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This prestigious ballet company has long offered audio devices with spoken commentary so that visually impaired viewers could track the performance on stage. Now, in a innovative performance, the whole audience will experience such commentary within a production that examines how lack of sight can reshape our perceptions to feeling, music and storytelling.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a fresh Royal Ballet work that will premiere on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced recently.

In her art, the artist is driven by a desire to demonstrate how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an alternative type of perception for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, integrated with the music, establishes the core of the show on stage.

"Making world-class ballet and opera for all" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is focusing on "complete inclusion – inviting artists and patrons to experience dance in revolutionary innovative methods," he stated.

Multiple Dance Creators Collaborate on Fresh Work

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

The curator, the curator of this work, said: "World Ballet Day was founded on the idea of inclusion. Following a decade, we're extending that idea further to examine how impaired perspectives can influence our creative medium, and welcome patrons of every capability and experiences to discover ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator realized that individuals who can see who had experienced Healey’s audio narration believed it assisted them grasp ballet, which can look so complex.

Touching Partnership Of Professional and Amateur Performers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had long assumed that ballet was "mostly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has realized that it in fact "entails a lot of sensation and feelings" and activates senses, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of earlier losing his way on his way home and using the sunlight to direct his way back had inspired a performance in which the professional dancer becomes the "warm breath of the sun around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer explained.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be radiating from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the rays itself, I could sense the heat … So I kept walking to the west …. It led me home. The sunshine was a good assistant to me. The sun could be a powerful symbol. So the narrative developed from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Unique Relationship with Motion

Healey, an academic of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Blindness and being blind fosters a active connection with motion in a way that is similar to a expert performer's connection with their physical self and dance."

In collaborating with the performers, she was striving to express what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not available through vision," she said. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they are in their body, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their body are sensing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, lighting, stage design and audio creators, the understandings and creativity of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and seeing individuals, develop a connection through our love of dance and performance. It is this innovation and passion that I strive to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the senses guided by visual impairment."

The artist added: "Although the sight of the performance, the stunning display, is present before the audience, there is so much that they miss or understanding, and it is blindness that is welcoming sighted and visually impaired audience members both into the invisible. What I desire is that, when patrons depart, they sense dance in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the presence, and hearing the perceptions of, blindness in fresh and active ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Narration

The composer, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5 billion digital listens, commented the audio descriptions established a connection between visual impairment and sight "by means of a audio environment, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He added: "It is not just a description of a show. This is the performance itself."

World Ballet Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for World Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will furthermore offer entry to backstage footage, preparations and freshly produced productions – transmitted as it happens via their official platform.