Northern Ballet Autumn Season with Audio Description

Season 1, Episode 1417,   Oct 10, 2022, 12:00 PM

Leeds based ballet company Northern Ballet’s autumn season continues around the country with audio described performances of their productions of both The Little Mermaid and The Nutcracker. 

RNIB Connect Radio’s Toby Davey caught up with Pippa Moore, Northern Ballet’s Artistic and Learning Assistant and Audio Describer, along with John Longstaff, Orchestrator for Northern Ballet’s productions of The Little Mermaid and The Nutcracker, to find out a bit more about both productions. 

Pippa began by giving a bit of background to the story of The Little Mermaid and how Northern Ballet have turned Hans Christian Andersen's original fairytale into this immersive and beautiful ballet production. 

John then talked about working on The Little Mermaid as an Orchestrator and how he added in various musical notation to Sally Beamish’s original score.

Then to the magical and festive treat for all the family that is The Nutcracker with Pippa giving an outline to the story of The Nutcracker without giving the ending away and John explaining how he worked on Tchaikovsky’s score for The Nutcracker and making the music fit for just a 27 piece orchestra but making it sound like what you would hear on the radio and on CD. 

Northern Ballet’s productions of The Little Mermaid and The Nutcracker continue on tour around the country this autumn with audio described performances and more details can be found about these and other described productions by visiting the audio described pages of the Northern Ballet website- 
https://northernballet.com/accessible-performances/audio-described-performances 


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