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This prestigious ballet company traditionally made available audio devices with spoken commentary so that visually impaired viewers could understand the movement on stage. Currently, through a revolutionary new work, the entire audience will experience such narration within a piece that investigates how blindness can transform our responses to sensation, music and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Works with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind artist, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in creating a recent ballet company production that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

Through her work, the artist is motivated by a wish to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can present an different mode of understanding for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the music, forms the center of the show on stage.

"Creating world-class dance and opera for everyone" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's director, the organization is concentrating on "complete inclusion – inviting creators and audiences to discover ballet in life-changing fresh approaches," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Partner on New Production

The recent commission is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, every one collaborating with Healey.

Robert Binet, the director of this commission, commented: "International Ballet Day was established on the idea of inclusion. After a decade, we're pushing that concept further to consider how challenged outlooks can shape our art form, and encourage audiences of diverse capacities and histories to experience dance in innovative methods."

Having worked with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he recognized that individuals who can see who had experienced the artist's spoken descriptions found it aided them understand dance, which can appear so complex.

Touching Collaboration Of Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had previously believed that dance was "primarily for individuals with vision". But the dancer has discovered that it truly "includes a lot of emotion and feelings" and taps into perceptions, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's unique narrative of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and using the sun to guide his way back had influenced a performance in which Dixon represents the "warm breath of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they move together," Malcomson said.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could sense the temperature … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sun was a excellent assistant to me. The sun could be a meaningful symbol. So the tale emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Special Connection with Motion

Healey, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Blindness and being blind encourages a active connection with motion in a way that is like a professional dancer’s bond with their body and motion."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was seeking to express what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not available through looking," she explained. "I converse with the dancers to get a understanding of how they are in their body, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their body are sensing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] attire, illumination, stage design and audio artists, the perceptions and innovation of visual impairment are ever present as we, blind and seeing persons, build a relationship through our love of motion and performance. It is this creativity and love that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the faculties directed by blindness."

The artist noted: "While the vision of the performance, the stunning visual feast, is there in front of the audience, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and blind patrons alike into the unseen. What I hope is that, when patrons leave, they sense performance in a new way, and they’re also feeling the being, and listening to the understandings of, visual impairment in fresh and dynamic ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5 billion digital listens, stated the audio descriptions established a relationship between blindness and vision "by means of a musical landscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not merely a narration of a production. It is the art."

International Ballet Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international collaborators for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The companies will additionally offer availability to backstage video, practice sessions and newly commissioned pieces – broadcast live via their official platform.