Creative Access in Dance Description: Experimenting with Integrated Preambles
Hosted by Amy Amantea
Since the early days of the pandemic, Dancer Describer Andrea Cownden and Access Disruptor Amy Amantea have been collaboratively exploring Creative Access in Dance — reimagining how Blind and low vision audiences experience movement. Their work moves beyond traditional audio description into a space of poetic integration, where description is not added on, but built into the fabric of the performance.
Their newest technique introduces an “integrated preamble”, or more — a moment of artistic “setup” that occurs within the dance itself. These preambles give essential visual and spatial information through movement, and language before a moment in the piece unfolds, allowing all audience members to share a deeper, more connected experience. Cownden and Amantea’s work is reshaping access as both a creative tool and a justice-driven practice in contemporary dance.
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