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The Royal Ballet traditionally made available headphones with spoken commentary so that visually impaired viewers could understand the action on stage. Now, in a innovative production, the whole gathering will experience such descriptions within a production that investigates how blindness can reshape our perceptions to experience, sound and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Partners with Celebrated Dance Creators

The blind artist, a blind creator, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in producing a recent Royal Ballet work that will debut on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, the artist is guided by a desire to demonstrate how blindness and physical challenge can present an different form of perception for all people. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the music, establishes the center of the show on stage.

"Creating exceptional ballet and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the company is concentrating on "complete inclusion – inviting artists and viewers to encounter ballet in revolutionary new ways," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Work on New Production

The fresh production is being choreographed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, each collaborating with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this commission, commented: "World Ballet Day was created on the principle of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're extending that idea deeper to explore how disabled viewpoints can shape our creative medium, and invite patrons of diverse capacities and histories to encounter dance in new ways."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, he recognized that sighted people who had encountered the artist's spoken descriptions found it aided them understand ballet, which can appear so unclear.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In a particular duet, the company's performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had always thought that dance was "mainly for sighted people". But the dancer has realized that it actually "includes a lot of emotion and feelings" and activates perceptions, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's individual experience of once getting lost on his way home and relying on the sunlight to orient his way back had motivated a duet in which Dixon becomes the "soothing presence of the sunlight around his partner as they perform as one," Malcomson said.

"It was during the day and I had a sense that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the sunlight itself, I could sense the heat … So I continued moving to the west …. It guided me home. The sun was a good helper to me. The sun could be a good symbol. So the tale emerged from there."

Blindness Provides Special Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability studies at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight invites a vibrant relationship with motion in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s bond with their physical self and dance."

In collaborating with the performers, she was striving to express what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she noted. "I talk with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their body, where their breathing is, what they think, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] costume, stage lights, scenery and audio artists, the perceptions and creativity of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted people, build a relationship through our affection of dance and dance. It is this creativity and love that I strive to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the perceptions guided by blindness."

She noted: "Although the vision of the ballet, the stunning display, is available in front of the audience, there is so much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is blindness that is inviting seeing and visually impaired audience members alike into the hidden. What I hope is that, when audience members depart, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and listening to the viewpoints of, blindness in fresh and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose works have gathered more than billions of digital listens, said the spoken narration established a connection between blindness and sight "via a musical landscape, providing expression to that which is not always visible". He noted: "This isn't simply a narration of a production. This is the performance itself."

International Ballet Event Collaborators

The company's international collaborators for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will also supply entry to backstage footage, rehearsals and freshly produced pieces – broadcast as it happens via online channels.