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This prestigious ballet company traditionally offered audio devices with audio descriptions so that visually impaired audience members could track the performance on stage. Presently, via a revolutionary new work, the complete audience will listen to such narration within a piece that explores how lack of sight can reshape our perceptions to sensation, audio and narrative.

Visually Impaired Artist Collaborates with Famous Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired professional, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in developing a recent Royal Ballet commission that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Through her work, the artist is guided by a desire to show how blindness and disability can provide an different mode of understanding for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the score, forms the heart of the production on stage.

"Creating exceptional ballet and musical theater for all" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the company is concentrating on "complete inclusion – inviting performers and patrons to encounter dance in transformative new ways," he said.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on Fresh Performance

The recent commission is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, each working with Healey.

The curator, the director of this production, said: "International Ballet Day was founded on the concept of access. After a decade, we're extending that idea more to examine how challenged outlooks can shape our performance style, and invite audiences of every capability and experiences to experience ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator understood that individuals who can see who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions found it aided them understand dance, which can appear so abstract.

Inspiring Partnership Of Professional and Amateur Performers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless since birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has discovered that it actually "includes a lot of sensation and emotions" and taps into perceptions, "visual and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously losing his way on his way home and relying on the sunlight to orient his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer becomes the "warm breath of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they move together," the choreographer stated.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a sense that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the rays itself, I could feel the warmth … So I kept walking to the west …. It led me home. The sun was a good assistant to me. The sunlight could be a good symbol. So the story originated from there."

Blindness Offers Unique Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Visual impairment and being blind encourages a vibrant bond with dance in a way that is like a expert performer's relationship with their physical self and motion."

In working with the dancers, the artist was attempting to communicate what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not available through vision," she explained. "I converse with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their body, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their muscles are feeling.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] clothing, lighting, set and music creators, the understandings and creativity of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, build a relationship through our affection of movement and dance. It is this artistry and love that I strive to weave into the detailed narration. It is a cooperation of the perceptions guided by visual impairment."

The artist added: "While the vision of the ballet, the beautiful display, is there facing the viewers, there is much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and visually impaired patrons equally into the hidden. What I wish is that, when patrons leave, they sense ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the being, and listening to the viewpoints of, visual impairment in new and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

The composer, whose works have gathered more than 3.5 billion online plays, commented the descriptive commentary established a connection between blindness and sight "by means of a soundscape, providing expression to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not just a description of a show. It is performance."

World Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide associates for World Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will furthermore provide availability to exclusive video, practice sessions and newly commissioned works – streamed in real-time via the event website.