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The Royal Ballet traditionally made available headphones with audio descriptions so that visually impaired patrons could understand the performance on stage. Now, through a innovative new work, the complete audience will hear such descriptions within a work that investigates how lack of sight can transform our responses to sensation, sound and storytelling.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Renowned Choreographers

The blind artist, a blind artist, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in creating a new Royal Ballet production that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

In her art, Healey is guided by a desire to show how visual impairment and disability can present an unique type of perception for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the music, creates the heart of the show on stage.

"Producing top-tier ballet and musical theater for all" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's director, the company is zeroing in on "total access – inviting artists and patrons to experience ballet in revolutionary innovative methods," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on New Work

The recent commission is being created by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, every one working with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this commission, said: "World Ballet Day was established on the principle of accessibility. Following a ten years, we're expanding that notion deeper to explore how challenged perspectives can mold our performance style, and encourage viewers of every capability and experiences to encounter dance in fresh approaches."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator realized that those with vision who had heard Healey’s audio narration felt it assisted them comprehend ballet, which can seem so complex.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Professional and Amateur Dancers

In a particular duet, 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 previously believed that ballet was "mostly for sighted people". But Kikuchi has understood that it actually "entails a lot of sensation and emotions" and engages senses, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a duet in which Dixon embodies the "gentle warmth of the sun around Kikuchi as they perform as one," Malcomson said.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could feel the warmth … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a great helper to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful symbol. So the story developed from there."

Blindness Offers Unique Connection with Movement

The blind artist, an academic of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Blindness and lacking sight invites a active relationship with dance in a way that is similar to a expert performer's relationship with their physical self and movement."

In collaborating with the performers, she was attempting to communicate what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she said. "I converse with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their breath is, what they consider, how their muscles are feeling.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] attire, illumination, scenery and audio designers, the viewpoints and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, build a rapport through our passion of movement and dance. It is this innovation and affection that I try to blend into the detailed narration. It is a collaboration of the faculties directed by visual impairment."

She noted: "Although the sight of the ballet, the gorgeous display, is present before the patrons, there is much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is blindness that is welcoming sighted and blind viewers alike into the invisible. What I wish is that, when viewers exit, they experience dance in a different way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and perceiving the understandings of, blindness in fresh and active ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Narration

Richter, whose recordings have accumulated more than billions of digital listens, said the descriptive commentary formed a relationship between blindness and vision "by means of a musical landscape, providing expression to that which remains unseen". He continued: "It is not simply a description of a production. It is performance."

World Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for World Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will furthermore provide entry to backstage footage, preparations and recently created productions – broadcast in real-time via the event website.