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This prestigious ballet company has long offered audio devices with descriptive narration so that blind patrons could understand the performance on stage. Currently, in a revolutionary performance, the entire gathering will listen to such commentary within a production that explores how visual impairment can transform our responses to feeling, audio and narrative.

Blind Artist Partners with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired artist, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in creating a recent ballet company production that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Within her creative practice, Healey is guided by a wish to demonstrate how blindness and physical challenge can present an different mode of awareness for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, woven with the composition, forms the core of the performance on stage.

"Making top-tier dance and opera for everyone" is a motto of the the organization. Under the director, the company's leader, the company is focusing on "total access – inviting artists and patrons to experience ballet in life-changing fresh approaches," he said.

Several Choreographers Partner on Fresh Performance

The recent commission is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, all partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this work, commented: "International Ballet Day was founded on the principle of access. Following a decade, we're pushing that idea more to examine how impaired viewpoints can shape our performance style, and encourage audiences of every capability and backgrounds to experience ballet in innovative methods."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator realized that those with vision who had heard the artist's spoken descriptions believed it helped them comprehend dance, which can look so abstract.

Inspiring Collaboration Of Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular duet, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind since birth and who had previously believed that ballet was "primarily for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "entails a lot of sensation and sentiments" and taps into perceptions, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s personal story of once losing his way on his way home and using the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer becomes the "gentle warmth of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," Malcomson said.

"It was during the day 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 sunlight itself, I could perceive the heat … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sun was a great assistant to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful symbol. So the story originated from there."

Blindness Provides Unique Connection with Dance

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, commented: "Blindness and being blind fosters a dynamic bond with motion in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's connection with their physical self and motion."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was seeking to convey what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not available through sight," she noted. "I converse with the dancers to get a understanding of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breathing is, what they think, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Partnering with the choreographers [and] attire, illumination, set and music creators, the understandings and creativity of blindness are ever present as we, blind and seeing persons, build a connection through our love of dance and performance. It is this artistry and affection that I try to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a collaboration of the senses led by blindness."

The artist continued: "While the sight of the ballet, the stunning display, is available in front of the viewers, there is much that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is blindness that is welcoming sighted and visually impaired audience members alike into the invisible. What I desire is that, when audience members leave, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and listening to the understandings of, visual impairment in new and vibrant ways."

Composer The Composer on Audio Narration

The composer, whose recordings have accumulated more than 3.5 billion streams, said the descriptive commentary created a rapport between visual impairment and sight "by means of a soundscape, offering narration to that which is not always visible". He added: "This isn't just a description of a performance. This is the performance itself."

International Dance Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s international partners for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also supply availability to exclusive footage, practice sessions and freshly produced productions – broadcast in real-time via online channels.