
They certainly have an overlap because they're expressing through their body. I often actually demonstrate when I'm in class situation, typically with children at schools of, "I will give you two demonstrations." And so I do one and then I do another one, and which one was the mime and which one was the dance? And they always pick it up right away because the mime is very gestural and the dance has rhythm, it's got a full body, it moves maybe bigger.
Christine Malec:
One of the things that's particularly interesting and relevant for blind and low vision people is posture. And posture is something that if you are observant, you learn by watching. If you have coaching from a physiotherapist or something, then you can hone your posture. As blind people, we don't get the feedback of looking at someone and going, "Ooh, they have really great posture. I want to carry myself in that way." So could we do a little exercise? Can you take maybe top to bottom or bottom to top and describe good posture, which I assume is also good posture for a dancer?
Annemarie Cabri:
Good posture allows us to be stress-free going about our day. And if you want to dance, then you need good posture to make it again, not stressful on the body. So if you think of your skeleton, you want your skeleton to hang from the ceiling, like those marionette puppets on a string, and you want your skeleton to line... We talk about good alignment in dance a lot, and that means one bone stacked on top of another in order that all your joints and must are free to move.
And how you get good postures by using your muscles. So for instance, I'm sitting down right now, and I don't know if you are, but if you roll your shoulders forward, you will notice that your ribs are now pressing maybe on your organs and you can't breathe as easily. So breath is the first movement we learn when we're born. It's the underlying movement of all movements.
So we need to be able to breathe easily to support all our movements. So if you now roll your shoulders back up, pull them back up by using your abdominal muscles, and now your ribs are more easy to open and close and breathe, your shoulders and your spine is straight. Your shoulders than your spine and then your pelvis is a very also heavy bone structure. And if it's tipped in any way, it will just pull you down and squash other things. So this straight alignment from your... You said, "Could I go from the bottom?" So from your feet on the floor, your ankle bone up through your shin, your kneecap, your thighbone into your pelvis, your spine, and imagine your head floating on the top being pulled up by that string.
Speaker 2:
It's a little cotton... Split soul we call it. And you flip it over, you'll see there's a ball of the foot there. Yeah. And then the heel, and those are leather. And then in the middle, what happens is it's cut away. So that when you stretch and point your feet, we call it, with the cutaway there, your pointed foot looks more archy.
Speaker 4:
Oh, okay. Okay.
Speaker 2:
And that's sort of a desirable... In ballet.
Speaker 4:
That's the graceful... Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And then there's a...
Christine Malec:
When you teach, what are the challenges when you're, say with people who are new to dance or beginners, what are some common areas where you have to spend more time?
Annemarie Cabri:
I think it's trusting themself. The first thing I often do is help people to find their outside edges. So if you haven't got contact inside yourself to the outside of yourself to where you are in space, so spatial awareness, then it's hard to be confident to move around, I find. People who are not used to moving through space, they might have more of a closed position, which is natural. You'd be protecting yourself. So being able to go from your center out to your extremity, how far can you reach out from your arms and legs from your center? That's a big confident gesture. And people who haven't experienced that in a safe way or an enjoyable way, it takes sometimes time for them to get there. But it's really, again, one of those fundamental movements that we do as babies to be in the world. So it comes from what's called our startle reflex. So when people do get that feeling and allow themself and trust that they can do that, it's just, "Woo!" We jump up a level of movement expression.
Christine Malec:
Rebecca, can we talk about the difference between having one or two or three dancers on stage versus 40 dancers on stage? And I'm asking because I recently got to experience the piece Colossus, as audio described brilliantly by you, I must say, and of all the dance performances I've attended with audio description, I found it the most compelling, but I'm not sure why. Can you help me figure that out? And what's the aesthetic storytelling difference there?
Rebecca Singh:
Well, so Colossus is definitely a piece of contemporary dance, and one of the main differences is that in describing that piece, I really needed to understand, so there were 42 dancers actually in the piece, what bound them together and what energy they were moving across the stage, shapes and groups in relationship to one another. And the ideas of partnering groups as opposed to two partners was really important to understand from my perspective, so that I impart that in the audio description as well.
And in terms of the differences between a smaller group versus a larger group, I am looking for that relationship in the choreography between different sections or different groups. One of the most important things for me is to make sure that you are connected with the rest of the audience. We often go to cultural events to be in communion with others, to commune, and I think that's a really important responsibility of an audio describer to remember that and to dedicate themselves towards capturing the moments of a piece that resonate with an audience.
