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The Royal Ballet traditionally provided audio devices with spoken commentary so that blind audience members could follow the action on stage. Presently, in a revolutionary performance, the complete crowd will listen to such descriptions within a work that explores how visual impairment can redefine our perceptions to feeling, audio and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Partners with Famous Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired creator, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a new Royal Ballet production that will debut on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

Through her work, the artist is driven by a desire to show how visual impairment and disability can offer an unique type of awareness for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the score, creates the center of the show on stage.

"Creating world-class dance and musical theater for all" is a motto of the the organization. Under the director, the company's leader, the troupe is concentrating on "radical accessibility – welcoming creators and patrons to discover ballet in revolutionary fresh approaches," he explained.

Multiple Dance Creators Work on Fresh Performance

The recent commission is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, each collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this commission, stated: "World Ballet Day was established on the principle of inclusion. After a ten years, we're expanding that idea more to explore how challenged outlooks can mold our performance style, and welcome audiences of all abilities and backgrounds to encounter ballet in fresh approaches."

After collaborating with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he realized that individuals who can see who had heard the artist's descriptive audio believed it assisted them grasp dance, which can seem so unclear.

Inspiring Partnership Between Professional and Amateur Dancers

In a particular dance piece, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind since birth and who had long assumed that dance was "mainly for sighted people". But Kikuchi has discovered that it actually "involves a lot of emotion and emotions" and taps into perceptions, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of earlier becoming disoriented on his way home and using the sun to orient his way back had motivated a performance in which the professional dancer represents the "warm breath of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," the choreographer said.

"It was during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could perceive the heat … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sun was a excellent assistant to me. The sunlight could be a good metaphor. So the tale originated from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Special Relationship with Dance

The blind artist, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind encourages a vibrant connection with movement in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s bond with their body and dance."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was seeking to communicate what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through sight," she said. "I talk with the performers to get a understanding of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they consider, how their muscles are feeling.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] clothing, stage lights, stage design and sound creators, the understandings and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and seeing individuals, build a relationship through our affection of movement and performance. It is this creativity and passion that I strive to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the senses led by visual impairment."

She noted: "While the view of the ballet, the stunning visual feast, is there in front of the patrons, there is much that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is inviting seeing and visually impaired audience members equally into the unseen. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they experience dance in a different way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and listening to the understandings of, blindness in new and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose works have amassed more than 3.5 billion online plays, said the audio descriptions established a connection between visual impairment and sight "through a musical landscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not just a explanation of a show. It is performance."

International Ballet Event Partners

The company's global partners for World Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will also supply availability to backstage material, rehearsals and freshly produced works – broadcast as it happens via the event website.