King’s academics have worked with the English National Ballet’s (ENB) recent production of Sleeping Beauty to bring the art of dance to children with learning difficulties and disabilities through the use of narration, signing and graphic symbols.

Working with the ENB,  Dr Chris Abbott, Emeritus Reader in Assistive Technologies in the King’s  Department of Education & Professional Studies, and his team produced a series of accessible symbol-based resources and ran a series of workshops to make the narrative and meaning of Sleeping Beauty clearer and easier to understand for younger people.

The project was in collaboration with  Widgit Software, a company specialising in developing materials for people who have difficulty in understanding and using text, and  Sign2Learn, a group of BSL qualified and experienced teachers with various backgrounds in the deaf community.

Sleeping Beauty ran at the English National Ballet 24 March – 10 July 2016 and was attended by 62,151 people during its tour of UK theatres. Over 700 children with learning difficulties and/or disabilities and their families and carers saw the ballet.

Sleeping Beauty was the third ENB production to integrate use of the King’s resources for children with learning difficulties and disabilities. Coppélia, the first ballet in the series, was performed in spring 2014 by second year students of English National Ballet School. Following on from the success of the first inclusive ballet, Swan Lake was created by English National Ballet’s Associate Artist George Williamson and was again performed by second year students from English National Ballet School.

Image credits (L-R): Daniel Myers as the Blue Bird and Misato Isogami as Princess Florine perform during English National Ballet school’s dress rehearsal of My First – Sleeping Beauty at The Peacock Theatre, London on March 23 2016. Photo: Arnaud Stephenson; (L-R) Madison Whitley as the Lilac Fairy and Sara Maggini as Nurse perform during English National Ballet school’s dress rehearsal of My First – Sleeping Beauty at The Peacock Theatre, London on March 23 2016. Photo: Arnaud Stephenson