Category: News / Announcements

News and updates about classes, etc.

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News / Announcements

Yeah, It Was Good! Celebrating Audio Described Dance on December 13

image described at the end of the post


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.

Several times over the last 3 years, Krishna has taught a popular audio description workshop called: Yeah, But Was It Good? Learning How to Listen to Audio Description for Dance Critically

But each time this workshop has offered, Krishna has discovered fewer and fewer examples of audio described dance available to explore online. Colleagues, companies and choreographers in the wide world of dance have made less of their work available in ways that prioritize the inclusion of blind and low-vision audiences — until now…

Save The Date!

On Saturday, December 13 2025 from 4 PM to 6 PM (Eastern Time), Dark Room Ballet will be sponsoring an audio described dance film showcase, with contributions from at least 3 blind/VI choreographers, and including new audio described work from the American Ballet Theatre!

We are still working out all the details, but this event will be free and open to all, and you can even register starting now, at the following link:

Zoom Registration Link for Yeah, It WAS Good! A Virtual Showcase Celebrating Audio Described Dance (Dec 13)

You’ll receive confirmation of your registration and a link to join from Zoom.

More details coming soon!

Image description:

A rectangular flyer with a muted pale-green background. Blurred diagonal film-strip graphics run from lower left to upper right, containing indistinct navy dancer silhouettes. Swooping orange brushstrokes overlay the background.

Text in dark black, purple and blue fonts reads:

SAVE THE DATE!
Yeah, It WAS Good!
A Virtual Showcase Celebrating Audio Described Dance sponsored by Dark Room Ballet
Saturday December 13, 2025, 4 PM to 6 PM (Eastern Time) on Zoom

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News / Announcements

Introductory Ballet for Blind and Visually Impaired Adults – New Cycle Begins February 21, 2026

Beginning Saturday, February 21st
From 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (New York Time)

About Saturday Introductory Level Class:

This is a FREE class!

This class is suitable for people with no prior knowledge of ballet. This repeating series of eight classes introduces students to the most common ballet vocabulary that they would need to know in order to participate in Open Level Dark Room Ballet Class. The class introduces students to necessary anatomical concepts like turnout, torso stability, foot sensitivity and mobility, sightless balancing, and the use of a taped floor for orientation.

Classes take place each Saturday online via the Zoom platform; there is also the option to call in via phone.

Dark Room Ballet classes and workshops are taught by Krishna Washburn, a blind dancer and dance teacher, and they prioritize the needs of blind and visually impaired students.

Note:

This is the ONLY time this Introductory Ballet class will be offered again for the foreseeable future — if you or a another blind or low-vision individual ( adult 18+) or organization you know of might be interested in participating, they MUST reach out to us as soon as possible!

Please note that Dark Room Ballet Introductory Level Classes now operate as a scholarship program for new blind and low-vision students.

Learn more about the Dark Room Ballet Intro Level Scholarship Program


If you are a blind or visually impaired individual interested in learning ballet remotely, you MUST contact us by no later than February 18, 2026, so you can complete the intake process to register for this class.

Register:

The next Intro Level cycle begins on Saturday February 21, 2026

To register, email info@darkroomballet.com to begin the intake process.

You can also reach Dark Room Ballet by phone at (929) 367-0025

  • If you have some ballet experience, you may also qualify to join the ongoing Dark Room Ballet: Open Level Class on Monday nights; please contact us if you are interested.
  • Returning students are welcome to re-join intro level classes, as well as encouraged to join Dark Room Ballet: Open Level Class. Please let us know if you would like to re-join intro class as a returning student.
  • If you work with an organization that serves blind or visually impaired people, please share this information with people who may be interested in registering for this class.
  • If you are NOT a blind or visually impaired student, you may qualify to join the ongoing Dark Room Ballet: Open Level Class on Monday nights on a select basis; please get in touch with us to explain your interest.

Other Classes in the Dark Room

In addition to online Introductory and Open Level ballet classes for blind and visually impaired adults, Krishna often teaches workshops on related topics open to everyone, including anatomy, improvisation and audio description.

Learn more about past and upcoming online workshops: Dark Room Ballet Workshops

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

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News / Announcements

A Practice of Being Workshop with Kayla Hamilton – December 10, 2025

image description in caption
A headshot of Kayla Hamilton, who is a milk chocolate colored Black woman. She is posing in front of a blurred brick wall, wearing a long sleeve black and tan striped shirt. She has light makeup and is smiling. Her black and golden locs are down.

