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This prestigious ballet company traditionally provided audio devices with spoken commentary so that sightless patrons could track the performance on stage. Now, via a groundbreaking production, the whole crowd will hear such descriptions within a production that examines how lack of sight can reshape our responses to experience, sound and narrative.

Blind Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in producing a fresh Royal Ballet work that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

In her art, the artist is guided by a wish to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can present an unique form of awareness for all people. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the composition, forms the center of the show on stage.

"Making top-tier ballet and opera for all" is a motto of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is focusing on "total access – inviting artists and viewers to discover dance in life-changing fresh approaches," he explained.

Multiple Dance Creators Partner on New Production

The fresh production is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, each working with the blind artist.

The curator, the curator of this commission, commented: "International Ballet Day was established on the concept of access. After a ten years, we're pushing that concept more to examine how disabled outlooks can shape our art form, and welcome viewers of all abilities and histories to discover dance in innovative methods."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it aided them comprehend dance, which can look so abstract.

Touching Collaboration Between Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In one duet, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from childhood and who had previously believed that ballet was "primarily for sighted people". But the dancer has discovered that it truly "includes a lot of emotion and sentiments" and activates faculties, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of once losing his way on his way home and relying on the sunlight to guide his way back had influenced a duet in which the professional dancer becomes the "soothing presence of the sunlight around his partner as they dance in unison," the choreographer said.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could feel the heat … So I continued moving to the west …. It led me home. The sunshine was a good guide to me. The sunlight could be a good metaphor. So the narrative originated from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Distinct Relationship with Movement

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

In partnering with the performers, the artist was seeking to convey what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she said. "I converse with the performers to get a understanding of how they feel in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their physical form are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] attire, illumination, scenery and audio artists, the perceptions and creativity of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, build a connection through our love of motion and performance. It is this innovation and affection that I strive to integrate into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a cooperation of the perceptions guided by visual impairment."

The artist continued: "While the sight of the performance, the stunning display, is present facing the viewers, there is so much that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is blindness that is welcoming sighted and blind audience members equally into the unseen. What I desire is that, when patrons leave, they sense ballet in a different way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and listening to the perceptions of, blindness in innovative and dynamic ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose recordings have accumulated more than 3.5 billion online plays, said the descriptive commentary created a rapport between blindness and vision "via a soundscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He continued: "It is not simply a description of a production. This is performance."

International Ballet Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international collaborators for World Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will additionally provide entry to exclusive video, preparations and newly commissioned productions – broadcast in real-time via online channels.