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The Royal Ballet has long offered audio devices with descriptive narration so that visually impaired patrons could track the action on stage. Currently, through a groundbreaking production, the complete gathering will listen to such narration within a piece that investigates how lack of sight can redefine our reactions to sensation, sound and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Artist Works with Renowned Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in producing a fresh Royal Ballet production that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Through her work, Healey is guided by a desire to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can offer an different form of perception for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the music, establishes the center of the production on stage.

"Making world-class ballet and opera for everyone" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the troupe is zeroing in on "radical accessibility – inviting creators and patrons to discover ballet in revolutionary new ways," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Partner on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, all working with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this work, said: "International Ballet Day was founded on the principle of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're expanding that idea further to explore how disabled viewpoints can shape our creative medium, and welcome viewers of diverse capacities and backgrounds to discover ballet in innovative methods."

Having worked with Healey in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator understood that sighted people who had heard Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it helped them grasp dance, which can look so complex.

Moving Partnership Between Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In one dance piece, the company's performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from birth and who had previously believed that ballet was "mainly for sighted people". But the dancer has understood that it truly "includes a lot of sensation and sentiments" and engages senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's personal story of once losing his way on his way home and relying on the sun to direct his way back had influenced a duet in which the professional dancer becomes the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they move together," the choreographer stated.

"It was during the day and I had a intuition that the sun should be radiating from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could perceive the warmth … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sun was a excellent helper to me. The sunlight could be a powerful metaphor. So the narrative emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Unique Connection with Motion

Healey, an assistant professor of disability research at the University of Toronto, said: "Visual impairment and lacking sight fosters a dynamic relationship with motion in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's connection with their physical self and motion."

In partnering with the performers, she was attempting to express what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through sight," she noted. "I talk with the performers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they think, how their physical form are sensing.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] costume, lighting, set and audio designers, the understandings and artistry of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and seeing persons, establish a connection through our love of movement and performance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a collaboration of the perceptions led by blindness."

The artist continued: "Even though the vision of the ballet, the beautiful visual feast, is available before the viewers, there is so much that they miss or appreciating, and it is blindness that is welcoming seeing and blind audience members alike into the unseen. What I desire is that, when audience members depart, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the existence, and listening to the understandings of, visual impairment in fresh and dynamic ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Narration

The composer, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5 billion digital listens, stated the audio descriptions established a connection between visual impairment and vision "by means of a musical landscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He added: "This isn't just a explanation of a performance. It is the art."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global collaborators for World Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will additionally provide entry to behind-the-scenes material, preparations and recently created productions – transmitted live via the event website.