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This prestigious ballet company traditionally made available audio devices with descriptive narration so that blind patrons could follow the movement on stage. Now, through a groundbreaking production, the complete audience will listen to such narration within a production that investigates how visual impairment can transform our responses to feeling, audio and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Partners with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a fresh Royal Ballet production that will debut on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

In her art, Healey is driven by a desire to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can offer an alternative type of awareness for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, integrated with the composition, forms the heart of the show on stage.

"Creating top-tier dance and opera for each person" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the company is concentrating on "total access – inviting artists and audiences to experience dance in transformative innovative methods," he stated.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on Fresh Production

The new work is being choreographed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, each collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this commission, said: "World Ballet Day was founded on the idea of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're extending that notion further to explore how disabled perspectives can shape our performance style, and welcome viewers of every capability and histories to experience dance in fresh approaches."

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

Moving Collaboration Of Expert and Amateur Dancers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from birth and who had long assumed that dance was "primarily for sighted people". But the dancer has understood that it actually "involves a lot of feeling and feelings" and activates senses, "visual and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of earlier losing his way on his way home and depending on the sun to guide his way back had motivated a performance in which the professional dancer represents the "soothing presence of the sun around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer said.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the west. 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 western direction …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a good assistant to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful metaphor. So the story developed from there."

Blindness Provides Distinct Relationship with Motion

Healey, an scholar of disability studies at the Toronto university, stated: "Blindness and being blind invites a dynamic connection with movement in a way that is like a professional dancer’s connection with their body and dance."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was attempting to communicate what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not accessible through sight," she said. "I talk with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their body, where their breathing is, what they consider, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Partnering with the choreographers [and] attire, illumination, set and sound creators, the viewpoints and creativity of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and sighted people, build a connection through our passion of dance and performance. It is this creativity and affection that I attempt to integrate into the detailed narration. It is a collaboration of the faculties led by visual impairment."

The artist continued: "Although the vision of the dance, the stunning visual feast, is there facing the viewers, there is a great deal that they overlook or appreciating, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and blind patrons equally into the hidden. What I hope is that, when viewers exit, they sense performance in a distinct way, and they’re also sensing the being, and listening to the understandings of, blindness in new and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of streams, said the spoken narration created a relationship between blindness and vision "through a soundscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He added: "This isn't simply a narration of a production. It is the art."

World Ballet Event Collaborators

The company's worldwide associates for World Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will also provide access to behind-the-scenes video, rehearsals and freshly produced pieces – transmitted as it happens via the event website.