What do you need?
That’s the question Ballet Des Moines asked community partners as the company sought to revamp its programming to offer people with disabilities more access to performance arts. It’s a question that has led to the formation of an accessibility committee, a team of local leaders and artists now guiding the company’s latest program, Ballet without Barriers.
Ballet companies often do outreach and work with various organizations, and what CEO Blaire Massa said she and her staff have learned is that question often goes unasked.
“No one else is saying: ‘What do you need from us?'” she said. “They’re saying, ‘Here’s something we’re making for you.'”
That resonated with Creative Director Jami Milne, who recalled a conversation with Maryfrances Evans, executive director of the Iowa Radio Reading Information Service, a year ago. For years, IRIS worked with Ballet Des Moines to bring performance arts to those who are blind or visually impaired through storytelling.
What stuck with Milne was how Evans said she felt about their relationship: That it felt “mechanical,” their conversations mostly about show tickets and dates, Milne said.
“That is not how any of us operate,” Milne said. “The bare minimum of anything.”
Milne thought further: “How else can we deliver an experience that’s not just checking the box?”
Milne later set up a tour for Evans and a group of blind and visually impaired guests, where they went backstage to meet a costume designer and touch the garments — feel their weight, the stitching, the fabrics’ texture — used during the company’s production of “The Nutcracker.”
The program, which Massa hopes will become a mainstay, started Thursday, Sept. 11, with a sensory dinner that included a three-course meal, wine pairings and immersive performances, with audio and visual descriptions, to Tom Mattingly’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.”
Ballet Des Moines leaned on two of its partners, The Harkin Institute and Iowa School for the Deaf, to bring the event to fruition.
The company plans to host a similar event Thursday, Nov. 6, with Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.”
“Working with our dancers to put descriptive words to the choroegraphy and movement such that our blind community or anyone who wants to understand better the vocabulary around that movement will have another way to experience it,” Massa said.
The company also is working with its music directors to use visual descriptions to illustrate songs’ relationships to the performance — “the feelings, the crescendos, the journey that the music takes alongside that performance,” she added.
What else is Ballet Des Moines doing?
Through a partnership with the Iowa Library Association and the Des Moines Public Library, Iowans who have a library card and are age 7 or older will be eligible for free tickets to Ballet Des Moines performances.
Ballet Des Moines also has launched an adaptive dance program — movement, dance, pilates and yoga classes for people of different skills and physical abilities. One class offered is “Every. Body. Dance: Movement for All Abilities,” which is geared toward people with Parkinson’s disease, neuropathy, arthritis or other age-related physical or neurological conditions.
Classes and other information are listed on the dance company’s website at www.balletdesmoines.org.
F. Amanda Tugade covers community and faith for the Des Moines Register. Email her at ftugade@dmreg.com or follow her on X @writefelissa.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Ballet Des Moines’ newest program brings performances to blind, deaf audience members
Reporting by F. Amanda Tugade, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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