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The Royal Ballet has long offered headphones with spoken commentary so that blind audience members could follow the performance on stage. Currently, in a groundbreaking new work, the entire audience will hear such commentary within a piece that investigates how blindness can reshape our perceptions to sensation, music and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Works with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired creator, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a new Royal Ballet work that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

In her art, the artist is guided by a ambition to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can present an alternative form of awareness for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the score, establishes the core of the show on stage.

"Creating top-tier dance and musical theater for each person" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is focusing on "total access – inviting creators and audiences to discover dance in transformative new ways," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Work on New Production

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, all partnering with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this production, stated: "International Ballet Day was established on the idea of accessibility. Following a decade, we're expanding that idea more to consider how challenged perspectives can shape our creative medium, and welcome audiences of diverse capacities and histories to experience dance in new ways."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australia, the curator realized that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s descriptive audio believed it aided them comprehend ballet, which can look so unclear.

Touching Collaboration Between Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind since birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has discovered that it truly "includes a lot of sensation and emotions" and engages perceptions, "sight-based and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of previously losing his way on his way home and relying on the sunlight to orient his way back had influenced a performance in which the professional dancer becomes the "soothing presence of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer explained.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sun should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the sunlight itself, I could feel the temperature … So I kept walking to the west …. It led me home. The sunshine was a good guide to me. The sunlight could be a powerful representation. So the tale developed from there."

Blindness Offers Special Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a dynamic bond with motion in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's bond with their physical self and dance."

In working with the performers, the artist was attempting to convey what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she noted. "I speak with the performers to get a sense of how they feel in their body, where their breathing is, what they think, how their body are experiencing.

"Partnering with the choreographers [and] costume, lighting, set and audio artists, the perceptions and artistry of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and seeing persons, build a relationship through our love of dance and performance. It is this innovation and affection that I strive to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the perceptions directed by blindness."

She added: "Although the vision of the performance, the stunning display, is there before the audience, there is much that they overlook or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging sighted and visually impaired patrons equally into the invisible. What I wish is that, when patrons leave, they feel ballet in a new way, and they’re also sensing the being, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and dynamic ways."

Composer The Composer on Sound Narration

Richter, whose compositions have gathered more than billions of online plays, said the audio descriptions created a rapport between blindness and vision "by means of a soundscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He continued: "It is not just a description of a production. It is the performance itself."

International Dance Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide collaborators for World Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will also supply availability to exclusive video, practice sessions and recently created works – streamed live via their official platform.