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This prestigious ballet company traditionally offered audio devices with spoken commentary so that sightless viewers could understand the movement on stage. Presently, in a innovative new work, the whole crowd will hear such commentary within a work that explores how blindness can transform our responses to sensation, audio and narrative.

Blind Creator Partners with Famous Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind creator, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in creating a fresh Royal Ballet work that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

Within her creative practice, the artist is motivated by a desire to demonstrate how visual impairment and disability can provide an unique form of understanding for everyone. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, woven with the music, forms the core of the show on stage.

"Producing exceptional dance and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's director, the organization is zeroing in on "total access – encouraging creators and viewers to discover dance in revolutionary innovative methods," he explained.

Multiple Dance Creators Work on Fresh Work

The new work is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, each partnering with the blind artist.

The curator, the director of this production, commented: "International Ballet Day was created on the idea of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're expanding that notion further to examine how disabled outlooks can shape our creative medium, and invite audiences of all abilities and histories to experience dance in new ways."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canada and Australia, the curator understood that sighted people who had encountered Healey’s spoken descriptions believed it helped them grasp ballet, which can appear so complex.

Moving Partnership Between Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In one dance piece, the company's performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from birth and who had always thought that ballet was "mostly for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "entails a lot of sensation and sentiments" and engages faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

The dancer's unique narrative of once becoming disoriented on his way home and depending on the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a duet in which Dixon represents the "warm breath of the sunlight 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 beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the rays itself, I could feel the temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sun was a great helper to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful symbol. So the tale emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Unique Relationship with Motion

The blind artist, an academic of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight invites a vibrant bond with movement in a way that is like a professional dancer’s bond with their physical self and movement."

In working with the dancers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she said. "I talk with the performers to get a understanding of how they feel in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are feeling.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] clothing, illumination, set and music creators, the viewpoints and innovation of blindness are ever present as we, blind and seeing persons, develop a rapport through our love of movement and performance. It is this creativity and love that I try to integrate into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the senses guided by visual impairment."

She noted: "Although the sight of the performance, the stunning spectacle, is present before the patrons, there is so much that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired patrons equally into the hidden. What I hope is that, when patrons leave, they sense ballet in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and hearing the perceptions of, blindness in innovative and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Narration

The composer, whose works have gathered more than billions of online plays, said the audio descriptions created a connection between blindness and vision "through a audio environment, providing expression to that which remains unseen". He continued: "This isn't just a narration of a show. It is the art."

International Dance Event Partners

The company's worldwide partners for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will furthermore supply availability to exclusive video, rehearsals and recently created works – transmitted as it happens via online channels.