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This prestigious ballet company for years offered audio devices with spoken commentary so that sightless patrons could understand the performance on stage. Now, in a revolutionary new work, the whole gathering will listen to such descriptions within a production that examines how visual impairment can transform our responses to experience, audio and dramatic expression.

Blind Artist Collaborates with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired artist, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in developing a new Royal Ballet work that will launch on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared on Thursday.

In her art, Healey is guided by a wish to show how blindness and disability can present an unique mode of perception for each individual. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the composition, establishes the heart of the show on stage.

"Producing exceptional ballet and musical theater for everyone" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is focusing on "total access – welcoming creators and viewers to experience dance in transformative new ways," he said.

Various Choreographers Work on New Performance

The fresh production is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, all working with Healey.

The curator, the curator of this production, said: "International Ballet Day was established on the concept of inclusion. After a decade, we're pushing that concept further to consider how impaired perspectives can mold our performance style, and encourage patrons of diverse capacities and histories to discover ballet in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canada and Australia, he realized that those with vision who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions believed it aided them grasp ballet, which can look so unclear.

Inspiring Collaboration Of Expert and Amateur Performers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had long assumed that ballet was "mainly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has understood that it truly "entails a lot of feeling and feelings" and activates faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of previously losing his way on his way home and using the sunlight to guide his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "gentle warmth of the sun around Kikuchi as they move together," the choreographer stated.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the sunlight itself, I could perceive the warmth … So I kept walking to the west …. It guided me home. The sun was a excellent assistant to me. The sun could be a powerful symbol. So the tale developed from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Distinct Relationship with Dance

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a dynamic relationship with movement in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their physical self and dance."

In collaborating with the performers, she was attempting to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she explained. "I talk with the dancers to get a understanding of how they feel in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are experiencing.

"Partnering with the choreographers [and] costume, illumination, set and audio creators, the understandings and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted people, develop a connection through our love of dance and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I attempt to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the faculties directed by visual impairment."

She added: "Even though the sight of the performance, the beautiful spectacle, is present in front of the audience, there is much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and visually impaired audience members alike into the invisible. What I desire is that, when patrons depart, they sense ballet in a different way, and they’re also sensing the being, and perceiving the understandings of, visual impairment in fresh and dynamic ways."

Musician The Composer on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have gathered more than 3.5 billion digital listens, said the spoken narration established a connection between visual impairment and sight "through a soundscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He continued: "It is not simply a description of a performance. It is performance."

International Ballet Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international collaborators for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also provide availability to behind-the-scenes video, preparations and newly commissioned works – streamed as it happens via online channels.