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The Royal Ballet has long made available headphones with descriptive narration so that sightless viewers could follow the action on stage. Currently, in a innovative new work, the complete gathering will hear such descriptions within a work that investigates how blindness can redefine our responses to experience, audio and storytelling.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Renowned Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired creator, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other choreographers, and composer Max Richter in producing a recent ballet company commission that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as announced recently.

In her art, Healey is motivated by a desire to demonstrate how blindness and physical challenge can present an different form of awareness for everyone. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the music, creates the core of the performance on stage.

"Producing top-tier ballet and opera for each person" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's leader, the company is focusing on "total access – inviting performers and audiences to encounter dance in transformative innovative methods," he stated.

Several Choreographers Work on New Performance

The new work is being choreographed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, all partnering with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this commission, said: "World Ballet Day was created on the principle of inclusion. After a ten years, we're expanding that concept further to explore how challenged perspectives can mold our art form, and encourage viewers of diverse capacities and experiences to encounter ballet in new ways."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that those with vision who had encountered Healey’s audio narration felt it helped them comprehend dance, which can seem so abstract.

Touching Collaboration Of Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from childhood and who had always thought that ballet was "mainly for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has discovered that it actually "includes a lot of sensation and emotions" and engages senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of earlier getting lost on his way home and relying on the sun to orient his way back had influenced a duet in which the professional dancer represents the "warm breath of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they perform as one," Malcomson said.

"It was during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could sense the temperature … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a excellent guide to me. The sunlight could be a good metaphor. So the story originated from there."

Blindness Offers Special Connection with Motion

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability research at the University of Toronto, commented: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a active relationship with dance in a way that is like a expert performer's relationship with their body and movement."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was seeking to communicate what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she explained. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they feel in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their body are feeling.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] clothing, illumination, stage design and audio artists, the perceptions and artistry of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and sighted individuals, develop a connection through our love of dance and performance. It is this innovation and passion that I strive to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a collaboration of the senses guided by blindness."

The artist added: "While the vision of the dance, the gorgeous visual feast, is available in front of the audience, there is much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and blind patrons both into the hidden. What I desire is that, when patrons exit, they feel ballet in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and listening to the viewpoints of, blindness in new and active ways."

Musician The Composer on Sound Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of digital listens, said the descriptive commentary created a relationship between blindness and vision "through a musical landscape, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He added: "It is not simply a description of a performance. This is performance."

World Ballet Event Partners

The company's global partners for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The companies will furthermore supply availability to behind-the-scenes material, practice sessions and recently created works – transmitted in real-time via the event website.