🔗 Share this article

The Royal Ballet has long offered audio devices with audio descriptions so that visually impaired patrons could follow the movement on stage. Now, via a innovative new work, the entire crowd will listen to such commentary within a production that investigates how lack of sight can redefine our responses to feeling, audio and narrative.

Visually Impaired Creator Collaborates with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired artist, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and composer Max Richter in developing a new Royal Ballet production that will debut on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as declared this week.

In her art, the artist is driven by a ambition to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can offer an unique form of awareness for everyone. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the music, forms the center of the performance on stage.

"Making exceptional dance and musical theater for each person" is a motto of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the company is zeroing in on "complete inclusion – encouraging artists and patrons to discover dance in transformative innovative methods," he stated.

Various Choreographers Partner on Fresh Production

The recent commission is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, every one partnering with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the director of this work, commented: "World Ballet Day was created on the concept of accessibility. Following a ten years, we're pushing that idea further to examine how impaired viewpoints can shape our art form, and invite patrons of all abilities and backgrounds to experience ballet in fresh approaches."

After collaborating with the artist in Canada and Australia, he understood that sighted people who had heard Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it assisted them grasp ballet, which can appear so unclear.

Moving Partnership Between Professional and Amateur Performers

In one dance piece, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from childhood and who had previously believed that dance was "primarily for those who can see". But Kikuchi has understood that it truly "involves a lot of emotion and emotions" and taps into faculties, "sight-based and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s personal story of once losing his way on his way home and depending on the sun to guide his way back had inspired a performance in which the professional dancer represents the "soothing presence of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they perform as one," the choreographer stated.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be shining from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the sunlight itself, I could sense the warmth … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sun was a excellent guide to me. The sun could be a good symbol. So the narrative originated from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Unique Connection with Dance

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and being blind fosters a vibrant bond with motion in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s relationship with their body and movement."

In working with the dancers, she was striving to convey what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through sight," she said. "I talk with the performers to get a feeling of how they feel in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they think, how their body are experiencing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] clothing, illumination, set and audio artists, the perceptions and creativity of blindness are always there as we, blind and sighted persons, build a relationship through our love of motion and dance. It is this creativity and passion that I strive to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a collaboration of the perceptions directed by visual impairment."

The artist continued: "Even though the view of the performance, the gorgeous visual feast, is available facing the viewers, there is much that they miss or understanding, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and blind patrons equally into the hidden. What I hope is that, when audience members depart, they experience ballet in a new way, and they’re also sensing the presence, and hearing the understandings of, visual impairment in innovative and active ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5bn streams, commented the spoken narration established a relationship between blindness and vision "via a soundscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He continued: "This isn't merely a description of a production. It is the art."

International Dance Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global collaborators for International Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also provide entry to exclusive footage, rehearsals and newly commissioned pieces – streamed in real-time via the event website.