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The Royal Ballet has long offered audio devices with audio descriptions so that blind patrons could track the movement on stage. Now, through a innovative production, the complete audience will listen to such descriptions within a production that explores how visual impairment can reshape our responses to sensation, music and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Artist Collaborates with Famous Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired professional, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in developing a new Royal Ballet commission that will premiere on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as declared this week.

In her art, Healey is motivated by a ambition to illustrate how blindness and physical challenge can offer an unique form of perception for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the composition, forms the center of the production on stage.

"Creating top-tier dance and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the company's leader, the troupe is focusing on "complete inclusion – encouraging creators and patrons to experience dance in life-changing new ways," he stated.

Various Dance Creators Partner on New Work

The fresh production is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to McGregor, each working with the blind artist.

The curator, the organizer of this commission, stated: "World Ballet Day was created on the idea of accessibility. Following a ten years, we're extending that idea deeper to examine how challenged perspectives can influence our performance style, and welcome viewers of every capability and experiences to encounter ballet in new ways."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australia, he understood that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s spoken descriptions found it aided them grasp dance, which can seem so unclear.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In one performance, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind from childhood and who had previously believed that dance was "mainly for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has realized that it in fact "involves a lot of sensation and sentiments" and taps into senses, "sight-based and other sensory".

The dancer's personal story of once losing his way on his way home and using the sun to guide his way back had influenced a performance in which the professional dancer represents the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer stated.

"It was during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could sense the warmth … So I continued moving to the west …. It led me home. The sunshine was a excellent guide to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful metaphor. So the narrative developed from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Distinct Relationship with Motion

Healey, an assistant professor of disability studies at the University of Toronto, commented: "Visual impairment and lacking sight fosters a active relationship with motion in a way that is like a professional dancer’s bond with their body and motion."

In working with the performers, she was striving to express what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she explained. "I converse with the dancers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their body, where their respiration is, what they’re thinking, how their body are experiencing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, illumination, scenery and music creators, the viewpoints and artistry of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and sighted people, develop a relationship through our passion of motion and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I strive to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the faculties led by visual impairment."

She added: "Although the vision of the dance, the stunning spectacle, is present in front of the patrons, there is much that they miss or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is inviting seeing and blind audience members equally into the unseen. What I hope is that, when patrons leave, they sense ballet in a different way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and perceiving the viewpoints of, blindness in new and vibrant ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Narration

Richter, whose recordings have amassed more than billions of digital listens, commented the audio descriptions created a rapport between visual impairment and vision "by means of a musical landscape, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He noted: "It is not merely a narration of a show. This is performance."

International Dance Event Partners

The company's international partners for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also provide entry to exclusive material, practice sessions and newly commissioned productions – broadcast in real-time via their official platform.