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This prestigious ballet company has long offered audio devices with spoken commentary so that sightless patrons could understand the action on stage. Currently, via a groundbreaking production, the whole audience will listen to such commentary within a piece that explores how blindness can reshape our reactions to experience, audio and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Artist Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired professional, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in creating a fresh Royal Ballet production that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as declared this week.

Through her work, Healey is guided by a ambition to show how visual impairment and disability can offer an different type of perception for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the composition, creates the heart of the show on stage.

"Creating top-tier dance and musical theater for each person" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the company is concentrating on "total access – inviting artists and patrons to experience ballet in transformative innovative methods," he said.

Several Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Work

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

The curator, the organizer of this production, said: "International Ballet Day was established on the idea of inclusion. After a decade, we're extending that concept further to examine how impaired viewpoints can mold our creative medium, and welcome viewers of all abilities and backgrounds to discover ballet in new ways."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australia, the curator recognized that sighted people who had encountered the artist's spoken descriptions found it aided them grasp ballet, which can appear so abstract.

Moving Partnership Of Professional and Amateur Dancers

In a particular duet, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had always thought that dance was "mostly for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "entails a lot of emotion and emotions" and taps into faculties, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of previously losing his way on his way home and using the sunlight to guide his way back had inspired a performance in which Dixon embodies the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they move together," the choreographer said.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could feel the heat … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It guided me home. The sun was a great guide to me. The sun could be a powerful metaphor. So the tale emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Distinct Connection with Motion

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Blindness and being blind encourages a vibrant bond with motion in a way that is like a professional dancer’s relationship with their body and dance."

In partnering with the performers, she was striving to convey what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she said. "I talk with the dancers to get a understanding of how they are in their body, where their breathing is, what they think, how their physical form are feeling.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, lighting, stage design and sound designers, the perceptions and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and seeing persons, build a connection through our passion of motion and performance. It is this creativity and passion that I strive to blend into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the senses directed by visual impairment."

The artist added: "Although the view of the ballet, the beautiful spectacle, is there in front of the viewers, there is so much that they miss or appreciating, and it is blindness that is encouraging sighted and blind audience members alike into the unseen. What I wish is that, when viewers depart, they sense performance in a different way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and listening to the viewpoints of, blindness in new and vibrant ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have gathered more than 3.5 billion digital listens, said the audio descriptions established a relationship between blindness and vision "through a soundscape, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He added: "This isn't simply a description of a production. It is performance."

World Ballet Event Collaborators

The company's global associates for International Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will furthermore offer entry to behind-the-scenes material, practice sessions and newly commissioned pieces – broadcast as it happens via online channels.