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The Royal Ballet for years provided audio devices with audio descriptions so that blind audience members could understand the action on stage. Now, via a groundbreaking new work, the entire gathering will hear such narration within a work that investigates how visual impairment can reshape our responses to experience, music and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Works with Renowned Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired creator, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, together with other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a new Royal Ballet commission that will launch on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

In her art, the artist is motivated by a wish to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can provide an alternative form of understanding for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the music, creates the heart of the production on stage.

"Making world-class dance and opera for all" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the company is zeroing in on "complete inclusion – inviting artists and audiences to discover dance in transformative fresh approaches," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Collaborate on New Performance

The fresh production is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, each working with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this production, commented: "World Ballet Day was established on the idea of access. Following a decade, we're extending that notion further to explore how impaired outlooks can influence our art form, and welcome viewers of all abilities and backgrounds to encounter ballet in fresh approaches."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator realized that individuals who can see who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it aided them comprehend dance, which can seem so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In one dance piece, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mostly for sighted people". But Kikuchi has understood that it in fact "entails a lot of feeling and sentiments" and engages perceptions, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's personal story of previously losing his way on his way home and using the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a performance in which the professional dancer embodies the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they move together," Malcomson explained.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could sense the warmth … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a great guide to me. The sunlight could be a good symbol. So the story developed from there."

Blindness Offers Unique Relationship with Dance

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the Toronto university, commented: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a active bond with motion in a way that is like a expert performer's bond with their body and movement."

In partnering with the dancers, she was striving to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through sight," she noted. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they think, how their muscles are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] attire, lighting, set and sound designers, the perceptions and innovation of blindness are always there as we, blind and seeing persons, build a relationship through our passion of dance and performance. It is this creativity and affection that I attempt to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the faculties led by visual impairment."

She noted: "Even though the view of the performance, the beautiful display, is there in front of the audience, there is so much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and blind patrons both into the hidden. What I hope is that, when patrons exit, they feel dance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and hearing the viewpoints of, blindness in new and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Narration

The composer, whose works have gathered more than billions of digital listens, stated the audio descriptions established a relationship between visual impairment and sight "via a musical landscape, giving voice to that which remains unseen". He added: "This isn't just a description of a performance. It is the performance itself."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The company's international partners for World Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will furthermore offer availability to exclusive footage, rehearsals and newly commissioned works – broadcast as it happens via their official platform.