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This prestigious ballet company traditionally provided audio devices with audio descriptions so that blind audience members could understand the movement on stage. Currently, through a groundbreaking production, the whole audience will hear such narration within a production that examines how visual impairment can transform our reactions to feeling, audio and storytelling.

Blind Artist Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind artist, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in producing a recent ballet company commission that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, the artist is driven by a desire to show how blindness and disability can present an alternative type of perception for all people. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the music, creates the center of the show on stage.

"Creating exceptional dance and opera for all" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the organization is concentrating on "complete inclusion – encouraging creators and audiences to encounter ballet in revolutionary fresh approaches," he said.

Multiple Choreographers Work on Fresh Work

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

Robert Binet, the curator of this production, said: "International Ballet Day was founded on the principle of inclusion. After a ten years, we're extending that idea more to consider how impaired outlooks can mold our performance style, and invite patrons of all abilities and histories to encounter dance in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canada and Australia, he realized that sighted people who had encountered the artist's audio narration felt it aided them understand ballet, which can appear so unclear.

Moving Collaboration Between Professional and Amateur Performers

In one performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless since birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mostly for those who can see". But the dancer has realized that it actually "entails a lot of feeling and feelings" and taps into perceptions, "visual and non-sight".

The dancer's unique narrative of once getting lost on his way home and relying on the sun to orient his way back had inspired a duet in which the professional dancer represents the "gentle warmth of the sun around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," the choreographer said.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be radiating from the west. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could perceive the heat … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a excellent assistant to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful symbol. So the narrative developed from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Special Relationship with Motion

The blind artist, an scholar of disability research at the University of Toronto, said: "Visual impairment and lacking sight fosters a dynamic connection with dance in a way that is similar to a expert performer's connection with their physical self and movement."

In collaborating with the dancers, she was striving to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not available through sight," she explained. "I speak with the dancers to get a feeling of how they feel in their body, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their body are feeling.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] clothing, lighting, set and audio creators, the viewpoints and artistry of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and sighted persons, develop a rapport through our affection of movement and dance. It is this creativity and affection that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the faculties directed by blindness."

She noted: "Although the vision of the dance, the stunning display, is there facing the patrons, there is so much that they overlook or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and blind audience members alike into the hidden. What I hope is that, when audience members leave, they sense dance in a different way, and they’re also sensing the presence, and perceiving the perceptions of, blindness in innovative and dynamic ways."

Composer The Composer on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of digital listens, commented the descriptive commentary established a rapport between blindness and vision "through a audio environment, offering narration to that which is not always visible". He added: "This isn't just a explanation of a production. This is performance."

International Ballet Day Collaborators

The company's international associates for World Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will furthermore offer availability to backstage material, preparations and recently created productions – transmitted as it happens via their official platform.