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This prestigious ballet company for years made available headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired patrons could understand the performance on stage. Presently, via a revolutionary new work, the complete crowd will experience such commentary within a work that explores how visual impairment can redefine our responses to sensation, music and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Partners with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind artist, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, together with other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in producing a new ballet company work that will debut on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

Through her work, the artist is driven by a wish to illustrate how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an unique form of understanding for all people. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the music, forms the core of the production on stage.

"Making world-class dance and opera for everyone" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the troupe is focusing on "radical accessibility – encouraging artists and viewers to discover ballet in transformative fresh approaches," he explained.

Various Choreographers Collaborate on New Work

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

The curator, the director of this commission, said: "World Ballet Day was founded on the concept of inclusion. After a ten years, we're pushing that concept more to explore how challenged outlooks can shape our performance style, and invite viewers of every capability and experiences to experience ballet in innovative methods."

Having worked with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator realized that sighted people who had experienced Healey’s audio narration found it helped them understand dance, which can appear so abstract.

Touching Collaboration Between Professional and Non-Professional Dancers

In a particular dance piece, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from childhood and who had long assumed that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it truly "includes a lot of emotion and emotions" and taps into senses, "visual and non-sight".

The dancer's personal story of earlier becoming disoriented on his way home and depending on the sun to guide his way back had motivated a duet in which the professional dancer becomes the "warm breath of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," Malcomson stated.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the rays itself, I could perceive the temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It guided me home. The sun was a great guide to me. The sun could be a meaningful metaphor. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Unique Connection with Movement

The blind artist, an academic of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and lacking sight encourages a vibrant connection with motion in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s relationship with their body and movement."

In collaborating with the performers, the artist was attempting to convey what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she said. "I converse with the performers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their breath is, what they think, how their muscles are experiencing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] attire, lighting, scenery and audio creators, the perceptions and innovation of visual impairment are always there as we, blind and sighted individuals, develop a relationship through our affection of motion and performance. It is this creativity and love that I try to blend into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the senses led by blindness."

The artist added: "Although the vision of the dance, the gorgeous visual feast, is there facing the patrons, there is so much that they’re not accessing or valuing, and it is blindness that is inviting sighted and blind patrons both into the invisible. What I wish is that, when patrons leave, they experience ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and listening to the understandings of, blindness in fresh and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Narration

Richter, whose compositions have accumulated more than 3.5 billion online plays, stated the spoken narration created a rapport between blindness and vision "via a soundscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not just a description of a performance. This is the art."

International Ballet Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will furthermore supply access to exclusive footage, preparations and recently created pieces – streamed in real-time via online channels.