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The Royal Ballet for years made available headphones with spoken commentary so that visually impaired patrons could understand the performance on stage. Presently, in a revolutionary production, the whole audience will experience such descriptions within a piece that explores how lack of sight can reshape our perceptions to feeling, audio and storytelling.

Blind Creator Partners with Famous Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in creating a new Royal Ballet commission that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as declared on Thursday.

In her art, the artist is driven by a desire to demonstrate how blindness and disability can present an unique mode of understanding for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, woven with the music, forms the center of the show on stage.

"Making world-class ballet and opera for everyone" is a motto of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the organization is focusing on "total access – welcoming performers and patrons to experience dance in transformative new ways," he said.

Various Choreographers Collaborate on New Production

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

The curator, the director of this work, stated: "World Ballet Day was established on the idea of accessibility. After a ten years, we're pushing that idea deeper to explore how impaired outlooks can shape our performance style, and invite viewers of every capability and experiences to discover ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with Healey in Canada and Australia, the curator realized that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s descriptive audio believed it helped them comprehend dance, which can appear so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In a particular performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had previously believed that ballet was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "entails a lot of emotion and emotions" and activates senses, "sight-based and other sensory".

The dancer's individual experience of once becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sunlight to guide his way back had influenced a dance piece in which Dixon embodies the "warm breath of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer explained.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a feeling that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the rays itself, I could feel the temperature … So I kept walking to the west …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a excellent helper to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful metaphor. So the narrative emerged from there."

Blindness Provides Unique Connection with Dance

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the Toronto university, commented: "Visual impairment and lacking sight encourages a active relationship with dance in a way that is like a expert performer's connection with their physical self and motion."

In collaborating with the performers, she was attempting to convey what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through sight," she explained. "I talk with the dancers 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, illumination, set and sound creators, the perceptions and creativity of blindness are always there as we, blind and sighted individuals, develop a rapport through our passion of movement and performance. It is this artistry and passion that I attempt to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the senses led by blindness."

The artist added: "Even though the vision of the ballet, the beautiful spectacle, is there before the viewers, there is a great deal that they miss or valuing, and it is blindness that is welcoming seeing and blind audience members equally into the unseen. What I hope is that, when patrons exit, they experience dance in a new way, and they’re also feeling the existence, and listening to the understandings of, visual impairment in innovative and active ways."

Composer The Composer on Audio Narration

Richter, whose compositions have gathered more than 3.5 billion digital listens, commented the descriptive commentary created a connection between blindness and sight "by means of a musical landscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He continued: "It is not just a description of a show. It is the performance itself."

World Dance Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global collaborators for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will additionally provide access to behind-the-scenes footage, preparations and freshly produced productions – streamed in real-time via the event website.