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Scholar-in-Residence
Dr. Devon Healey returns for her second of three years as FFDN Scholar-in-Residence 2025-2027
Dr. Devon Healey returns to FFDN in 2026 to continue her three year Scholar-in-Residence exploration of how blindness can enhance perception of dance. An academic and artist who moved into blindness as a young adult, she is the originator of Immersive Descriptive Audio (IDA) for dance, a revolutionary way of narrating the sensory experience of dance performance for greater accessibility.
Developed in collaboration with FFDN Artistic Director Robert Binet, IDA is recognized for its ability to demystify dance - for blind, visually impaired, and sighted people. The IDA script is developed alongside the creation of the choreography and is integrated into the work's ultimate performance. IDA is poetic storytelling, one that is based on the dancers’ and dancemaker’s physical expressive intent and joined with Devon’s experience of the movement through her own blindness.
Recently, Devon was interviewed for World Ballet Day and explained how IDA shifts accessibility from an afterthought to something integral to the creation:
“With Immersive Descriptive Audio, we are not merely thinking about how we can make something accessible at the end, something needing to be filled in. The beauty of Immersive Descriptive Audio that comes from the writing of a blind artist, and the perception of that blind artist, is that we are right there with the dancers and choreographer, all together at the start of the process. We begin to develop a vocabulary distinct to each artist. With each rehearsal, the Immersive Descriptive Audio changes, it weaves in the love and the emotion of the creative team, and becomes a true collaboration of the senses and the artistry that everyone brings.”
- Dr. Devon Healey, Access Becomes Art: World Ballet Day 2025 I The Royal Ballet
Fall for Dance North’s diverse programming offers a unique opportunity to expand IDA across multiple dance lineages and cultural forms. Over Dr. Devon Healey’s three-year Scholar-in-Residence appointment, IDA is being developed for Signature Programme presentation. In the Q & A below, Devon shares what she learned in Year 1 and where she hopes to take her research in Year 2:
Going into year 2 of 3, FFDN invited Devon to share her thoughts about the Scholar-in-Residence experience.
Q: Tell us about your first year as FFDN Scholar-in-Residence.
A: One of the most meaningful moments of my first year as FFDN’s Scholar in Residence was collaborating with 2025 Artist-in-Residence Esie Mensah on our exploration, Dancing with Blindness. We oriented to blindness as a guide in this work leading us into uncertainty. In that space, we began to learn how to listen. We listened to our bodies, to each other, to the room, and to the ongoing histories humming beneath the floor and around us. Through this practice of listening, something shifted. A quiet, shared attunement began to grow.”
Q: The attunement between blindness and dance can seem counterintuitive to some, but it in fact exposes remarkable similarities regarding one's awareness of the body. Could you provide an example of how that attunement shows up in the Immersive Descriptive Audio created with Esie?
A: Certainly, we practiced being present. Breathing together. Paying attention. Opening ourselves to what surrounded us and to what was rising within. From that slow collaboration, this Immersive Descriptive Audio emerged:
“Feet deceive the eyes that watch.
They don’t just carry, they hold; they root.
Toes flex, core contracts, stacking.
Anticipation.
Arms thrust into the sky— a moment of weightlessness—
the earth,
she pulls,
return and disperse.
The foundational plane of my body grows…
a different sense of myself.”
Q: What are you looking forward to in Year 2?
A: I am a student of the many artists and creators at the festival. Being in conversation with their practices continues to shape my own. My research is stretching and settling at the same time, especially as I weave critical disability studies and my exploration of blindness into the many approaches to movement and dance that live within FFDN.
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Devon Healey is an Assistant Professor of Disability Studies at OISE, University of Toronto. All of her work is grounded in her experience as a blind woman guided by a desire to show how blindness, specifically, and disability more broadly, can be understood as offering an alternate form of perception and is thus, a valuable and creative way of experiencing and knowing the world. She is the author of, Dramatizing Blindness: Disability Studies as Critical Creative Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan). Devon is an award-winning actor and the co-founder of Peripheral Theatre. Her first play, Rainbow on Mars (Outside the March/National Ballet of Canada/Peripheral Theatre) premiered August 2025 in Toronto. Her work exploring blind perception has been featured by The Royal Ballet (UK), the Queensland Ballet (Australia), Vienna State Opera (Austria), and the National Ballet of Canada.
"Devon's work has completely reshaped my understanding of disability and accessibility. Her twin goals of making dance accessible to Blind and low-vision audiences, and also making the artistry and wisdom of blindness accessible to all, work powerfully together as we look at how FFDN builds audiences and at how dance can reshape our understanding of the world. I am so grateful to Devon for her partnership and collaboration."
- Rob Binet, Artistic Director & Co-CEO
"Devon reminds us that accessibility is not simply about removing barriers, it is about expanding perception. I’m so thrilled and honoured to welcome her back as our Scholar-in-Residence this year, helping to strengthen our festival’s commitment to accessibility by placing it at the heart of the artistic process, not at its margins."
- Lily Sutherland, Festival Director & Co-CEO