An Collaboration of the Senses: The Royal Ballet Partners alongside Blind Artist for Innovative New Production

The Royal Ballet has long made available headphones with spoken commentary so that sightless patrons could understand the performance on stage. Presently, in a innovative performance, the entire audience will listen to such narration within a work that explores how blindness can transform our reactions to sensation, sound and narrative.

Blind Creator Collaborates with Renowned Choreographers

Devon Healey, a blind professional, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, together with other choreographers, and composer the celebrated composer in producing a fresh Royal Ballet production that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as announced this week.

In her art, Healey is guided by a desire to show how visual impairment and disability can provide an alternative form of awareness for each individual. Her rich spoken descriptions, integrated with the score, establishes the center of the show on stage.

"Making top-tier dance and opera for all" is a motto of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's leader, the company is zeroing in on "complete inclusion – inviting artists and patrons to encounter ballet in life-changing new ways," he stated.

Several Dance Creators Work on New Performance

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, all collaborating with the blind artist.

The curator, the director of this work, stated: "International Ballet Day was created on the principle of access. Following a ten years, we're extending that concept further to consider how disabled perspectives can mold our art form, and invite audiences of all abilities and experiences to discover ballet in fresh approaches."

Having worked with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he understood that sighted people who had heard Healey’s audio narration felt it helped them comprehend dance, which can seem so complex.

Touching Collaboration Of Professional and Amateur Performers

In one performance, the company's performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from childhood and who had long assumed that ballet was "primarily for sighted people". But Kikuchi has discovered that it truly "includes a lot of emotion and sentiments" and activates perceptions, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's individual experience of previously getting lost on his way home and using the sunlight to guide his way back had influenced a performance in which the professional dancer becomes the "gentle warmth of the sun around his partner as they move together," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sunlight should be beaming from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I couldn't see the sunlight itself, I could feel the heat … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a great guide to me. The sun could be a good metaphor. So the narrative originated from there."

Blindness Offers Unique Connection with Movement

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Blindness and being blind invites a active relationship with movement in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s bond with their body and motion."

In working with the dancers, the artist was seeking to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through sight," she said. "I talk with the performers to get a understanding of how they feel in their physical self, where their breath is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are experiencing.

"Partnering with the dance creators [and] clothing, lighting, set and sound artists, the perceptions and creativity of visual impairment are always there as we, visually impaired and sighted people, establish a relationship through our love of movement and dance. It is this creativity and passion that I strive to blend into the detailed narration. It is a partnership of the perceptions guided by blindness."

The artist continued: "Although the view of the performance, the gorgeous display, is present before the audience, there is a great deal that they overlook or valuing, and it is visual impairment that is inviting seeing and visually impaired viewers equally into the hidden. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also sensing the presence, and hearing the perceptions of, visual impairment in new and active ways."

Composer The Composer on Audio Narration

The composer, whose compositions have accumulated more than billions of online plays, said the descriptive commentary established a connection between blindness and sight "by means of a audio environment, giving voice to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not merely a description of a production. It is the art."

International Ballet Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global partners for International Ballet Day feature the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will furthermore supply availability to backstage footage, preparations and recently created productions – streamed as it happens via the event website.