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The Royal Ballet for years offered headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired viewers could understand the movement on stage. Now, through a revolutionary new work, the complete audience will listen to such narration within a work that investigates how lack of sight can redefine our perceptions to experience, audio and narrative.

Blind Artist Works with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired professional, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a new ballet company work that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, Healey is motivated by a desire to show how blindness and disability can provide an different form of awareness for all people. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the score, creates the core of the performance on stage.

"Producing exceptional dance and musical theater for everyone" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the company's director, the troupe is zeroing in on "total access – welcoming performers and audiences to encounter dance in life-changing innovative methods," he stated.

Various Dance Creators Partner on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, every one collaborating with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this work, stated: "International Ballet Day was created on the concept of inclusion. After a decade, we're extending that notion further to examine how challenged outlooks can mold our creative medium, and invite audiences of diverse capacities and backgrounds to experience dance in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that sighted people who had encountered the artist's audio narration felt it helped them comprehend dance, which can seem so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Between Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular performance, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had long assumed that dance was "mostly for sighted people". But the dancer has understood that it in fact "entails a lot of feeling and emotions" and taps into faculties, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's personal story of previously losing his way on his way home and relying on the sunlight to orient his way back had inspired a performance in which Dixon becomes the "warm breath of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they perform as one," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a sense that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could perceive the temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a great guide to me. The sun could be a powerful representation. So the tale emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Distinct Connection with Motion

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Visual impairment and being blind encourages a dynamic relationship with movement in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s connection with their physical self and dance."

In working with the performers, she was attempting to communicate what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she explained. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they are in their body, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are feeling.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] attire, stage lights, set and audio designers, the perceptions and artistry of blindness are ever present as we, blind and seeing persons, build a relationship through our love of motion and dance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the perceptions guided by blindness."

The artist continued: "While the vision of the performance, the beautiful visual feast, is present facing the audience, there is much that they overlook or valuing, and it is blindness that is encouraging sighted and visually impaired patrons alike into the hidden. What I hope is that, when audience members exit, they feel ballet in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the presence, and perceiving the understandings of, visual impairment in fresh and vibrant ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose works have accumulated more than billions of streams, stated the descriptive commentary created a connection between blindness and vision "via a audio environment, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He continued: "It is not simply a explanation of a show. This is performance."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for World Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will also provide entry to behind-the-scenes material, practice sessions and recently created pieces – streamed as it happens via online channels.