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The Royal Ballet traditionally made available audio devices with descriptive narration so that visually impaired audience members could understand the movement on stage. Currently, via a revolutionary performance, the whole crowd will hear such descriptions within a production that investigates how lack of sight can redefine our reactions to feeling, music and narrative.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Famous Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in developing a new ballet company work that will debut on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as announced this week.

Within her creative practice, the artist is guided by a desire to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can present an alternative type of understanding for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the composition, establishes the heart of the production on stage.

"Making world-class ballet and opera for all" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's director, the company is focusing on "complete inclusion – encouraging creators and patrons to encounter dance in life-changing innovative methods," he stated.

Various Dance Creators Collaborate on New Performance

The new work is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, all working with the blind artist.

The curator, the curator of this work, said: "International Ballet Day was established on the idea of accessibility. After a decade, we're pushing that idea deeper to examine how challenged perspectives can influence our performance style, and invite viewers of all abilities and experiences to encounter ballet in new ways."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canada and Australian locations, he understood that sighted people who had encountered Healey’s audio narration felt it assisted them understand ballet, which can look so abstract.

Touching Partnership Of Expert and Amateur Performers

In a particular performance, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had long assumed that ballet was "mainly for sighted people". But Kikuchi has discovered that it in fact "involves a lot of sensation and emotions" and engages perceptions, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's personal story of once getting lost on his way home and depending on the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they move together," Malcomson said.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a sense that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the sunlight itself, I could feel the temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sun was a excellent guide to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful representation. So the narrative emerged from there."

Blindness Provides Unique Connection with Motion

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind encourages a vibrant relationship with motion in a way that is like a professional dancer’s connection with their body and dance."

In collaborating with the performers, she was seeking to convey what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not available through vision," she said. "I speak with the performers to get a understanding of how they’re feeling in their body, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] clothing, lighting, scenery and audio designers, the understandings and innovation of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, establish a connection through our affection of dance and performance. It is this artistry and love that I attempt to integrate into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the perceptions guided by visual impairment."

She noted: "While the vision of the ballet, the stunning visual feast, is available facing the viewers, there is a great deal that they miss or valuing, and it is blindness that is inviting seeing and blind audience members alike into the unseen. What I desire is that, when viewers exit, they feel dance in a distinct way, and they’re also sensing the presence, and listening to the understandings of, blindness in fresh and dynamic ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Narration

The composer, whose works have accumulated more than 3.5bn online plays, said the spoken narration formed a rapport between blindness and vision "by means of a musical landscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not simply a narration of a production. It is performance."

International Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international partners for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will furthermore provide entry to behind-the-scenes footage, practice sessions and freshly produced productions – broadcast as it happens via online channels.