🔗 Share this article

The Royal Ballet for years provided audio devices with spoken commentary so that visually impaired audience members could track the performance on stage. Currently, via a innovative production, the whole crowd will hear such narration within a piece that investigates how blindness can redefine our perceptions to sensation, audio and storytelling.

Blind Creator Partners with Celebrated Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a visually impaired professional, is partnering with Sir Wayne McGregor, among other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in producing a fresh Royal Ballet commission that will debut on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced on Thursday.

In her art, the artist is driven by a wish to show how visual impairment and physical challenge can provide an unique form of awareness for each individual. Her detailed audio narration, blended with the composition, forms the core of the show on stage.

"Producing top-tier dance and opera for each person" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the organization is concentrating on "complete inclusion – inviting creators and patrons to encounter dance in revolutionary new ways," he explained.

Several Choreographers Collaborate on New Work

The recent commission is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as McGregor, all collaborating with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this work, commented: "World Ballet Day was founded on the concept of inclusion. After a decade, we're extending that notion further to examine how impaired viewpoints can influence our creative medium, and encourage patrons of diverse capacities and experiences to discover dance in fresh approaches."

Having worked with the artist in Canada and Australia, the curator understood that individuals who can see who had encountered Healey’s audio narration believed it helped them grasp dance, which can look so complex.

Moving Collaboration Of Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In one duet, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired from birth and who had always thought that dance was "mainly for sighted people". But Kikuchi has understood that it actually "entails a lot of sensation and sentiments" and engages senses, "sight-based and non-sight".

The dancer's unique narrative of once losing his way on his way home and using the sunlight to orient his way back had motivated a dance piece in which Dixon represents the "soothing presence of the sun around his partner as they perform as one," Malcomson said.

"This occurred mid-afternoon and I had a intuition that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I turned toward the sunlight, even though I wouldn’t see the rays itself, I could sense the heat … So I kept walking to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a excellent guide to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful representation. So the narrative developed from there."

Blindness Offers Unique Connection with Dance

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the University of Toronto, stated: "Visual impairment and being blind invites a vibrant connection with dance in a way that is comparable to a expert performer's bond with their body and motion."

In collaborating with the performers, the artist was striving to communicate what "they feel in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through looking," she explained. "I speak with the performers to get a understanding of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they think, how their muscles are feeling.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] clothing, lighting, set and audio designers, the perceptions and artistry of visual impairment are constantly visible as we, visually impaired and sighted persons, establish a connection through our affection of dance and performance. It is this innovation and love that I strive to blend into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a cooperation of the faculties directed by blindness."

The artist noted: "While the view of the performance, the beautiful spectacle, is present before the audience, there is so much that they overlook or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and blind viewers equally into the invisible. What I hope is that, when viewers exit, they experience dance in a different way, and they’re also experiencing the existence, and perceiving the understandings of, visual impairment in new and dynamic ways."

Musician Max Richter on Audio Narration

The composer, whose works have gathered more than 3.5bn digital listens, stated the descriptive commentary formed a rapport between blindness and sight "by means of a musical landscape, offering narration to that which remains unseen". He added: "It is not just a description of a performance. This is performance."

World Ballet Day Collaborators

The company's worldwide collaborators for World Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The organizations will additionally provide access to backstage footage, rehearsals and recently created productions – streamed as it happens via online channels.