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The Royal Ballet for years made available headphones with audio descriptions so that blind patrons could understand the performance on stage. Presently, via a revolutionary performance, the entire audience will listen to such commentary within a piece that investigates how visual impairment can reshape our reactions to feeling, sound and narrative.

Blind Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in producing a recent Royal Ballet work that will launch on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as announced recently.

Within her creative practice, the artist is guided by a desire to illustrate how blindness and disability can offer an different mode of awareness for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the score, forms the core of the production on stage.

"Creating world-class dance and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the troupe is concentrating on "radical accessibility – inviting performers and viewers to discover ballet in life-changing fresh approaches," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Partner on New Performance

The recent commission is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, all partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the curator of this commission, said: "International Ballet Day was established on the concept of accessibility. Following a ten years, we're expanding that idea further to consider how challenged outlooks can mold our creative medium, and encourage audiences of every capability and histories to discover dance in innovative methods."

Having worked with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator realized that individuals who can see who had encountered the artist's spoken descriptions felt it helped them grasp dance, which can look so unclear.

Touching Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In a particular duet, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind from childhood and who had long assumed that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has realized that it actually "involves a lot of sensation and sentiments" and engages faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of once losing his way on his way home and using the sun to guide his way back had motivated a duet in which Dixon becomes the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they move together," the choreographer explained.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a sense that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could feel the warmth … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a great assistant to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful symbol. So the story originated from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Unique Relationship with Movement

Healey, an assistant professor of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind encourages a active bond with movement in a way that is like a professional dancer’s bond with their body and motion."

In collaborating with the performers, the artist was striving to express what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through sight," she noted. "I converse with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their body, where their respiration is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are sensing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, lighting, set and music creators, the perceptions and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and sighted people, develop a rapport through our love of motion and performance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to integrate into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the senses guided by visual impairment."

She noted: "While the sight of the performance, the beautiful visual feast, is available before the audience, there is much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and blind audience members equally into the unseen. What I hope is that, when patrons leave, they sense ballet in a new way, and they’re also sensing the presence, and perceiving the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and dynamic ways."

Musician The Composer on Sound Narration

Richter, whose works have accumulated more than billions of digital listens, stated the audio descriptions formed a rapport between visual impairment and vision "via a musical landscape, offering narration to that which remains unseen". He continued: "This isn't simply a description of a show. It is performance."

World Dance Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide partners for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will also offer entry to exclusive footage, preparations and newly commissioned works – transmitted live via online channels.