🔗 Share this article

The Royal Ballet traditionally made available headphones with audio descriptions so that visually impaired patrons could follow the action on stage. Presently, via a groundbreaking new work, the whole audience will experience such commentary within a production that explores how visual impairment can transform our reactions to feeling, music and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Artist Collaborates with Renowned Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired professional, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician the celebrated composer in creating a fresh Royal Ballet work that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

Through her work, Healey is guided by a desire to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an alternative mode of perception for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, integrated with the music, establishes the heart of the production on stage.

"Producing top-tier ballet and opera for all" is a motto of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the troupe is zeroing in on "radical accessibility – encouraging creators and audiences to discover ballet in life-changing fresh approaches," he explained.

Various Choreographers Work on Fresh Performance

The fresh production is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, all partnering with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the director of this commission, stated: "International Ballet Day was created on the principle of access. Following a decade, we're expanding that concept deeper to explore how impaired perspectives can shape our performance style, and encourage patrons of all abilities and histories to encounter ballet in innovative methods."

Having worked with Healey in Canada and Australia, he recognized that sighted people who had encountered the artist's spoken descriptions found it assisted them understand dance, which can look so abstract.

Touching Collaboration Of Expert and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular dance piece, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been blind from birth and who had previously believed that ballet was "primarily for those who can see". But the dancer has understood that it actually "involves a lot of emotion and feelings" and taps into senses, "visual and non-sight".

The dancer's personal story of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and depending on the sun to orient his way back had inspired a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "warm breath of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," the choreographer said.

"This occurred in the afternoon and I had a sense that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could perceive the temperature … So I continued moving to the west …. It led me home. The sunshine was a excellent assistant to me. The sunlight could be a powerful metaphor. So the tale emerged from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Distinct Connection with Movement

The blind artist, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Visual impairment and being blind encourages a active relationship with movement in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's connection with their body and movement."

In working with the dancers, she was attempting to express what "they feel in their body, something that’s just not available through looking," she explained. "I speak 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, illumination, scenery and music artists, the perceptions and innovation of blindness are always there as we, blind and seeing persons, establish a rapport through our passion of dance and performance. It is this artistry and passion that I strive to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a collaboration of the faculties guided by visual impairment."

The artist noted: "Although the view of the dance, the gorgeous display, is present facing the audience, there is a great deal that they miss or valuing, and it is blindness that is encouraging seeing and visually impaired viewers alike into the unseen. What I wish is that, when patrons depart, they feel performance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the presence, and perceiving the understandings of, blindness in fresh and vibrant ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Narration

The composer, whose compositions have amassed more than billions of online plays, said the spoken narration formed a rapport between visual impairment and vision "via a soundscape, offering narration to that which is not always visible". He continued: "This isn't simply a description of a production. This is performance."

International Ballet Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s worldwide collaborators for World Ballet Day include the Canadian ballet company and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will additionally supply availability to backstage material, preparations and recently created works – broadcast live via their official platform.