🔗 Share this article

The Royal Ballet has long provided headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired audience members could understand the movement on stage. Now, in a innovative new work, the whole crowd will listen to such narration within a work that investigates how blindness can redefine our responses to sensation, sound and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Works with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired creator, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in developing a recent ballet company production that will launch on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

In her art, the artist is guided by a wish to illustrate how blindness and disability can provide an unique form of understanding for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, woven with the music, establishes the heart of the production on stage.

"Making top-tier dance and opera for all" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under the director, the company's leader, the organization is focusing on "complete inclusion – welcoming performers and audiences to encounter dance in life-changing new ways," he explained.

Several Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Work

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, all partnering with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this commission, stated: "International Ballet Day was founded on the idea of access. After a decade, we're expanding that idea deeper to consider how disabled outlooks can mold our art form, and invite viewers of diverse capacities and backgrounds to discover ballet in fresh approaches."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, he realized that sighted people who had heard the artist's spoken descriptions found it aided them grasp ballet, which can appear so complex.

Moving Collaboration Of Professional and Amateur Dancers

In one duet, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from birth and who had long assumed that ballet was "primarily for sighted people". But Kikuchi has understood that it in fact "entails a lot of emotion and emotions" and engages senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of once losing his way on his way home and depending on the sunlight to direct his way back had influenced a dance piece in which Dixon represents the "warm breath of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," Malcomson said.

"This occurred during the day and I had a intuition that the sun should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the sunlight itself, I could perceive the temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a good helper to me. The sunlight could be a good representation. So the tale originated from there."

Blindness Presents Unique Connection with Movement

Healey, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind fosters a active connection with motion in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s relationship with their body and movement."

In partnering with the performers, she was seeking to express what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she noted. "I speak with the performers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they consider, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] costume, lighting, scenery and music designers, the viewpoints and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and sighted persons, develop a relationship through our passion of dance and performance. It is this artistry and passion that I strive to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the perceptions guided by blindness."

She noted: "Even though the vision of the ballet, the gorgeous visual feast, is present in front of the viewers, there is a great deal that they miss or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and blind patrons both into the hidden. What I desire is that, when patrons exit, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and perceiving the viewpoints of, visual impairment in innovative and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Narration

The composer, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5 billion digital listens, said the audio descriptions created a relationship between visual impairment and vision "by means of a audio environment, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He noted: "This isn't merely a description of a production. This is the performance itself."

International Ballet Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide partners for World Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will furthermore offer entry to exclusive material, preparations and newly commissioned pieces – broadcast live via the event website.