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This prestigious ballet company has long provided headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired patrons could track the action on stage. Currently, in a innovative performance, the entire audience will listen to such descriptions within a work that examines how blindness can redefine our responses to feeling, music and storytelling.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired professional, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in creating a fresh Royal Ballet commission that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

Within her creative practice, the artist is guided by a wish to show how blindness and disability can offer an different type of perception for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the score, creates the heart of the production on stage.

"Producing top-tier dance and musical theater for everyone" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is concentrating on "radical accessibility – encouraging performers and viewers to encounter ballet in life-changing fresh approaches," he stated.

Multiple Dance Creators Collaborate on Fresh Work

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

Robert Binet, the director of this commission, stated: "World Ballet Day was founded on the principle of accessibility. After a decade, we're extending that notion deeper to examine how challenged outlooks can influence our art form, and encourage viewers of all abilities and backgrounds to discover dance in innovative methods."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that those with vision who had experienced the artist's spoken descriptions found it assisted them comprehend ballet, which can seem so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Between Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In one performance, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had always thought that dance was "mostly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has realized that it truly "includes a lot of emotion and sentiments" and engages faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of earlier becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sun to guide his way back had motivated a dance piece in which the professional dancer becomes the "gentle warmth of the sun around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," the choreographer said.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could sense the temperature … So I continued moving to the west …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a excellent helper to me. The sun could be a powerful metaphor. So the tale emerged from there."

Blindness Offers Special Relationship with Dance

Healey, an academic of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Visual impairment and lacking sight invites a dynamic connection with dance in a way that is like a expert performer's bond with their physical self and movement."

In working with the performers, the artist was attempting to convey what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not available through sight," she noted. "I converse with the performers to get a understanding of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breath is, what they’re thinking, how their body are experiencing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, lighting, scenery and audio designers, the perceptions and innovation of visual impairment are ever present as we, blind and sighted individuals, develop a relationship through our love of movement and dance. It is this creativity and passion that I strive to weave into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the senses directed by visual impairment."

She added: "While the sight of the ballet, the beautiful spectacle, is present facing the viewers, there is so much that they miss or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is inviting sighted and blind audience members alike into the invisible. What I desire is that, when patrons exit, they feel dance in a new way, and they’re also feeling the being, and hearing the viewpoints of, blindness in fresh and active ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Narration

Richter, whose recordings have accumulated more than billions of online plays, commented the descriptive commentary formed a connection between visual impairment and vision "through a musical landscape, offering narration to that which remains unseen". He continued: "It is not simply a narration of a performance. It is performance."

International Dance Day Partners

The company's global partners for International Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also provide availability to exclusive footage, preparations and recently created works – broadcast as it happens via their official platform.