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The Royal Ballet has long made available headphones with descriptive narration so that sightless audience members could track the performance on stage. Currently, via a innovative performance, the whole audience will experience such descriptions within a piece that explores how blindness can reshape our responses to experience, audio and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Creator Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in producing a fresh Royal Ballet production that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as declared recently.

Within her creative practice, the artist is driven by a wish to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can provide an different type of perception for each individual. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the composition, forms the core of the performance on stage.

"Producing exceptional dance and opera for all" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the organization is concentrating on "total access – welcoming creators and patrons to discover dance in revolutionary innovative methods," he said.

Various Dance Creators Partner on New Performance

The recent commission is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, all collaborating with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this work, stated: "International Ballet Day was founded on the idea of accessibility. After a ten years, we're expanding that notion further to explore how impaired outlooks can mold our art form, and welcome viewers of every capability and histories to experience dance in fresh approaches."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canada and Australian locations, the curator realized that those with vision who had heard the artist's spoken descriptions found it assisted them understand ballet, which can seem so abstract.

Touching Partnership Between Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In a particular performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from childhood and who had always thought that ballet was "mainly for those who can see". But Kikuchi has understood that it truly "involves a lot of sensation and feelings" and taps into perceptions, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and using the sunlight to orient his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon represents the "warm breath of the sunlight around his partner as they move together," the choreographer stated.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the rays itself, I could sense the warmth … So I continued moving to the west …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a excellent assistant to me. The sun could be a good representation. So the story emerged from there."

Blindness Presents Unique Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an scholar of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight fosters a active relationship with movement in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's relationship with their physical self and motion."

In collaborating with the dancers, she was attempting to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she noted. "I converse with the performers to get a understanding of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are sensing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] attire, lighting, stage design and audio designers, the perceptions and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and sighted individuals, develop a relationship through our affection of motion and dance. It is this innovation and affection that I strive to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a cooperation of the perceptions directed by blindness."

The artist continued: "Although the view of the performance, the gorgeous display, is present facing the audience, there is much that they miss or valuing, and it is blindness that is encouraging sighted and visually impaired patrons both into the invisible. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and hearing the viewpoints of, blindness in innovative and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose works have gathered more than billions of digital listens, said the descriptive commentary formed a connection between visual impairment and sight "by means of a audio environment, providing expression to that which is not always visible". He added: "This isn't merely a description of a performance. It is the performance itself."

World Dance Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international associates for World Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will also offer availability to behind-the-scenes material, practice sessions and newly commissioned productions – broadcast live via the event website.