Disney is reimagining three hit songs from its animated films in American Sign Language, turning the musical numbers into performances shaped by ASL’s richly expressive visual vocabulary of movement.
The numbers, part of a new Disney Animation Studios project called Songs in Sign Language, include “Beyond” from Moana 2, “The Next Right Thing” from Frozen 2, and from Encanto, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” a viral smash that topped the Billboard Hot 100. The sequences primarily feature new animation based on the performances of Deaf actors who helped interpret and choreograph the Disney songs while preserving each tune’s emotional core.
The full songs will be available on Disney+ starting Monday in celebration of National Deaf History Month, which takes place every April.
“Sign language is one of the most beautiful ways of communication on Earth,” said veteran Disney animator Hyrum Osmond, the project’s director. “If ever there was a medium to showcase sign language, it was animation.”
Osmond grew up with a Deaf father and began wondering what Disney songs would look like if they’d been created with his dad — and others who are Deaf or hard of hearing — in mind.
American Sign Language doesn’t map English words one to one, but is its own distinct language that prioritizes ideas and visual-spatial expression. Artists from Tony Award-winning Deaf West Theatre in Los Angeles actively rebuilt the three Disney songs from the ground up, carefully considering which signs would reflect specific characters’ personalities.
“We translated concepts, emotions and subtext into ASL the way ASL actually moves — through space, rhythm and facial grammar,” DJ Kurs, artistic director of Deaf West Theatre, said in an interview.
Facial grammar refers to signals that support the hand gestures. Slightly raised eyebrows at the end of a sentence represent a question, for example, while a head tilt paired with lifted brows conveys an “if” clause.
By letting go of word-for-word fidelity, “what we gained was a real elegance in movement and visual flow within the performances,” said Osmond, who served as supervising animator for the 2013 film Frozen and directed the 2021 Disney+ series Olaf Presents.
‘Poetry In Motion’
As Moana stands at the ocean’s edge in the new version of the Moana 2 song, she gracefully extends her arm upward and outward, palm open toward the horizon to suggest a vast world waiting to be discovered.
Another way the musical numbers showcase sign language is through characters’ use of name signs, personalized gestures used in the Deaf community in place of spelling out names.
The name sign for Bruno, the misunderstood estranged uncle in Encanto, “uses a distinct flipping motion behind the head, meant to evoke his iconic hood, while Moana’s, which was developed by the Pacific Islander community even before we began this project, mimics the gentle movement of the ocean,” Osmond said in an interview.
The Deaf West Theatre also made casting choices that reflect cultural specificity. The team chose deaf Colombian actors for “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” and a Deaf Samoan actor for “Beyond” and also used signs developed by Pacific Islander Deaf artists for that song.
Osmond and animation lead Joel Reid led a team of more than 20 animators — Reid and several other animators had worked on the original movies the songs came from. The team used the Deaf West Theatre actors’ sign language reference footage as a basis, then adjusted it for texture.
Other media have made efforts to incorporate American Sign Language — in 2024, PBS Kids launched a dedicated ASL section that embeds interpreters in popular shows to improve accessibility.
But Disney’s approach goes further, reworking the songs themselves rather than layering interpretation on top. This lends the sequences a distinct artistry — “a dance that feels like poetry in motion,” Reid said.
But as hands twirl cross, point, the shift isn’t just technical. It’s about who gets to see themselves reflected in the story.
“So many of us grew up on Disney, and now we get to see ourselves inside these characters we have loved our whole lives,” Jurs said. “That is the part I keep coming back to. ASL is a language, but it is also a creative vehicle, a whole art form of possibilities.”
