Dark Room Ballet with Krishna Washburn

Session 3: script preparation strategies!
Did you miss the first session? You can still register for Audio Description for Dance for Free! This week we are experimenting with Vocal Tonality. Each week explores a different topic and you can join any and all! Email [email protected] to register!

Join Dark Room Ballet for a tuition-free online workshop series exploring the art, practice, and philosophy of audio description for dance. Designed for blind and visually impaired artists and audiences, audio describers, choreographers, educators, and arts administrators, this series offers an in-depth look into accessible performance practices and creative approaches to audio description.

Topics include:
• Vocal Tonality in Audio Description
• Script Preparation Strategies
• Logic and Language in Audio Description
• Critically Listening to Audio Description for Dance

Workshops take place online via Zoom on Saturdays from 4–6 PM ET.

Dark Room Ballet is an independent, grant-funded, tuition-free fine arts educational program for blind and visually impaired adults taught by expert blind and visually impaired teaching artists.

Session 2: Experimenting with Vocal Tonality!

Did you miss the first session? You can still register for Audio Description for Dance for Free! This week we are experimenting with Vocal Tonality. Each week explores a different topic and you can join any and all! Email [email protected] to register!

Join Dark Room Ballet for a tuition-free online workshop series exploring the art, practice, and philosophy of audio description for dance. Designed for blind and visually impaired artists and audiences, audio describers, choreographers, educators, and arts administrators, this series offers an in-depth look into accessible performance practices and creative approaches to audio description.

Topics include:
• Vocal Tonality in Audio Description
• Script Preparation Strategies
• Logic and Language in Audio Description
• Critically Listening to Audio Description for Dance

Workshops take place online via Zoom on Saturdays from 4–6 PM ET.

Dark Room Ballet is an independent, grant-funded, tuition-free fine arts educational program for blind and visually impaired adults taught by expert blind and visually impaired teaching artists.

Starting this Saturday!

Audio Description for Dance with Krishna Washburn

Join Dark Room Ballet for a tuition-free online workshop series exploring the art, practice, and philosophy of audio description for dance. Designed for blind and visually impaired artists and audiences, audio describers, choreographers, educators, and arts administrators, this series offers an in-depth look into accessible performance practices and creative approaches to audio description.

Topics include:
• How to Hire an Audio Describer
• Vocal Tonality in Audio Description
• Script Preparation Strategies
• Logic and Language in Audio Description
• Critically Listening to Audio Description for Dance

Workshops take place online via Zoom on Saturdays from 4–6 PM ET.

Dark Room Ballet is an independent, grant-funded, tuition-free fine arts educational program for blind and visually impaired adults taught by expert blind and visually impaired teaching artists.

If you are interested in signing up, please email:
[[email protected]

Tomorrow: Sensory Beyond Sight with Davian “DJ” Robinson
Free virtual choreographic workshop
4 PM Eastern. E-mail: [email protected]
Join visually impaired dancer, choreographer, and para-Olympian DJ Robinson for a powerful movement practice exploring choreography through breath, touch, spatial hearing, weight, and proprioception rather than sight.
This cumulative workshop series invites participants to:
• Discover imaginative movement beyond visual imitation
• Deepen body awareness in time and space
• Build trust through movement and verbal cueing
DJ’s work challenges conventional movement practices and expands what choreography can be.
Tactile and creative tools are welcome, including tactile boards, felt boards, Wikki Stix, or other accessible drafting materials.

InclusiveDance

Sensory Beyond Sight
Study Choreography with DJ Robinson
Join us Friday, May 15
4:00–5:30 PM Eastern
Virtual on Zoom
Tuition-free
Developed by visually impaired choreographer, dancer, para-Olympian, and PAD Grant recipient DJ Robinson, this class explores creative movement and choreography through breath, touch, spatial hearing, weight, and proprioception rather than sight.
Discover imaginative movement beyond visual imitation.
Deepen body awareness in time and space.
Build trust through movement.
Register now on Zoom
Email [email protected] to learn more
InclusiveDance

Join us on Zoom this Sunday, May 2nd — registration link in bio.
VORTEX Workshop with Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez
About the 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 are invited to navigate internal and external spaces using heritage, lineage, memory, proprioception, breathwork, and magical existence.
About the Artist:
Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez is a Costa Rican-American artist working across choreography, film, installation, sound, and blind art. His work investigates access, trust, mythology, anthropology, and heritage—contemplating the body, its movement, and its relationship to energy, force, and space/time through the lens of visual impairment.
Details:
📍 Virtual (Zoom)
🗓 Saturday, May 2, 2026
⏰ 2 PM – 4 PM (EST)
Image description: 1. Christopher moves his arms, creating curved lines as dim light bathes his body—evoking the feeling of being inside a cave. 2. White font over black Vortex Workshop with Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez – May 2, 2026“

Presented as part of our 2026 rotating faculty 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 multisensory, multimedia artist grounded in iterative, time-based experimentation. Their practice engages with the full range of our senses and draws on ritual, material, and performance, to construct strange worlds between the physical and the ephemeral. Their practice researches the interconnected systems between ecology, decay, the body, disability, power, ghosts, geologic time, movement, textile, and memory.