Presented as part of our Fall/Winter 2025 guest artist workshop series:

A Practice of Being Workshop with Kayla Hamilton

About Kayla Hamilton:

Kayla Hamilton is a Texas-born, Bronx-based dancer, performance maker, educator, consultant and artistic director of Circle O—a cultural organization uplifting Black Disabled and other multiply marginalized creatives.

About This Workshop:

Come exactly as you are—rested or restless, steady or stirred. In this improvisational movement space, there are no set steps and no pressure to perform. We begin with breath, curiosity, and a shared willingness to see what wants to emerge. Movement may arrive small and subtle—or bold and expansive. It might surprise you, delight you, or teach you something  about how your body wants to be known.

Together, we’ll play, experiment, and follow sensation as it leads us into rhythm, stillness, or flow. Each moment becomes an invitation to the next. There are no wrong turns—only new possibilities. 

For anyone who craves freedom in movement, trusts—or wants to trust—their impulses, and is ready to say “yes” , together.

Workshop Date and Details:

This workshop will be offered virtually on Zoom.

The workshop is two hours long, from 6 PM to 8 PM on  Wednesday December 10, 2025 – NEW date and time

To register for this workshop series, send an email to info@darkroomballet.com with the subject line A Practice of Being Workshop with Kayla Hamilton

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Krishna's Thoughts News / Announcements

What’s a Collegium, Anyway? (It starts so soon!)

You may have heard about the upcoming Dark Room Ballet Collegium, an upcoming free series of workshops sponsored by Dark Room Ballet that is starting very soon — the first workshop is coming up Thursday, October 9, 2025 from 6 PM to 8 PM on Zoom!

But what is a Collegium, anyway?

Merriam-Webster says, in part, that a collegium is:

An organized society or group: association” and also “a college, especially one in a university.”

That means that this series of high quality workshops, all provided for free by a group of passionate blind and low-vision professional artists, is like a Dark Room Ballet temporary university!

Read on to learn more about each offering, and reach out via email to register for any or all of these workshops at: info@darkroomballet.com to begin the registration process.

*If you have emailed but have not received a reply, we should have your message, but feel free to write again!

You can hear Krishna talk about the Collegium in a video on YouTube (with open captions and a transcript available):

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News / Announcements

Vortex Workshop with Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez – December 6, 2025

image description in caption
Christopher moves his arms, creating curved lines while a dim light bathes his body, creating the effect of being in a cave.

Presented as part of our Fall/Winter 2025 guest artist workshop series:

Vortex Workshop with Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez

About Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez:

Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez is a Costa Rican-American artist who works in choreography, film, installation, sound, and blind art. His work explores the connections between access, trust, mythology, anthropology, and heritage. Núñez contemplates the body, its movement, and how it interacts with energy and force in relation to space/time and from his visual impairment.

About This Workshop:

Vortex explores the anatomical planes (sagittal, transverse, frontal) and the axes of movement (anteroposterior, mediolateral, longitudinal) through the body and  space/time. Vortex is spatial alchemy. Disabled dancers learn to navigate internal and external spaces using our heritage, lineage, memory, proprioception, breathwork and  magical existence.

Workshop Date and Details:

This workshop will be offered virtually on Zoom.

The workshop is two hours long, from 4 PM to 6 PM on  Saturday December 6, 2025

To register for this workshop series, send an email to info@darkroomballet.com with the subject line Vortex Workshop with Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez

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News / Announcements

December 2025: Developing Your Voice Intensive with Alex Bulmer

image is described in caption
A white woman in her fifties with short light brown hair stands against a wall. She has black headphones on her head and wears a brown leather jacket with zippers at the wrist. Bright eyed she looks at the camera with her hands raised to the headphones.

Presented as part of our Fall/Winter 2025 guest artist workshop series:

Developing Your Voice — A Vocal Training Intensive Workshop Series with Alex Bulmer

About Alex Bulmer:

Alex Bulmer is an award winning Blind playwright, voice teacher, actor and performance maker with thirty five professional years working across Canada and the UK.

She finds joy and potency through mutual  growth and original expression, is dedicated to inter-dependent practice, and guided by an invitation to follow the grain of her own wood.

Alex is co-creator of multiple Blind-led productions including May I Take Your Arm, Perceptual Archaeology, Gesture and Maddy and The Invisible Band of Groovers.

She is artistic director of Toronto-based Fire and Rescue Arts, which de-centres visuality from imagination to creation.

