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The Royal Ballet for years offered audio devices with spoken commentary so that visually impaired audience members could understand the performance on stage. Presently, in a groundbreaking new work, the entire crowd will experience such commentary within a production that examines how lack of sight can redefine our responses to experience, audio and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind professional, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a recent ballet company commission that will launch on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared on Thursday.

Through her work, Healey is driven by a wish to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can present an different form of awareness for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the composition, forms the center of the show on stage.

"Producing world-class dance and musical theater for each person" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's director, the troupe is focusing on "complete inclusion – welcoming artists and viewers to experience dance in life-changing new ways," he said.

Several Choreographers Work on New Work

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

The curator, the organizer of this production, commented: "International Ballet Day was created on the idea of accessibility. Following a ten years, we're extending that notion further to consider how disabled perspectives can mold our art form, and encourage patrons of every capability and histories to discover ballet in fresh approaches."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that sighted people who had encountered Healey’s descriptive audio believed it assisted them grasp dance, which can seem so complex.

Moving Collaboration Of Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In a particular performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless since birth and who had long assumed that dance was "mostly for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has discovered that it actually "involves a lot of emotion and sentiments" and engages senses, "visual and non-sight".

The dancer's unique narrative of once losing his way on his way home and using the sun to guide his way back had influenced a duet in which the professional dancer embodies the "soothing presence of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," the choreographer stated.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a sense that the sunlight should be shining from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could sense the heat … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It directed me home. The sun was a good guide to me. The sun could be a meaningful metaphor. So the narrative emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Distinct Relationship with Motion

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind invites a dynamic connection with movement in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's relationship with their physical self and motion."

In collaborating with the performers, the artist was attempting to convey what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through sight," she noted. "I speak with the dancers to get a feeling of how they are in their physical self, where their breath is, what they think, how their physical form are experiencing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] clothing, lighting, set and sound designers, the viewpoints and artistry of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and seeing persons, establish a connection through our affection of motion and performance. It is this artistry and affection that I strive to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the faculties led by visual impairment."

The artist added: "While the view of the dance, the beautiful spectacle, is present before the patrons, there is a great deal that they overlook or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and blind patrons equally into the invisible. What I desire is that, when audience members exit, they feel ballet in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the presence, and listening to the understandings of, visual impairment in innovative and vibrant ways."

Composer The Composer on Audio Narration

The composer, whose recordings have amassed more than billions of digital listens, commented the spoken narration created a rapport between blindness and vision "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."

World Dance Event Collaborators

The company's global partners for International Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will also provide entry to behind-the-scenes material, rehearsals and freshly produced works – streamed in real-time via their official platform.