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The Royal Ballet has long made available audio devices with audio descriptions so that visually impaired viewers could track the action on stage. Currently, in a revolutionary new work, the complete crowd will listen to such commentary within a piece that explores how visual impairment can redefine our perceptions to experience, music and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Partners with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind artist, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in developing a new ballet company commission that will launch on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced recently.

Through her work, the artist is driven by a desire to demonstrate how blindness and disability can present an unique form of awareness for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, woven with the score, establishes the core of the show on stage.

"Creating world-class ballet and musical theater for everyone" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the company is concentrating on "total access – encouraging creators and patrons to experience dance in revolutionary fresh approaches," he stated.

Multiple Dance Creators Partner on Fresh Work

The fresh production is being created by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, every one collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the director of this commission, commented: "World Ballet Day was created on the concept of access. After a decade, we're pushing that idea further to examine how challenged perspectives can shape our creative medium, and encourage viewers of diverse capacities and experiences to experience dance in fresh approaches."

Having worked with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator understood that those with vision who had heard Healey’s descriptive audio found it helped them comprehend ballet, which can seem so complex.

Touching Collaboration Of Expert and Amateur Performers

In one performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from birth and who had always thought that ballet was "mostly for sighted people". But the dancer has realized that it actually "involves a lot of sensation and feelings" and engages senses, "visual and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of previously getting lost on his way home and using the sunlight to orient his way back had motivated a duet in which the professional dancer embodies the "soothing presence of the sunlight around his partner as they dance in unison," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the sunlight itself, I could sense the warmth … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a excellent helper to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful symbol. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Unique Relationship with Dance

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the Toronto university, commented: "Blindness and being blind encourages a vibrant relationship with dance in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their physical self and dance."

In collaborating with the performers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not accessible through sight," she explained. "I converse with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they think, how their body are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] attire, illumination, set and sound designers, the understandings and creativity of blindness are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted people, establish a connection through our passion of movement and performance. It is this creativity and affection that I attempt to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the perceptions led by blindness."

The artist continued: "Although the sight of the ballet, the beautiful spectacle, is there in front of the viewers, there is much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired audience members alike into the unseen. What I desire is that, when audience members exit, they experience performance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the presence, and perceiving the understandings of, blindness in fresh and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Narration

Richter, whose recordings have accumulated more than 3.5 billion streams, commented the audio descriptions established a connection between blindness and sight "via a audio environment, offering narration to that which remains unseen". He noted: "This isn't simply a description of a production. This is the performance itself."

International Ballet Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide collaborators for International Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also offer entry to behind-the-scenes material, rehearsals and recently created works – streamed in real-time via the event website.