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The Royal Ballet has long made available audio devices with audio descriptions so that blind viewers could understand the action on stage. Now, via a groundbreaking new work, the entire crowd will experience such descriptions within a piece that explores how lack of sight can reshape our perceptions to feeling, sound and storytelling.

Visually Impaired Artist Collaborates with Celebrated Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired artist, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in developing a recent Royal Ballet production that will launch on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as announced recently.

In her art, Healey is motivated by a ambition to show how blindness and physical challenge can offer an unique mode of understanding for all people. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the music, establishes the heart of the production on stage.

"Making world-class dance and musical theater for each person" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's leader, the organization is focusing on "radical accessibility – welcoming creators and audiences to discover ballet in revolutionary new ways," he explained.

Several Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Work

The recent commission is being choreographed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, in addition to Wayne McGregor, each working with Healey.

The curator, the organizer of this production, commented: "World Ballet Day was created on the idea of accessibility. Following a ten years, we're pushing that idea further to explore how challenged perspectives can influence our art form, and welcome patrons of all abilities and experiences to encounter ballet in new ways."

Having worked with the artist in Canadian venues and Australia, the curator realized that those with vision who had experienced the artist's audio narration believed it assisted them grasp ballet, which can look so abstract.

Inspiring Partnership Between Expert and Amateur Performers

In a particular performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been blind since birth and who had long assumed that dance was "mostly for individuals with vision". But the dancer has realized that it actually "entails a lot of feeling and sentiments" and activates faculties, "visual and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s individual experience of previously becoming disoriented on his way home and relying on the sunlight to guide his way back had motivated a dance piece in which the professional dancer becomes the "warm breath of the sun around Kikuchi as they move together," the choreographer said.

"It was mid-afternoon and I had a sense that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could sense the warmth … So I continued moving to the west …. It directed me home. The sun was a good helper to me. The sunlight could be a good symbol. So the story developed from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Distinct Relationship with Motion

The blind artist, an assistant professor of disability research at the Toronto university, commented: "Blindness and lacking sight encourages a active bond with dance in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s connection with their physical self and dance."

In collaborating with the performers, the artist was striving to convey what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not accessible through sight," she said. "I converse with the performers to get a feeling of how they are in their physical self, where their breathing is, what they consider, how their muscles are sensing.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] costume, lighting, scenery and sound creators, the viewpoints and innovation of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and sighted persons, build a connection through our love of motion and performance. It is this creativity and affection that I try to blend into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a cooperation of the perceptions led by visual impairment."

She noted: "While the view of the dance, the beautiful visual feast, is there facing the viewers, there is so much that they overlook or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is encouraging seeing and blind patrons both into the hidden. What I desire is that, when patrons exit, they experience ballet in a different way, and they’re also feeling the being, and perceiving the perceptions of, blindness in new and vibrant ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

The composer, whose compositions have gathered more than 3.5bn online plays, commented the audio descriptions formed a relationship between visual impairment and vision "through a audio environment, offering narration to that which is not always visible". He added: "This isn't just a description of a performance. This is the art."

World Ballet Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global associates for World Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will additionally provide access to backstage footage, preparations and freshly produced works – transmitted in real-time via the event website.