And so, especially in dance, there can be moments that are just simply awe-inspiring or breathtaking because of the athleticism of dancers, because of the spectacle of large groups being in sync, for example. And I'm trying to make sure that the beats of the choreography or the beats of the piece are held intact in a way so that when there's a lighting shift, that it as much as possible can make sense to you as you're experiencing the piece. And that if you are sitting in a row with other people experiencing the piece, and there's just this electric feeling, there's this breath that the audience has. Sometimes people will catch their breath or hold their breath when they're watching something amazing and that so to add the visual element to that feeling that you might sense in the audience is also something that I try and pay attention to.
Speaker 2:
First arabesque. So I'm standing on one leg, one arm, the same arm forward is the standing leg. Pointed back foot. And then I start to lift this leg and it can go up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. So that's okay, as high as I can get it. But if you saw a performance, my back leg would be sticking up here from my bum.
Christine Malec:
Annemarie, how do you know when you have witnessed an extremely good dance performance? One where you walk away and go, "That was incredible." When that happens, what are you responding to? What have the dancers done to elicit that reaction from you?
Annemarie Cabri:
Well, if it's a dance with a specific technique, like let's say, ballet, has a very stylized way of moving. And if that completely melts away, where I don't see the dance technique, It's just a human on stage and they are creating. So it's feeling. Is if the dancers touched me, if I was moved in any of the emotion range, then to me that is an incredible performance. And I don't expect it every time. You might only see that a couple times in your life. Somebody can really, really just transport you to another world almost. That's a really good performance.
Christine Malec:
One of the pieces Luminato will be highlighting is called Nuit, and it's a dance performance without music. And I wonder, do you have experience dancing without music? And what happens when that's the case, when you're going to move your body intentionally in a dance way, but there's no music? What happens there as a dancer?
Annemarie Cabri:
Well, you create, a musical score inside. So you might have rhythms that you're working with, but you're just noting it inside for yourself. I'm thinking a lot about, there are 15 dance elements. So it could be the weight I give something, the pathway, the direction, the speed, all those words help create the movement where you're not laying your movement along with the music.
Christine Malec:
For a blind person, audio description is the only in to experiencing a dance performance. And so to a certain extent, the dance performance for us is going to be as good as the audio description. And so just imagine, I know you're not trained as a describer, but imagine if you were describing a dance performance, do you have a sense of what you would emphasize and how you would carry that meaning to someone who couldn't see it? What would be your goal?
Annemarie Cabri:
Well, to come away with a feeling. Yeah, what it would have been like if you had gone through that dance yourself. Was there exertion? Was there these balance moments? Was it quiet? Was it very minimal, something very delicate and quiet, or was it a jumping, joyous section? If it was a story ballet or a story dance, you'd want to be giving the story. But my goal would be somehow to fit in there about what it feels like for the dancer to do any of the parts.
Speaker 2:
Bar hand, heels together, breath plie. Arm float to stretch, standing up and stay. Again plie. Down and push to stand up and you wait again. Plie down.
Christine Malec:
In this last segment of the podcast, I'd like to bring into the conversation another of our lead hosts, Ramya Amuthan, and welcome back Rebecca Singh, an audio describer with Luminato, to tease out more the idea of how we tell stories without words and also dance, and what kind of relationship a blind person and the blind community can have with a medium that is nonverbal, that's movement generated, movement related. And so Ramya, I suspect that like myself, many blind and low vision people have a bit of a complex relationship with dance and the idea of dance. Can you say anything about your relationship with dance?
Ramya Amuthan:
Yeah, I can say a lot. Growing up, I did not feel any comfort or confidence or even just the non-resistance to dance. It wasn't there because physical movement just felt so difficult for me. And I think it was just the idea that people were going to watch me do something that I had no clue what was supposed to be visually okay. And it hit very, very deep. So as I got older, I had to really unpack a lot of that stuff. And now I feel much more comfortable saying these things out loud. But for a very, very long time, it was kind of like, "No, I'm not going to dance. No, this is..."
Even by myself, I can remember many instances where you get the momentum to dance, you're listening to music, I always loved blasting music around the house, but felt uncomfortable going there with my body. And I think that over the last maybe five-ish years, I've explored it more openly and talked about it with other blind, low vision people. And this sharing of, "Yeah, we've felt that way too." And this collective understanding of why it could be difficult and uncomfortable, and that has made it easier to get going and start relaxing into wanting to move and wanting to move whether or not you're being watched. But that was always the biggest part of it for me, Chris, that people were watching.