In 1990, Alex graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Voice Studies from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Since then, she has been supporting Blind and Sighted performers to experience vocal freedom – the deep connection between breath and voice, the energy of resonance and vibration and the dynamic physicality of speech.

About This Intensive Workshop Series:

Developing Your Voice is a special intensive workshop series that addresses the specific vocal skills needed by both audio describers of dance and self-describing dancers.

In Alex’s words: The human voice, your voice, is your primary instrument as a describer. When describing Dance, your voice is called upon to be more flexible and expressive. So let’s learn to play your vocal instrument well!

In these workshops, you will learn how to prepare your voice for description, and gain skills to enable you to express language in the most effective way.

The workshop will cover a brief overview of how the voice works, discuss how you can keep your voice healthy, and offer exercises to nourish and develop your vocality, and better engage with the physicality of language.

You will learn a warm up routine that you can practice to develop and support you to vocally best connect Blind audiences with the art of Dance, whether as an audio describer or dance or a self-describing dancer.

Workshop Dates and Details:

These intensive workshops are designed for the learning needs of different professional groups, but can be approached in a cumulative way, with the second workshop building on the skills developed in the first.

They will be offered virtually on Zoom.

All workshops start at 4 PM (Eastern Time), and include 90 minutes of vocal technique followed by 30 minutes of open question and answer time.

  • Wednesday, December 3, 2025: Developing Your Voice for Describers of Dance
  • Thursday, December 4, 2025: Developing Your Voice for Self-Describing Dancers

If you an an audio describer, for the first workshop, please bring a paragraph of text that you can read and practice during the workshop — a sample of audio description from a recent project is ideal! If you are an audio describer or self-describing dancer, for the second workshop, please memorize one sentence that you can use during the workshop — it can be anything!

To register for this transformative workshop series, send an email to info@darkroomballet.com with the subject line Developing Your Voice

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News / Announcements

Musicality Concepts in Ballet — A Pro-Level Intensive Workshop Series with Hannah Werbel

photo is described in the caption
Hannah stands on a large rock in a mountain meadow, surrounded by wildflowers and tall pine trees. She stands with her left leg held straight and supporting her, while her right leg is lifted high to the side, nearly horizontal. Her left arm curves overhead, and her right arm stretches toward her raised foot, creating a diagonal line across her body. She wears leggings, a short-sleeve shirt, trail shoes, and sunglasses, with her hair in two braids. The sky is clear, and snow-capped mountains are visible in the distance.

Presented as part of our Fall/Winter 2025 guest artist workshop series:

Musicality Concepts in Ballet — A Pro-Level Intensive Workshop Series with Hannah Werbel (October/November 2025)

About Hannah Werbel:

Trained in classical ballet, with forays into jazz, contemporary and modern swing dance, Hannah has been dancing and playing with music since before she can remember.

As a student of Dark Room Ballet herself, Hannah is excited to share her love of music and expression with the community. She believes in teaching from a perspective of curiosity and play, and is looking forward to helping students discover a sense of expression within the structure of ballet. 

About This Intensive Workshop Series:

Musicality Concepts in Ballet is a special intensive workshop series that analyzes and reinforces select  musicality concepts in the context of a pro-level ballet technique class. Each week, we will explore two contrasting concepts and experiment with them through different combination-based movement patterns. This workshop is designed for disabled dancers who have been dancing ballet consistently for at least one year and have strong ballet vocabulary recall. (If you’re taking ballet class every week, this series is for you!)

Workshop Dates and Details:


 These intensive workshops can be studied either in a standalone or in a cumulative way.

They will be offered virtually on Zoom.

The format of each workshop is similar to a ballet technique class, but with an open floor for questions after each few combinations.

Each workshop is two hours long:

Wednesday evening classes will run from 8 PM to 10 PM (Eastern Time)

Saturday evening classes will run from 6 PM to 8 PM (Eastern Time)

  • Wednesday, October 22, 2025: Accents and Rhythms (8 PM to 10 PM)
  • Saturday, October 25, 2025: Dynamics: using the floor to generate and dampen energy (6 PM to 8 PM)
  • Wednesday, October 29, 2025: Staccato and Legato (8 PM to 10 PM)
  • Saturday, November 1, 2025: Rubato: playing with the music (6 PM to 8 PM)

    If you are a taped floor dancer, have your floor taped as you would normally for ballet technique class, and be ready to dance ballet in a richer, more expressive way!

