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The Royal Ballet has long made available audio devices with audio descriptions so that visually impaired audience members could track the performance on stage. Presently, in a innovative new work, the complete crowd will hear such commentary within a work that examines how blindness can reshape our perceptions to experience, music and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a blind creator, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a new ballet company production that will launch on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced this week.

In her art, the artist is guided by a ambition to illustrate how blindness and disability can present an alternative mode of awareness for all people. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the music, establishes the center of the performance on stage.

"Creating world-class dance and musical theater for everyone" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the organization is focusing on "complete inclusion – inviting creators and patrons to encounter ballet in transformative innovative methods," he said.

Various Choreographers Partner on Fresh Work

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

Robert Binet, the curator of this work, said: "World Ballet Day was founded on the principle of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're expanding that idea deeper to explore how challenged outlooks can mold our art form, and welcome audiences of diverse capacities and backgrounds to discover dance in new ways."

Having worked with Healey in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator understood that those with vision who had heard Healey’s audio narration believed it aided them understand dance, which can seem so unclear.

Touching Partnership Of Expert and Amateur Dancers

In a particular duet, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from childhood and who had always thought that ballet was "mostly for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it truly "entails a lot of sensation and feelings" and activates faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's unique narrative of once losing his way on his way home and using the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a dance piece in which Dixon embodies the "gentle warmth of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sun should be beaming from the west. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the sunlight itself, I could sense the heat … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It led me home. The sun was a good assistant to me. The sun could be a good representation. So the story developed from there."

Blindness Provides Special Relationship with Movement

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a active relationship with movement in a way that is similar to a expert performer's connection with their body and dance."

In working with the performers, the artist was attempting to express what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she explained. "I talk with the performers to get a understanding of how they feel in their body, where their breath is, what they think, how their physical form are experiencing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, stage lights, set and sound designers, the understandings and artistry of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, establish a relationship through our love of motion and dance. It is this artistry and passion that I strive to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the perceptions guided by visual impairment."

She added: "Even though the sight of the performance, the gorgeous display, is there before the viewers, there is so much that they miss or appreciating, and it is blindness that is encouraging sighted and visually impaired viewers both into the hidden. What I hope is that, when audience members exit, they experience dance in a new way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and perceiving the viewpoints of, blindness in fresh and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose works have gathered more than billions of digital listens, commented the descriptive commentary formed a relationship between visual impairment and vision "by means of a soundscape, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He noted: "It is not simply a narration of a performance. This is the performance itself."

World Ballet Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide partners for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will furthermore supply access to backstage footage, practice sessions and newly commissioned works – transmitted as it happens via their official platform.