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The Royal Ballet has long offered headphones with audio descriptions so that sightless audience members could track the movement on stage. Presently, in a groundbreaking new work, the whole crowd will listen to such descriptions within a work that explores how blindness can reshape our reactions to sensation, sound and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Creator Works with Famous Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired artist, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and composer Max Richter in developing a recent Royal Ballet commission that will premiere on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as revealed recently.

Within her creative practice, Healey is driven by a desire to demonstrate how visual impairment and physical challenge can offer an different type of perception for all people. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the composition, establishes the core of the show on stage.

"Creating world-class dance and opera for all" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the troupe is focusing on "radical accessibility – welcoming creators and patrons to discover ballet in revolutionary new ways," he explained.

Various Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Production

The fresh production is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, every one partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the director of this work, said: "World Ballet Day was established on the concept of inclusion. Following a ten years, we're expanding that notion more to examine how impaired viewpoints can shape our art form, and invite viewers of every capability and backgrounds to experience ballet in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, he understood that individuals who can see who had heard Healey’s spoken descriptions believed it helped them understand ballet, which can look so complex.

Touching Collaboration Between Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In one duet, the company's performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind from childhood and who had previously believed that dance was "mostly for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has realized that it truly "entails a lot of feeling and emotions" and taps into perceptions, "visual and other sensory".

The dancer's personal story of previously getting lost on his way home and depending on the sunlight to guide his way back had inspired a performance in which the professional dancer embodies the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they move together," Malcomson stated.

"It was in the afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be shining from the west. So, if I turned toward the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the sunlight itself, I could perceive the heat … So I kept walking to the west …. It directed me home. The sun was a good helper to me. The sunlight could be a powerful symbol. So the story developed from there."

Blindness Provides Special Connection with Dance

Healey, an assistant professor of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight encourages a active bond with motion in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s bond with their physical self and movement."

In partnering with the performers, she was seeking to convey what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she said. "I talk with the performers to get a understanding of how they feel in their body, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their physical form are sensing.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] clothing, stage lights, stage design and audio artists, the perceptions and creativity of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, blind and sighted persons, develop a relationship through our passion of motion and dance. It is this artistry and passion that I attempt to blend into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a partnership of the faculties guided by blindness."

She added: "Even though the vision of the dance, the beautiful visual feast, is available in front of the audience, there is a great deal that they overlook or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is inviting seeing and visually impaired patrons both into the unseen. What I desire is that, when viewers depart, they feel performance in a new way, and they’re also sensing the existence, and perceiving the viewpoints of, visual impairment in innovative and dynamic ways."

Musician The Composer on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose compositions have accumulated more than 3.5bn online plays, said the spoken narration formed a rapport between blindness and vision "via a musical landscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He noted: "It is not merely a explanation of a production. It is performance."

World Ballet Day Partners

The company's international collaborators for International Ballet Day comprise the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The troupes will furthermore provide entry to backstage video, rehearsals and recently created works – transmitted live via their official platform.