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The Royal Ballet has long offered audio devices with spoken commentary so that sightless patrons could follow the movement on stage. Now, through a groundbreaking production, the complete crowd will hear such commentary within a production that examines how visual impairment can reshape our perceptions to feeling, audio and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Renowned Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired creator, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and composer Max Richter in developing a recent Royal Ballet work that will launch on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

Through her work, the artist is driven by a desire to illustrate how visual impairment and physical challenge can offer an alternative mode of understanding for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the music, establishes the center of the production on stage.

"Producing top-tier dance and musical theater for each person" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the troupe is focusing on "complete inclusion – inviting performers and audiences to discover ballet in transformative innovative methods," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Collaborate on New Performance

The fresh production is being choreographed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, every one partnering with the blind artist.

The curator, the organizer of this commission, commented: "World Ballet Day was created on the principle of accessibility. Following a decade, we're expanding that idea further to explore how disabled viewpoints can influence our creative medium, and welcome audiences of every capability and histories to experience ballet in new ways."

After collaborating with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator recognized that those with vision who had heard the artist's audio narration believed it assisted them grasp dance, which can seem so complex.

Moving Partnership Between Expert and Amateur Performers

In a particular dance piece, the company's performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind from childhood and who had previously believed that ballet was "primarily for sighted people". But Kikuchi has realized that it actually "entails a lot of sensation and feelings" and taps into faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's individual experience of earlier losing his way on his way home and relying on the sunlight to orient his way back had inspired a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they perform as one," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the rays itself, I could sense the warmth … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a good helper to me. The sun could be a powerful metaphor. So the tale emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Distinct Relationship with Motion

Healey, an assistant professor of disability studies at the Toronto university, said: "Blindness and lacking sight encourages a active relationship with dance in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s bond with their body and movement."

In collaborating with the dancers, she was striving to convey what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through sight," she explained. "I talk with the performers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they consider, how their physical form are sensing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] clothing, stage lights, scenery and sound creators, the understandings and artistry of blindness are ever present as we, blind and seeing individuals, establish a relationship through our affection of motion and dance. It is this artistry and affection that I try to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the senses guided by blindness."

The artist continued: "Although the view of the ballet, the beautiful spectacle, is there before the viewers, there is much that they miss or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and blind viewers alike into the invisible. What I hope is that, when patrons exit, they sense dance in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the being, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose recordings have accumulated more than 3.5 billion digital listens, said the spoken narration created a relationship between visual impairment and sight "by means of a musical landscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He added: "This isn't merely a explanation of a production. It is performance."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for World Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will also supply entry to backstage footage, rehearsals and freshly produced productions – broadcast as it happens via online channels.