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Seeing dance for the firs time

By Vico Lee
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Dec 06, 2003, Page 16

First, I thought dance is such a visual thing that I would never understand it, but now I find that I can enjoy it to the full," said Chan Zhi-ping (詹志萍), a blind college student, after taking in the premiere of Magic of the Dance (魔力之舞), the world's first audio version of a dance performance film.

In the screening room of the Chinese Culture University in Taipei last Saturday, an audience of some 40 visually impaired people felt the 12 pairs of tap dance shoes that were making sounds in the room, while listening to the audio description of an Irish tap dance group's most celebrated work. With the thrilling traditional music and Irish ballads in the background, a female voice described the tap dancing steps, as well as the stage settings, special effects and lighting. More voices dubbed the dialogues of the show. It was a busy 90 minutes in which complicated bodily movements were translated into language.

To describe a dance film is the Audio Description Association's (口述影像發展協會) latest attempt to expand the scope of cultural activities which the visually impaired can access and appreciate. As the audience fumbled and tried on the tap dance shoes and listened to the film with much curiosity and enjoyment, the project seemed to have achieved its aim.

"I realize that dance shows are not off-limits for me after all. Now I would like to explore the world of performance arts of other kinds, too," Chan said.

For four years, the association, the only organization in Taiwan to produce audio description programs, has made over 20 films and plays, starting with Public Television Service's drama series Sun Yat-sen. The most well-known programs are the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Performance Workshop's new play Mumble Jumble.

While dialogue-heavy theater or movies are relatively easy to do, the association took one giant step forward by audio describing fine arts at last year's Fauvist painter Henri Matisse's exhibition at the National Museum of History. Next to the three-dimensional renditions of the paintings, which the French co-organizer provided, the association wrote and described their combinations of shapes and colors.

"After we'd done fine arts, we wanted to go one step further by audio describing something usually was thought to be purely visual and that is dance," said Chao Ya-li (趙雅麗), general director of the association. Magic of the Dance is probably the ultimate achievement in terms of audio description."

The film seemed to have worked its magic on the blind audience. "It reminded me of the visual world that I lost. I can picture in my head what the show was all about," Chan said.

Lee Yi-huei (李怡慧), an audio book author, thinks that the prose description is the best part of the show. "The prose was so beautiful. It also told us about the lighting and setting of stage. The whole atmosphere was there," Lee said.

Lin Hsin-ting (林信廷), a member of Dance of Light Troupe, a dance group of visually impaired people which specializes in tap dance, was inspired to emulate the innovative choreography of the show. "The audio description was helpful in detailing interesting arrangements on stage, like the way they would dance into iron barrels. That inspired me a lot with my own choreography."

But Lin also found the description confusing as the tracks of English dialogue, Chinese translations, and captioning of the visual goings-on overlap sometimes. "It probably can't be helped because the dance shows are by nature too difficult to be fully described with words."

"The biggest difficulty in making this version is technical. A four minute long performance can fit only 240 words at most, but it's so little information compared what you can see at one glance. The person writing the descriptions has to have a good command of both performance arts and the language comprehensible to the visually impaired," Chao said.

Despite the difficulty, made worse by small size of her production team of untrained graduate students, Chao insisted on doing the dance film because the visually impaired need it. "When visually impaired people hear their sighted friends talking about the latest show, they want to know about it too so they have topics in common with other people. We chose Magic of the Dance also because the show is very popular both here and in Europe. They can talk about the show with many people," Chao said.

After the film finishes touring eight locations across Taiwan, it will become part of the collection of the Council for Cultural Affairs, which funded the project. Audio described versions of films in local libraries, however (as in the US), is nowhere near realization due to a lack of legislation regarding copyright. Copyright issues also limit the film's screenings to schools instead of theaters.

"There's a long way to go before these films become widely available. The government policies for the visually impaired at present still focus on improving their livelihood with vocational training. But a blind person's life can be more sorrowful than healthy people. Participating in cultural activities can do them good. It may also bring out their artistic talents, which then give them wider career options," Chao said.

Magic of the Dance is also the first audio described version of a foreign-language film. The need for well-known Hollywood movies, as Chan concedes, is more urgent than dance shows because it makes the visually impaired part of pop culture.

"I love foreign movies, but I have to have two friends with me in the theater. One to interpret the English dialogue and the other to describe movements," Chan said, laughing about the trouble it caused his friends.

Chao admitted that audio description was costly and involved a lot of time and personnel."It would be possible [to do more] if we had more support, particularly from the private sector, to set up systematic training programs for audio-description professionals. But this deficiency of such professionals is a world-wide problem," Chao said.

"The sighted often underestimate the blind's longing for the visual world. They are actually very curious about sights, about movies and fine arts. They can enjoy these things equally if we construct their visual world for them through language, which we all have in common," Chao concluded.

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