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The Royal Ballet traditionally provided headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired viewers could track the action on stage. Presently, via a groundbreaking production, the complete gathering will listen to such descriptions within a work that examines how blindness can transform our responses to feeling, sound and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in producing a fresh ballet company commission that will premiere on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as revealed this week.

In her art, Healey is guided by a ambition to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can present an different mode of understanding for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, integrated with the music, creates the center of the performance on stage.

"Making top-tier dance and musical theater for everyone" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the company is concentrating on "total access – welcoming performers and patrons to encounter ballet in transformative new ways," he explained.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on Fresh Work

The fresh production is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, each collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the curator of this production, said: "World Ballet Day was established on the concept of access. After a decade, we're pushing that notion deeper to explore how challenged outlooks can influence our performance style, and welcome viewers of every capability and backgrounds to discover ballet in fresh approaches."

Having worked with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he realized that sighted people who had heard the artist's spoken descriptions found it helped them grasp dance, which can look so complex.

Inspiring Partnership Of Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In a particular duet, the company's performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from birth and who had previously believed that dance was "primarily for sighted people". But Kikuchi has realized that it in fact "includes a lot of emotion and sentiments" and taps into senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of once losing his way on his way home and relying on the sun to orient his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they move together," the choreographer explained.

"It was during the day and I had a intuition that the sun should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could sense the temperature … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It directed me home. The sun was a great helper to me. The sun could be a powerful metaphor. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Unique Connection with Motion

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability studies at the University of Toronto, said: "Blindness and lacking sight invites a dynamic bond with dance in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s connection with their physical self and dance."

In collaborating with the dancers, she was striving to communicate what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she explained. "I talk with the dancers to get a sense of how they are in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they think, how their muscles are feeling.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] costume, illumination, scenery and sound artists, the understandings and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and seeing individuals, establish a relationship through our affection of motion and dance. It is this artistry and love that I attempt to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the perceptions led by visual impairment."

She noted: "While the sight of the ballet, the stunning spectacle, is there in front of the viewers, there is so much that they miss or appreciating, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and blind audience members alike into the unseen. What I wish is that, when viewers leave, they experience ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and hearing the viewpoints of, visual impairment in innovative and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Narration

Richter, whose recordings have amassed more than 3.5bn online plays, commented the spoken narration created a connection between visual impairment and vision "via a musical landscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He noted: "This isn't simply a narration of a performance. It is the performance itself."

World Dance Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s international collaborators for International Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also offer access to backstage footage, preparations and newly commissioned pieces – streamed as it happens via online channels.