The No Body? Considerations from the Culture of the Non-Sighted World Sarah Hoboult
This article is also available in audio form on SoundCloud.
Two dancers face each other smiling, Sarah Hoboult stands between them - Workshop with Sarah Hoboult, Interchange Festival 2017 - Photo Credit: Matthew Syres
Imagine a life where words and touch are the only way to experience dance. Don’t close your eyes, but recall how words affect your intake of dance, or how you might use words to describe your dance. Don’t close your eyes to listen harder. Let’s open our ears. The blind and partially sighted community has historically not attended dance presentations. We are new audience. We experience bodies on multiple layers, and if there is silence, there is no body. If there is a music track accompanying the dance, there is just a music track. So we want dance that is visceral, and verbal. An awesome choreographic work would be one that is developed with sound and text in mind. Text to describe the world and set and expression, sound to convey the emotion, weight, direction, duration, for example. Touch could also be used in interesting ways, with audience consent (asking before doing, for someone who is blind). Our deeper experience of the world can not be found through a blindfold, but through an acknowledgement that there exists a whole non- sighted world, where sight is not prioritised.
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