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This prestigious ballet company has long made available headphones with spoken commentary so that visually impaired audience members could understand the movement on stage. Presently, in a groundbreaking performance, the entire crowd will hear such narration within a work that examines how blindness can transform our reactions to sensation, sound and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Famous Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired creator, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a recent ballet company production that will premiere on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced this week.

In her art, Healey is guided by a ambition to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an unique form of awareness for everyone. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the score, creates the core of the show on stage.

"Creating exceptional ballet and opera for all" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's leader, the company is focusing on "radical accessibility – inviting performers and audiences to encounter ballet in revolutionary innovative methods," he stated.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on New Work

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

The curator, the curator of this production, stated: "International Ballet Day was established on the concept of accessibility. After a ten years, we're extending that idea more to consider how challenged outlooks can shape our performance style, and invite viewers of diverse capacities and backgrounds to discover ballet in fresh approaches."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canada and Australia, the curator recognized that sighted people who had encountered the artist's spoken descriptions found it assisted them grasp dance, which can seem so unclear.

Inspiring Partnership Between Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind since birth and who had long assumed that ballet was "mostly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has understood that it truly "involves a lot of feeling and sentiments" and activates senses, "visual and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and depending on the sun to orient his way back had motivated a duet in which the professional dancer represents the "soothing presence of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," Malcomson stated.

"It was in the 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 light itself, I could perceive the heat … So I kept walking to the west …. It led me home. The sun was a good helper to me. The sunlight could be a powerful metaphor. So the narrative emerged from there."

Blindness Presents Distinct Relationship with Dance

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, commented: "Blindness and being blind fosters a active relationship with movement in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their physical self and movement."

In collaborating with the dancers, the artist was seeking to express what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she noted. "I talk with the dancers to get a understanding of how they feel in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their body are sensing.

"Partnering with the choreographers [and] attire, lighting, stage design and sound designers, the understandings and innovation of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and sighted people, develop a relationship through our love of dance and dance. It is this innovation and passion that I strive to blend into the detailed narration. It is a collaboration of the perceptions guided by blindness."

She continued: "While the view of the performance, the stunning display, is there before the audience, there is so much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and visually impaired viewers alike into the unseen. What I desire is that, when audience members leave, they sense dance in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and perceiving the viewpoints of, blindness in new and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of streams, commented the audio descriptions established a connection between visual impairment and sight "through a audio environment, providing expression to that which does not always appear". He added: "This isn't merely a explanation of a production. This is the art."

International Dance Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide partners for International Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will furthermore supply availability to behind-the-scenes footage, preparations and freshly produced works – transmitted as it happens via the event website.