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This prestigious ballet company has long provided headphones with spoken commentary so that visually impaired viewers could track the movement on stage. Currently, in a groundbreaking new work, the whole gathering will experience such commentary within a piece that examines how visual impairment can transform our responses to sensation, sound and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Renowned Dance Creators

The blind artist, a visually impaired professional, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in creating a recent ballet company production that will premiere on November 12th, World Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

In her art, Healey is driven by a wish to demonstrate how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an alternative type of understanding for each individual. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the music, forms the core of the show on stage.

"Making world-class dance and opera for all" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's director, the company is concentrating on "radical accessibility – welcoming artists and viewers to encounter dance in transformative new ways," he explained.

Multiple Dance Creators Work on New Work

The recent commission is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to McGregor, all partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the director of this commission, stated: "World Ballet Day was established on the idea of accessibility. Following a decade, we're extending that notion further to consider how impaired outlooks can influence our art form, and invite viewers of diverse capacities and experiences to encounter ballet in fresh approaches."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator recognized that individuals who can see who had experienced Healey’s descriptive audio believed it helped them comprehend dance, which can seem so complex.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Professional and Amateur Dancers

In one performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind from birth and who had previously believed that dance was "mostly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has realized that it truly "involves a lot of feeling and emotions" and taps into senses, "sight-based and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of previously losing his way on his way home and relying on the sunlight to direct his way back had motivated a dance piece in which the professional dancer embodies the "gentle warmth of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," Malcomson explained.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could feel the warmth … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sun was a excellent guide to me. The sun could be a powerful metaphor. So the narrative developed from there."

Blindness Offers Special Connection with Motion

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind invites a vibrant relationship with movement in a way that is like a expert performer's bond with their body and movement."

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

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] costume, lighting, stage design and audio artists, the perceptions and creativity of blindness are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and seeing people, develop a connection through our love of dance and performance. It is this artistry and love that I strive to blend into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the senses guided by visual impairment."

The artist added: "While the vision of the ballet, the gorgeous display, is available in front of the patrons, there is a great deal that they’re not accessing or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is inviting sighted and visually impaired audience members both into the unseen. What I hope is that, when patrons leave, they sense ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and hearing the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Narration

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of digital listens, said the audio descriptions formed a rapport between blindness and vision "through a musical landscape, providing expression to that which does not always appear". He added: "This isn't just a explanation of a show. It is the art."

World Dance Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global partners for World Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will also supply access to exclusive video, rehearsals and recently created pieces – transmitted in real-time via their official platform.