To register for this workshop series, send an email to info@darkroomballet.com with the subject line Musicality Concepts in Ballet

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News / Announcements

October 2025 Improvisation Intensive Workshop Series with Shannon Brooks

image is described in caption
Shannon crouches on the floor holding a microphone with neon yellow/green tulle draped across their body and smushing their face. They speak/sing into the microphone with their eyes closed. Photo credit: And Keller

Presented as part of our Fall/Winter 2025 guest artist workshop series:

Improvising with our Ecosystems: a Laboratory and Introduction to Improvising with Movement, Sound, and Self-Audio Description with Shannon Brooks

About Shannon Brooks:


Shannon Brooks is a multi-sensory, multimedia  artist working across movement, sound, sculpture, moving image, installation, and social-based practices.

Shannon’s work combines the heightened ritual of performance with the glorious imperfections of process. Their practice revels in the seams and edges of their work, lingers within transitions, and creates strange worlds. Shannon is a self-identified freak/weirdo and uses play and clowning to embrace the nonsensical. Their practice is iterative and spans time, it shifts form and medium to experiment to follow a thread of research or question, is it archival, it pierces into other dimensions.

As a Disabled and low-vision person, Shannon believes access is for everyone, is always transforming, and is a creative force that transforms time, space, and power structures.

Shannon will be accompanied musically on Saturdays by George Shands and Josh Meakim.

image is described in post
A two tone blue and white photo of George. His head is tilted to the right and he is making a calm face with a slight smile.

About This Intensive Workshop Series:

Improvising with our Ecosystems is laboratory to experiment with different approaches to improvisation, ground into your body’s impulses, explore imaginative embodiments, and play with self-audio description improv with live music. 

Workshop Dates and Details:

These four workshops are set up to build on one another but can be taken separately. 

They will be offered virtually on Zoom.

Each workshop is two hours long:

Thursday classes will run from 6 PM to 8 PM (Eastern Time) and will introduce new improvisation concepts

Saturday classes will run from 4 PM to 6 PM (Eastern Time) and will provide opportunities to more deeply explore those concepts while listening to live music!

  • Thursday, October 9th (6 PM to 8 PM): Improvising with our Interior Ecosystems: improvising with our bodies, impulses, memories, and self audio description.
  • Saturday, October 11th (4 PM to 6 PM): Improvising with our Interior Ecosystems: review + practice laboratory with live music.
  • Thursday, October 16th (6 PM to 8 PM): Improvising with our Exterior Ecosystems: improvising with our environments, materials, and others.
  • Saturday, October 18th (6 PM to 8 PM): Improvising with our Exterior Ecosystems: review + practice laboratory with live music.

To register for this workshop series, send an email to info@darkroomballet.com with the subject line Improvising with our Ecosystems

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News / Announcements

Upcoming Workshops, Classes & Events — Fall 2025 and Beyond

There is so much to look forward to in the Dark Room Ballet community in the coming months.

Dark Room Ballet with Krishna Washburn will be hosting several amazing blind and visually impaired teaching artists who are highly experienced and deeply passionate about sharing their artistic knowledge — to be a disabled artist today is to be someone living in truth.

Join us for the Dark Room Ballet Collegium!

These upcoming workshops are open to all adult students, regardless of experience.

So far, the following virtual workshops are scheduled – all via Zoom (listings are in Eastern Time).

Visit the links to each workshop to learn more!

If you are interested in attending any or all of these workshops, please email info@darkroomballet.com to begin the registration process.

Improvisation Intensive Workshop Series with Shannon Brooks

Four dates in October:

  • Thursday, October 9, 2025 from 6 PM to 8 PM
  • Saturday, October 11, 2025 from 4 PM to 6 PM
  • Thursday, October 16, 2025 from 6 PM to 8 PM
  • Saturday, October 18, 2025 from 4 PM to 6 PM

Musicality Concepts in Ballet — A Pro-Level Intensive Workshop Series with Hannah Werbel

Four dates in October and November:

  • Wednesday, October 22, 2025 from 8 PM to 10 PM
  • Saturday, October 25, 2025 from 6 PM to 8 PM
  • Wednesday, October 29, 2025 from 8 PM to 10 PM
  • Saturday, November 1, 2025 from 6 PM to 8 PM

Sensory Beyond Sight, a Choreographic Workshop Series with Davian “DJ” Robinson

Four Saturdays in November:

This four workshop series discusses finding inspiration, creating physical records of choreography and choreographic staging as a memory and communication device, and is rooted in body and breath awareness.

