There are a lot of benefits when one dances. Apart from building confidence, dance also improves one’s physical condition: it strengthens bones, balance, and coordination. And Brazil’s first ballet school for the blind offers just that for aspiring blind dancers to follow their passion and unleash their potential.
The Fernanda Bianchini Ballet Company uses the sensorial form of touch to train its dancers.
“Today the method is all through touch and body perception. The students touch my body, feel the movement and afterwards try to reproduce it in their own bodies.”
Fernanda Bianchini is the founder and director of the ballet company. The dancers also use pool noodles and other gymnastic equipment to train their bodies. The instructor, Geysa Pereira, is also blind. She understands that dancing blind is not always easy, and takes much practice. She admits that one of her biggest challenges up till now is performing turns, because it requires the dancer to direct his/her attention to a point. However, dancing is not just about technique, but the emotions it evokes as well. “I always try to show people not only a ballerina dancing, but also the feeling of the ballerina,” Geysa shares.
For 10-year-old Polina Brito, dance, in particular ballet, has transformed her abilities and attitude. She encourages more blind people to take up ballet “to feel more free, because a lot of them are scared to walk, like [her] in the beginning.”
And as Fernanda adequately sums up, spreading the gift of dance is essential because:
“I learn every day to close the eyes of the sight which are extremely full of preconception, and to open the eyes of the heart.”