Beginning May 30
Five Courses on Saturdays from 4-6pm
Registration is now open! To register for any of these tuition-free workshops, please send an email to [email protected]
This series of five online workshops covers a variety of topics related to audio description for dance and are designed not only as professional development for audio describers, but also as essential education for blind and visually impaired audiences, choreographers, dancers, movement educators, and administrators for arts presenting organizations.
Like all Dark Room curriculum, all of these workshops are designed for the educational needs of blind and visually impaired adults, and these workshops are meant to serve specifically: blind and visually impaired dancers, blind and visually impaired audio description consultants and editors, audio describers of all vision levels, access professionals working for arts organizations and educational institutions, choreographers, dramaturges, and performing arts educators.
All workshops are tuition-free and take place online via Zoom.
Course Description
May 30, 2026: How to Hire an Audio Describer
This workshop is designed to help prepare choreographers and arts administrators to effectively collaborate with a professional audio describer, ideally to integrate the audio description consultant as a full member of the production team. Audio description consultants will learn about their rights as professionals, the role of blind audio description consultants will be discussed, and models will be shared demonstrating how true artistic excellence can be achieved when all parties involved in the audio description process understand their role and purpose.
June 6, 2026: Experimentation in Vocal Tonality for Audio Description for Dance
Most audio description used to support television and film is recorded with a neutral tone of voice. However, we here in the Dark Room propose that dance is a very different art form that deserves a different approach to audio description. Be ready to listen to some interesting examples of audio description, practice using the voice expressively, and pair sound and movement together in artistically effective ways.
June 13, 2026: Script Preparation Strategies for Audio Description for Dance – Multiple Pathways!
Where do audio description scripts come from? It depends! This workshop will discuss multiple approaches to getting started on an audio description script, depending on multiple factors: access to artists involved with the project, prior knowledge, type of audience, style of performance, timeframes, and so on and so forth. This is a great introduction to script writing for audio description novices, and a great opportunity for audio description fans to express themselves.
June 20, 2026: Finding Purpose: The Logic of Arts Communication in Audio Description for Dance (BRAND NEW CURRICULUM!)
Audio description for dance is an art form, it is dance made manifest in the voice and in language. As a former teacher of formal logic and language analysis, Krishna presents ways to use the logic of language to decode what artists say about their work, how the logic of language can be used to understand the artistic priorities of any specific dance project, and how to check your audio description scripts for logical flow, keeping audiences confidently immersed in the performance.
June 27, 2026: Yeah, But Was It Good? Listening to Audio Description for Dance Critically (NEW AND IMPROVED VERSION!)
Audio description for dance performances is still very rare, but that doesn’t mean that blind and visually impaired audiences should be satisfied when the audio description on offer is of low quality. Students are going to get to listen to many, many examples of audio description for dance, and talk about what works and what doesn’t work, and what we might change in order to improve it.
Krishna Washburn is the Artistic Director of Dark Room Ballet. She teaches traditional blind dance technique at the introductory, open, and professional levels, dancer’s anatomy for blind and visually impaired learners (No Diagram Anatomy), and audio description for dance. She holds a M.Ed. from Hunter College and multiple certifications through the American College of Sports Medicine with special focus in biomechanics. She is the Co-Director, along with choreographer Heather Shaw, of Telephone, an educational documentary film that explores artistic philosophy pertaining to audio description and documenting the multiple artistic forms of audio description for dance. Krishna is one of a growing faculty of blind and visually impaired educators in dance and audio description!
To register for any or all workshops, please write to [email protected] as soon as possible to complete the registration process.