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This prestigious ballet company has long offered audio devices with descriptive narration so that visually impaired audience members could track the action on stage. Presently, via a groundbreaking production, the entire gathering will listen to such commentary within a production that examines how lack of sight can transform our responses to experience, audio and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Artist Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired professional, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a fresh Royal Ballet commission that will debut on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced recently.

In her art, Healey is guided by a wish to demonstrate how blindness and disability can present an alternative type of understanding for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the music, establishes the heart of the performance on stage.

"Making top-tier ballet and opera for everyone" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is zeroing in on "total access – welcoming creators and patrons to discover dance in transformative innovative methods," he said.

Multiple Choreographers Work on Fresh Work

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, each collaborating with Healey.

The curator, the director of this work, stated: "International Ballet Day was founded on the principle of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're extending that idea further to consider how disabled viewpoints can influence our performance style, and encourage audiences of all abilities and backgrounds to encounter dance in fresh approaches."

Having worked with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that those with vision who had experienced the artist's descriptive audio believed it helped them grasp ballet, which can seem so abstract.

Touching Collaboration Of Expert and Amateur Dancers

In one duet, the company's performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless since birth and who had always thought that ballet was "mostly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has discovered that it truly "involves a lot of feeling and emotions" and activates senses, "sight-based and other sensory".

The dancer's individual experience of previously losing his way on his way home and using the sun to guide his way back had influenced a dance piece in which Dixon becomes the "soothing presence of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," Malcomson stated.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a sense that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could feel the temperature … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a excellent guide to me. The sun could be a meaningful metaphor. So the tale originated from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Unique Connection with Dance

Healey, an assistant professor of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind fosters a dynamic connection with motion in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s connection with their physical self and motion."

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

"Partnering with the choreographers [and] clothing, lighting, set and music artists, the understandings and artistry of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted people, establish a relationship through our love of dance and dance. It is this artistry and passion that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the faculties led by blindness."

She continued: "While the view of the performance, the gorgeous spectacle, is available facing the viewers, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired viewers equally into the hidden. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they sense dance in a new way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and listening to the understandings of, blindness in fresh and vibrant ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Narration

Richter, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5bn streams, stated the descriptive commentary created a connection between visual impairment and sight "via a musical landscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He noted: "This isn't simply a description of a production. This is the art."

International Ballet Day Partners

The company's international partners for World Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also provide availability to exclusive footage, preparations and newly commissioned works – broadcast in real-time via the event website.