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The Royal Ballet traditionally offered headphones with spoken commentary so that blind viewers could understand the performance on stage. Now, through a groundbreaking performance, the complete gathering will listen to such commentary within a piece that examines how lack of sight can transform our perceptions to feeling, audio and dramatic expression.

Blind Creator Works with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a visually impaired artist, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in creating a new Royal Ballet work that will launch on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Within her creative practice, the artist is driven by a ambition to illustrate how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an alternative type of awareness for all people. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the composition, forms the heart of the performance on stage.

"Creating top-tier dance and musical theater for everyone" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is zeroing in on "complete inclusion – inviting creators and audiences to experience ballet in transformative fresh approaches," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Collaborate on New Production

The new work is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, every one working with Healey.

Robert Binet, the curator of this work, commented: "World Ballet Day was created on the concept of inclusion. After a decade, we're extending that notion further to consider how impaired viewpoints can shape our performance style, and invite patrons of all abilities and experiences to experience ballet in fresh approaches."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator recognized that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it assisted them grasp dance, which can appear so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Of Professional and Amateur Dancers

In a particular performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had long assumed that ballet was "mostly for sighted people". But Kikuchi has realized that it in fact "entails a lot of sensation and emotions" and activates faculties, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sun to direct his way back had influenced a duet in which Dixon becomes the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer explained.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could perceive the temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sun was a excellent assistant to me. The sunlight could be a powerful representation. So the tale developed from there."

Blindness Provides Special Relationship with Movement

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight fosters a active bond with movement in a way that is like a expert performer's connection with their physical self and motion."

In working with the dancers, she was striving to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not available through vision," she said. "I speak with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are sensing.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] costume, stage lights, stage design and music designers, the perceptions and creativity of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and sighted persons, establish a rapport through our affection of dance and performance. It is this artistry and affection that I try to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the faculties guided by visual impairment."

The artist continued: "Although the sight of the performance, the gorgeous spectacle, is present in front of the patrons, there is so much that they overlook or understanding, and it is blindness that is encouraging sighted and blind patrons alike into the invisible. What I desire is that, when patrons depart, they experience dance in a new way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and hearing the viewpoints of, visual impairment in new and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Narration

The composer, whose compositions have accumulated more than billions of digital listens, commented the descriptive commentary formed a rapport between visual impairment and sight "through a audio environment, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He added: "It is not merely a narration of a show. This is the art."

International Ballet Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will additionally offer availability to behind-the-scenes footage, practice sessions and newly commissioned works – streamed as it happens via the event website.