  • Saturday, November 8, 2025 from 4 PM to 5:30 PM
  • Saturday, November 15, 2025 from 4 PM to 5:30 PM
  • Saturday, November 22, 2025 from 4 PM to 5:30 PM
  • Saturday, November 29, 2025 from 4 PM to 5:30 PM

Developing Your Voice Intensive with Alex Bulmer

In December, this special two-day series explores the physicality and anatomy of the voice and language, with a focus on the vocal skills of audio describers on Wednesday, and expanding on those skills for self-describing dancers on Thursday.

  • For Describers of Dance: Wednesday, December 3, 2025 from 4 PM to 6 PM
  • For Self-Describing Dancers: Thursday, December 4, 2025 from 4 PM to 6 PM


Vortex Workshop with Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez

Vortex explores the anatomical planes (sagittal, transverse, frontal) and the axes of movement (anteroposterior, mediolateral, longitudinal) through the body and space/time. Vortex is spatial alchemy. Disabled dancers learn to navigate internal and external spaces using our heritage, lineage, memory, proprioception, breathwork and magical existence.

  • Saturday December 6, 2025 from 4 PM to 6 PM

A Practice of Being Workshop with Kayla Hamilton

We’ll move together—no set steps, no pressure to perform. Just breath, curiosity, and a willingness to see what unfolds. Movement may be small or bold, quiet or expansive, playful or still. Each moment will invite the next.

For anyone ready to explore movement freely, trust their impulses, and say “yes” together.

  • Wednesday December 10, 2025 from 6 PM to 8 PM

And returning in February 2026 for eight consecutive Saturdays from 4 PM to 6 PM:

Dark Room Ballet Introductory Ballet Class

This series prioritizes blind and low-vision adult students.

This repeating series of eight classes introduces students to necessary anatomical concepts like turnout, torso stability, foot sensitivity and mobility, sightless balancing, and the use of a taped floor for orientation.

  • Saturday, February 21, 2026
  • Saturday, February 28, 2026
  • Saturday, March 7, 2026
  • Saturday, March 14, 2026
  • Saturday, March 21, 2026
  • Saturday, March 28, 2026
  • Saturday, April 4, 2026
  • Saturday, April 11, 2026

Link to learn more about Saturday Introductory Level Classes

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News / Announcements

Audio Description for Dance Workshops – Spring 2025

image is described at the end of the post

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. 

All workshops take place online via Zoom.

To register for any or all workshops, please write to info@darkroomballet.com as soon as possible to complete the registration process.

Saturday, April 12, 2025:  
How to Hire and Collaborate with a Professional Audio Describer (NEW!)


This workshop is designed to help prepare choreographers and arts administrators to effectively collaborate with a professional audio describer, ideally to integrate the audio describer as a full member of the production team. Audio describers 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. 

Saturday, April 19, 2025:
Body Language, Movement Shorthand, and Mime for Blind Audiences

Although there are common cultural assumptions about popular body language and movement shorthand, it’s important to remember that they are all learned and not universally known! We’re going to break down some body language assumptions, find ways to integrate effective audio description, and explore the wonderfully hilarious world of mime and exaggerated body language.

Saturday, April 26, 2025:
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.

Saturday, May 3, 2025:
Yeah, But Was It Good? Learning How to Listen to Audio Description for Dance Critically  

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.

Saturday, May 10, 2025:
How to Watch Dance 2: an Audio Description Workshop for Audio Describers and Blind Audiences 

The second of the Dark Room’s “watch party” workshops (How to Watch Dance 1 took place in November 2024), as a community, we will research an audio described dance performance video, set our expectations and make predictions, watch a full-length performance together, and then share our critique of the audio description and the performance. We had a blast back in November watching The View from Here by Zaccho Dance Theatre; come and hone your critical listening skills!

On a dark background sprinkled with small illustrated stars, people appear at the bottom with different body types, dressed in colorful casual clothing while they move and dance.

Contrasting white and cream-colored text above reads:

DARK ROOM BALLET WITH KRISHNA WASHBURN

Audio Description for Dance

A SERIES OF 5 VIRTUAL WORKSHOPS

SATURDAYS FROM APRIL 12 TO MAY 10, 2025

ON ZOOM FROM 4 PM TO 6 PM (EASTERN/NEW YORK TIME)

MORE INFO/REGISTER AT LINK

or visit DarkRoomBallet.com