A Collaboration between Our Senses: Royal Ballet Partners alongside Visually Impaired Creator for Innovative New Production

The Royal Ballet has long provided headphones with descriptive narration so that sightless viewers could follow the movement on stage. Now, via a groundbreaking new work, the whole crowd will hear such narration within a work that explores how blindness can reshape our perceptions to experience, music and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Artist Works with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired artist, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in developing a new ballet company work that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

In her art, the artist is motivated by a ambition to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can present an different form of awareness for all people. Her detailed audio narration, integrated with the music, establishes the core of the show on stage.

"Producing world-class dance and opera for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the Royal Ballet's leader, the company is focusing on "total access – welcoming artists and patrons to encounter ballet in transformative fresh approaches," he stated.

Multiple Choreographers Collaborate on New Work

The new work is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, every one working with the blind artist.

The curator, the curator of this production, said: "World Ballet Day was founded on the principle of accessibility. After a ten years, we're pushing that idea further to examine how impaired viewpoints can mold our performance style, and welcome audiences of every capability and experiences to experience ballet in new ways."

Having worked with the artist in Canada and Australian locations, the curator realized that sighted people who had encountered Healey’s audio narration felt it aided them understand ballet, which can appear so complex.

Moving Collaboration Of Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In one performance, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from childhood and who had long assumed that dance was "mainly for sighted people". But the dancer has understood that it truly "includes a lot of sensation and feelings" and activates faculties, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of earlier becoming disoriented on his way home and depending on the sunlight to orient his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon represents the "warm breath of the sunlight around his partner as they perform as one," the choreographer stated.

"It was during the day and I had a intuition that the sun should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the light itself, I could perceive the warmth … So I kept walking to the west …. It led me home. The sun was a good assistant to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful representation. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Unique Connection with Movement

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a active bond with motion in a way that is similar to a expert performer's connection with their body and motion."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she noted. "I speak with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they think, how their body are sensing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] clothing, lighting, set and music artists, the perceptions and innovation of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and seeing people, develop a rapport through our affection of motion and performance. It is this innovation and passion that I try to weave into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the faculties guided by visual impairment."

The artist added: "Although the view of the performance, the beautiful spectacle, is available before the patrons, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging sighted and visually impaired patrons alike into the invisible. What I desire is that, when viewers leave, they feel ballet in a new way, and they’re also sensing the being, and perceiving the perceptions of, visual impairment in fresh and active ways."

Composer The Composer on Sound Narration

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of digital listens, stated the descriptive commentary established a relationship between blindness and sight "through a musical landscape, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He continued: "It is not simply a narration of a show. It is the art."

World Dance Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global collaborators for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will also offer availability to exclusive footage, preparations and freshly produced productions – broadcast live via the event website.