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The Royal Ballet for years provided audio devices with audio descriptions so that blind viewers could understand the action on stage. Presently, through a revolutionary new work, the whole audience will listen to such narration within a work that investigates how visual impairment can transform our perceptions to feeling, music and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Partners with Famous Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in creating a new ballet company production that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

In her art, Healey is guided by a desire to show how visual impairment and disability can provide an different mode of perception for everyone. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, woven with the music, creates the center of the show on stage.

"Creating exceptional ballet and musical theater for everyone" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's director, the troupe is zeroing in on "radical accessibility – inviting creators and viewers to experience dance in revolutionary new ways," he explained.

Various Dance Creators Partner on Fresh Production

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to McGregor, each working with Healey.

Robert Binet, the curator of this production, commented: "World Ballet Day was established on the principle of accessibility. Following a ten years, we're pushing that idea deeper to consider how disabled outlooks can influence our creative medium, and encourage audiences of every capability and backgrounds to experience ballet in fresh approaches."

After collaborating with the artist in Canada and Australia, the curator recognized that those with vision who had heard the artist's descriptive audio felt it aided them comprehend ballet, which can seem so unclear.

Touching Collaboration Of Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In one performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from childhood and who had long assumed that dance was "primarily for individuals with vision". But the dancer has discovered that it actually "includes a lot of sensation and feelings" and activates senses, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and using the sun to direct his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon embodies the "warm breath of the sun around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer explained.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the rays itself, I could perceive the warmth … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a good guide to me. The sun could be a meaningful symbol. So the tale originated from there."

Blindness Presents Distinct Relationship with Dance

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a vibrant relationship with dance in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s connection with their body and motion."

In working with the dancers, she was striving to communicate what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she said. "I speak with the dancers to get a understanding of how they feel in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] clothing, lighting, stage design and audio designers, the perceptions and innovation of blindness are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and sighted people, establish a relationship through our passion of movement and performance. It is this artistry and affection that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the faculties directed by blindness."

The artist continued: "While the sight of the ballet, the stunning visual feast, is available facing the viewers, there is much that they’re not accessing or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming sighted and visually impaired patrons equally into the unseen. What I wish is that, when patrons leave, they feel dance in a different way, and they’re also feeling the existence, and perceiving the perceptions of, blindness in new and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Narration

Richter, whose compositions have gathered more than billions of online plays, said the descriptive commentary formed a rapport between blindness and sight "via a audio environment, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He noted: "It is not simply a description of a show. This is the art."

International Dance Event Partners

The company's worldwide partners for World Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will additionally offer entry to backstage material, rehearsals and newly commissioned works – streamed as it happens via the event website.