Their practice decentralizes sight as the ultimate means of validating experience, creating cacophonies of textures and sounds to explore the dimensions of our senses. As a low-vision person, Shannon understands accessibility as an imperfect creative force that transforms time, space, and power structures.

About This Workshop Series:
monthly ritual to connect with, stretch into and experiment with the glory of our senses.

We ground into our practice with guided imaginative eco-embodiments and learning different approaches to improvising with movement and sound. Then we will play with, touch, taste, listen, and smell materials found in our own everyday life to celebrate and map out the landscapes of our sensorial experiences. Our time will conclude by folding our somatic exploration into our improvisations, and developing imperfect audio descriptions reflecting on our practice together.

After each practice, participants will receive an overview of the improvisation techniques we explored, music selections, and an ever-evolving dictionary of terms specific to Shannon’s class series.

Workshop Dates and Details:
These 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:

Sunday, February 1, 2026 – Improvising with Our Ecosystems with Shannon Brooks, 2 PM to 4 PM (Eastern/New York Time)

Sunday, March 1, 2026 – Improvising with Our Ecosystems with Shannon Brooks, 2 PM to 4 PM (Eastern/New York Time)

Sunday, April 12, 2026 – Improvising with Our Ecosystems with Shannon Brooks, 2 PM to 4 PM (Eastern/New York Time)

To register for this workshop series, visit

Rotating Faculty 2026: Improvising with our Ecosystems with Shannon Brooks – Dark Room Ballet with Krishna Washburn Categories News / Announcements Rotating Faculty 2026: Improvising with our Ecosystems with Shannon Brooks Post author By krishna Post date January 26, 2026 Shannon crouches on the floor holding a microphone with neon yellow/green tulle draped across their body and smushing their face. They speak/si...

TODAY!

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

Info & register:
https://darkroomballet.com/fall-2025-movement-kayla/

[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.]

TODAY!

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 go to:

Vortex Workshop with Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez – December 6, 2025 – Dark Room Ballet with Krishna Washburn Categories News / Announcements Vortex Workshop with Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez – December 6, 2025 Post author By krishna Post date August 10, 2025 Christopher moves his arms, creating curved lines while a dim light bathes his body, creating the effect of being in a cave. Presented as pa...

Supporting Dark Room Ballet Means Supporting Dance Education and Opportunity for Blind Artists and Audiences

Dark Room Ballet is celebrating its sixth anniversary, which means…

Krishna has taught almost 300 Open Level Classes for adults on Monday nights

500+ adults have studied ballet and traditional blind dance techniques with Krishna in Open, Intro, and Pro level classes

Krishna been offering audio description workshops and courses tuition-free since 2022

We’re revving up for our Fourteenth Cycle of the Dark Room Ballet Intro Class for blind and visually impaired adults that have not had the opportunity to study dance before — COMING IN FEBRUARY!

Dark Room Ballet is the only place where blind and visually impaired adults receive high-quality, pre-professional and professional level education from educators that share their disability – tuition free. And there’s so much more than ballet happening at Dark Room Ballet!

BE A PART OF OUR GROWTH

Dark Room Ballet is now a driving force for high-quality audio description for dance

Audio Description Consultation services are expanding globally because of the efforts of Dark Room Ballet and the Telephone Film

With support from Dark Room Ballet and Telephone, Pacific Northwest Ballet created their first audio description program with audio describer Alyson Osborn — it’s now a model for large dance companies starting fully integrated audio description programs.

American Ballet Theater / ABT Rise produced their VERY FIRST audio described dance video for World Ballet Day on November 12. Dark Room Ballet donated many, many volunteer hours to ABT to ensure audio described media in its catalog. Three Dark Room Ballet-trained audio describers got paid for this project…

And on December 13th, we will showcase audio described dance on film with Yeah, It WAS Good!

Dark Room Ballet continues to support, train, and consult with independent artists and dance companies as they create audio described dance projects. Some of our collaborators include: ShaLeigh Dance Works, Jo Troll, Emilee Lord, Toby MacNutt, and so many more!

Your donation will enable us to expand opportunities to train a new generation of audio describers of dance

Dark Room Ballet has Increased its Faculty with the Dark Room Collegium in 2025

Dark Room Ballet intends to build a full faculty of blind and visually impaired educators which we launched with Collegium 2025, a series of classes and workshops taught by the world’s best blind and low-vision movement and arts educators, sharing their artistry and knowledge with our community.

In 2025:

Shannon Brooks taught improvisation
Hannah Werbel taught ballet musicality
Davian “DJ” Robinson taught choreography and tactile map making
Alex Bulmer is teaching vocal skills for both audio describers of dance and self-describing dancers — STARTS TOMORROW!
Christopher “Unpezverde” Nuñez and Kayla Hamilton are opening windows into their artistic practices as choreographers — THIS WEEKEND AND NEXT WEEK!

Expanding opportunities in 2026:

There are so many more blind and visually impaired arts educators that we want to bring into our community as rotating faculty.

Your tax-deductible donation will help us hire the support staff we need to grow!

More info & donate at:
https://darkroomballet.com/giving-tuesday-2025/

(image descriptions in each caption)