Christine Malec:
Rebecca, I've gotten more and more interested in the idea of how do you tell the same story in different media? And so in dance, in ballet especially, we get things like say, Cinderella or stories that we know from another context that get told without words. And so in your experience as a describer who's done a lot of dance, can you talk in an overarching way about... More about, because I know I've asked Annemarie about this and you in other contexts, but can we just keep saying more about how a story can be told with the body and not using words?
Rebecca Singh:
Sure. Yeah. I think one of the keys is quite simply how you take up space. So how does the body exist in space and how does it travel through space? Some of it could be... There's certain levels of status that dancers can convey, and actors as well. There's this physical "body language" that you can use by standing straighter or just even the way that you may hold your head, how you position your arms, the way with which energy you walk across or dance across the floor. So in that sense, there's a way that energy becomes embodied, and that is part of the storytelling. So that is part of the chemistry as well between dancers and of course that is where we can understand what are the relationships between the dancers, the characters, what have you, on stage.
Christine Malec:
I think that's interesting, and it makes me think of how body language is a bit of a foreign language for blind people. And I don't know where I'm going with that, but I just throw that out there, that there's a way in which this language is a foreign one and an unknown one to people who have grown up without sight. And so as a describer, I feel like you've really got your work cut out for you in conveying that. And so I love to see and hear how that unfolds. Ramya, I happen to know that you have recently become active in blind soccer. Is there a way in which you feel there's an overlap between doing sports and one's experience of dance? Doing dance one's self?
Ramya Amuthan:
I actually do look for the overlap in other physical activity that I take part in and do the comparison in my head or find out what thresholds I'm good with or what kind of movement I'm getting better at and becoming more comfortable with. Because dance always seems like the highest point of needs practice to feel comfortable with. But I think what's interesting is when something is adapted for you, like blind soccer is very much an adapted sport. Everyone who participates is blind.
There are a set of rules that everybody follows and puts you in the same head space and physical body space as other people. That plays, I think, for obvious reasons, a huge role in why something like organized parasport is much easier to get on board with. It feels more reasonable to try something like this compared to walking into an open social dance space and moving your body and not exactly knowing what the rules are, what's going on around you, and how you're being perceived. So this has helped me kind of understand that, understand the differences and the comparisons, but it's also made me more comfortable to try other things. Now that I'm comfortable doing blind soccer and I can fully immerse myself in it, maybe that is more helpful as a catalyst to try doing things that are less comfortable, that I'm less confident in.
Christine Malec:
I love that. I got the chance recently to participate in a folk dance class geared toward blind people and one of the things that they experimented with was in teaching a step first have everyone sitting down and have a volunteer person behind them tapping on their back and shoulders. And as another instructor is talking through the step, moving their fingertips on your shoulders and back so that you're getting a sense of the patterns before you're trying to achieve them in real space. And so it brings me to a question I have for you, Rebecca, that the field of describing dance in my perception is really evolving and experimenting and innovating. And are there different innovations that you've come across in how other people are experimenting with this field?
Rebecca Singh:
Yeah, absolutely. I've been involved in different discussions about new techniques for both screen dance and live performance. One of the themes that comes up is this is equivalency. So how do you create, and this is a conversation that from what I've heard has been mostly led by sighted folks, but the idea of equivalency, how do you create an equivalent experience in terms of dance for your blind and partially sighted audience? It's led to some really interesting offerings.
One of them is, there's a dancer named Alice Shepherd, her company's Kinetic Light, and they have an app that you can use while going to their live performance, which essentially has nine different audio tracks that will begin at the beginning of the dance piece. And they were created through the question of what is the dance piece, the dance piece was called Wired, in sound?
So each of those nine tracks has a different interpretation version, translation perhaps, of the piece in sound. So one of the tracks is poetry, one of the tracks will just be the sound, like a real closeup of the dancer's bodies, their body sounds. One of the tracks is the sound of their chairs. So they're wheelchair users. And the idea is to get closer to having somewhat of an embodied experience and not being, just needing to come to the level of audio description. So having that cognitive filter and there is a traditional audio description track, and essentially you can toggle between those.
The music used in the segment is by G.R. Gritt.