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This prestigious ballet company for years made available audio devices with spoken commentary so that visually impaired viewers could follow the performance on stage. Currently, in a revolutionary production, the whole gathering will experience such descriptions within a work that examines how lack of sight can redefine our responses to feeling, audio and narrative.

Visually Impaired Artist Collaborates with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind professional, is working with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician the celebrated composer in creating a recent ballet company commission that will launch on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as declared on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, Healey is guided by a wish to show how visual impairment and disability can offer an alternative mode of perception for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, woven with the score, forms the center of the production on stage.

"Producing world-class ballet and opera for all" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's leader, the organization is focusing on "total access – encouraging artists and viewers to encounter dance in transformative fresh approaches," he explained.

Various Dance Creators Partner on Fresh Performance

The recent commission is being created by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, all working with Healey.

Robert Binet, the director of this production, commented: "World Ballet Day was founded on the principle of access. Following a ten years, we're pushing that concept deeper to examine how challenged outlooks can influence our creative medium, and encourage viewers of diverse capacities and backgrounds to experience ballet in new ways."

Having worked with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he realized that individuals who can see who had encountered Healey’s audio narration felt it aided them grasp dance, which can look so unclear.

Touching Collaboration Between Professional and Amateur Dancers

In a particular dance piece, the company's performer Leo Dixon will dance with Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless from childhood and who had previously believed that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has discovered that it in fact "involves a lot of feeling and feelings" and engages senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's personal story of once getting lost on his way home and using the sun to guide his way back had influenced a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "soothing presence of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," the choreographer explained.

"It was during the day and I had a sense that the sunlight should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the light itself, I could sense the temperature … So I persisted in walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a good guide to me. The sunlight could be a powerful representation. So the story emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Provides Distinct Connection with Movement

Healey, an academic of disability studies at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight invites a active connection with motion in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's connection with their body and motion."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was seeking to express what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she explained. "I converse with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their body, where their breathing is, what they’re thinking, how their physical form are experiencing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] clothing, lighting, stage design and sound creators, the viewpoints and artistry of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and sighted individuals, build a connection through our passion of motion and performance. It is this creativity and love that I attempt to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the perceptions directed by visual impairment."

She continued: "While the view of the dance, the beautiful spectacle, is present facing the audience, there is so much that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming sighted and visually impaired audience members both into the unseen. What I hope is that, when audience members depart, they feel dance in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the existence, and hearing the perceptions of, blindness in fresh and vibrant ways."

Musician The Composer on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have amassed more than 3.5bn digital listens, stated the audio descriptions created a connection between visual impairment and sight "through a soundscape, giving voice to that which is not always visible". He continued: "This isn't just a narration of a performance. This is the art."

International Dance Day Partners

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide collaborators for International Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The organizations will additionally offer entry to exclusive footage, preparations and newly commissioned productions – streamed live via their official platform.