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This prestigious ballet company has long made available audio devices with descriptive narration so that sightless viewers could follow the performance on stage. Now, in a groundbreaking production, the entire gathering will hear such commentary within a production that investigates how lack of sight can redefine our perceptions to experience, sound and narrative.

Blind Creator Works with Renowned Choreographers

The blind artist, a blind creator, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in producing a new Royal Ballet production that will launch on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as announced this week.

Within her creative practice, the artist is motivated by a ambition to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can offer an unique type of understanding for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, integrated with the composition, creates the center of the performance on stage.

"Making top-tier dance and musical theater for each person" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the troupe is zeroing in on "radical accessibility – inviting performers and patrons to encounter ballet in transformative fresh approaches," he explained.

Various Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, all working with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this commission, said: "World Ballet Day was founded on the idea of accessibility. Following a decade, we're expanding that idea more to consider how challenged viewpoints can mold our performance style, and encourage patrons of all abilities and histories to encounter ballet in new ways."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australian locations, the curator recognized that sighted people who had heard the artist's audio narration felt it aided them grasp dance, which can seem so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Of Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In one performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from childhood and who had always thought that ballet was "mostly for those who can see". But the dancer has realized that it actually "entails a lot of feeling and feelings" and engages perceptions, "visual and non-sight".

The dancer's personal story of once becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sunlight to orient his way back had inspired a duet in which the professional dancer becomes the "warm breath of the sun around his partner as they move together," the choreographer stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a sense that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could sense the temperature … So I continued moving to the west …. It led me home. The sunshine was a great assistant to me. The sun could be a powerful representation. So the tale originated from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Distinct Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Visual impairment and lacking sight encourages a active relationship with movement in a way that is like a professional dancer’s bond with their physical self and dance."

In collaborating with the dancers, the artist was attempting to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she noted. "I speak with the dancers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breathing is, what they think, how their body are sensing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] clothing, illumination, set and audio creators, the understandings and artistry of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and seeing individuals, develop a relationship through our love of movement and performance. It is this innovation and affection that I try to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a collaboration of the senses directed by visual impairment."

She noted: "Even though the sight of the ballet, the stunning spectacle, is available facing the audience, there is much that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is inviting sighted and blind viewers both into the invisible. What I wish is that, when viewers depart, they experience ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the existence, and perceiving the perceptions of, visual impairment in fresh and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have gathered more than billions of digital listens, said the spoken narration formed a relationship between blindness and sight "by means of a soundscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He continued: "It is not simply a explanation of a production. It is the art."

International Dance Event Collaborators

The company's worldwide associates for World Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The companies will furthermore provide availability to backstage material, rehearsals and newly commissioned pieces – broadcast in real-time via the event website.