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The Royal Ballet for years offered audio devices with descriptive narration so that visually impaired audience members could follow the performance on stage. Now, through a innovative performance, the whole crowd will hear such descriptions within a piece that explores how lack of sight can redefine our perceptions to feeling, audio and storytelling.

Blind Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in creating a fresh Royal Ballet work that will launch on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as announced this week.

Within her creative practice, the artist is motivated by a wish to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can present an alternative mode of awareness for everyone. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the composition, creates the heart of the production on stage.

"Producing world-class dance and opera for everyone" is a motto of the the organization. Under the director, the company's leader, the organization is focusing on "total access – inviting artists and audiences to discover ballet in life-changing new ways," he said.

Several Choreographers Work on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being choreographed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, each working with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this work, commented: "World Ballet Day was founded on the principle of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're expanding that concept deeper to explore how impaired perspectives can shape our creative medium, and encourage patrons of all abilities and experiences to experience dance in innovative methods."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, he realized that those with vision who had experienced Healey’s descriptive audio found it assisted them understand ballet, which can appear so complex.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In a particular dance piece, the company's performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had long assumed that dance was "primarily for sighted people". But Kikuchi has realized that it actually "includes a lot of feeling and emotions" and activates faculties, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously losing his way on his way home and depending on the sun to direct his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon embodies the "soothing presence of the sun around Kikuchi as they move together," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sun should be radiating from the west. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the sunlight itself, I could sense the warmth … So I kept walking to the west …. It guided me home. The sun was a good helper to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful metaphor. So the story originated from there."

Blindness Offers Distinct Relationship with Movement

The blind artist, an academic of disability research at the University of Toronto, commented: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a active relationship with motion in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their physical self and motion."

In working with the dancers, she was attempting to express what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through vision," she explained. "I speak with the performers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they consider, how their muscles are sensing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] costume, illumination, set and audio creators, the viewpoints and creativity of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and seeing people, establish a connection through our affection of motion and dance. It is this creativity and passion that I try to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a cooperation of the perceptions led by blindness."

The artist noted: "Even though the vision of the dance, the stunning spectacle, is there in front of the patrons, there is much that they miss or valuing, and it is blindness that is welcoming seeing and visually impaired patrons alike into the invisible. What I wish is that, when patrons depart, they experience dance in a different way, and they’re also sensing the being, and perceiving the understandings of, visual impairment in new and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose works have accumulated more than billions of online plays, stated the audio descriptions established a connection between visual impairment and vision "through a soundscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not merely a explanation of a show. It is performance."

International Ballet Event Partners

The company's global partners for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will also supply entry to exclusive footage, preparations and recently created productions – streamed as it happens via their official platform.