Audio description in dance involves describing bodies, movements, situations and everything else that happens on stage using language and the voice. It is the means of access for blind and visually impaired audiences to be able to enjoy theatre performances. In this workshop, constructed as a kind of research lab, participants will get the chance to try various tasks and proposals to translate dance and performance into descriptive language and sounds – alternately acting from within and describing from outside.

Rykena/Jüngst have been working together as an artistic duo between the cities of Hamburg and Munich since 2016. Their pieces address queer-feminist, intersectional and ableism-critical body discourses, as well as the transformation of normative categorisations of bodies. Since the onset of their collaboration, they have been comprehensively experimenting with the relationship between body and voice and their ways of commenting and querying one another. Since 2019, their artistic works have been created on a continuous basis with Kampnagel Hamburg and HochX Munich. Rykena/Jüngst’s produktion SHE LEGEND was invited to the 2022 Tanzplattform at HAU/Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin as well as to the FREESPACE Festival, West Kowloon, Hongkong. Also since 2019, the two of them have concerned themselves with participation and access in dance and theatre and artistically included means of creating access such as audio description into their pieces. @rykenajuengst www.rykenajuengst.com

Theresa Scheinecker / Ray (she/her) lives in Vienna as a white, disabled artist and psychologist. Before being part of PARASOL (TQW) in 2022, Ray had already appeared in pieces by Ian Kaler, Alix Eynaudi and Michael Turinsky. Her movement language is derived from various practices such as urban styles, acrobatics and contemporary. Last year, Ray entered the field of audio description based on her own experience as a visually impaired person. She now wants to share her perspective with the approach to create more accessibility for blind and visually impaired audiences in the dance and performance scene.

Katharina Senk / Senki (she/her) lives in Vienna as white, female, non-disabled dancer. She performed in pieces by the likes of Doris Uhlich, Florentina Holzinger, Sara Ostertag, Georg Blaschke and Michael Turinsky. In her own art practice, Senki works on combining her interest in post-humanism, pleasure and inter-sectional feminism with her knowledge in the fields of dance, movement and martial arts. Together with Maartje Pasman, Senki runs the association tanz.sucht.theater that has in recent years created exciting projects with many important companions, considering the idea of access on several levels. Senki turned to artistic audio description in late 2022. www.katharinasenk.com