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The Royal Ballet traditionally provided audio devices with spoken commentary so that visually impaired patrons could follow the movement on stage. Presently, through a innovative new work, the whole audience will listen to such commentary within a piece that examines how visual impairment can transform our responses to feeling, audio and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Artist Works with Celebrated Choreographers

The blind artist, a blind artist, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in developing a new ballet company production that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as announced this week.

Within her creative practice, Healey is motivated by a wish to show how blindness and physical challenge can offer an alternative form of awareness for everyone. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, blended with the music, establishes the core of the production on stage.

"Creating exceptional ballet and musical theater for all" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the company's director, the troupe is focusing on "complete inclusion – inviting artists and viewers to encounter ballet in transformative innovative methods," he stated.

Several Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Work

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, every one collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this production, stated: "World Ballet Day was established on the idea of access. Following a decade, we're pushing that notion more to examine how challenged viewpoints can influence our creative medium, and invite patrons of diverse capacities and backgrounds to discover dance in new ways."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australia, he understood that those with vision who had experienced the artist's descriptive audio felt it aided them comprehend dance, which can appear so abstract.

Inspiring Partnership Between Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In a particular dance piece, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had always thought that dance was "primarily for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has realized that it in fact "entails a lot of feeling and emotions" and taps into faculties, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's unique narrative of previously getting lost on his way home and depending on the sun to direct his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon represents the "soothing presence of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," Malcomson stated.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could sense the warmth … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It guided me home. The sunshine was a good assistant to me. The sun could be a meaningful metaphor. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Unique Relationship with Motion

Healey, an academic of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight encourages a vibrant relationship with motion in a way that is like a professional dancer’s bond with their physical self and dance."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through sight," she said. "I talk with the dancers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they’re thinking, how their body are sensing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] clothing, stage lights, stage design and audio artists, the viewpoints and artistry of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and seeing people, develop a connection through our love of motion and performance. It is this innovation and love that I attempt to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the perceptions led by visual impairment."

The artist continued: "While the vision of the ballet, the gorgeous spectacle, is available in front of the patrons, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired patrons both into the unseen. What I hope is that, when audience members exit, they experience performance in a different way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and perceiving the viewpoints of, blindness in innovative and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Narration

The composer, whose works have amassed more than 3.5 billion online plays, said the audio descriptions created a rapport between blindness and vision "through a musical landscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not merely a description of a performance. It is performance."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide collaborators for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will also offer entry to behind-the-scenes video, rehearsals and freshly produced works – broadcast as it happens via the event website.