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This prestigious ballet company for years offered audio devices with descriptive narration so that blind patrons could follow the performance on stage. Now, via a revolutionary new work, the whole gathering will hear such descriptions within a piece that examines how lack of sight can transform our responses to experience, audio and storytelling.

Blind Artist Partners with Famous Dance Creators

Devon Healey, a blind professional, is working with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in developing a recent ballet company production that will debut on 12 November, World Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Through her work, the artist is driven by a wish to show how blindness and physical challenge can present an unique type of awareness for everyone. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the score, creates the core of the production on stage.

"Making exceptional ballet and musical theater for each person" is a guiding principle of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's director, the organization is concentrating on "radical accessibility – welcoming performers and patrons to encounter ballet in transformative new ways," he explained.

Various Dance Creators Collaborate on Fresh Work

The new work is being designed by Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, all partnering with Healey.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this work, stated: "International Ballet Day was founded on the concept of accessibility. After a decade, we're pushing that concept further to consider how disabled perspectives can shape our performance style, and welcome patrons of all abilities and histories to encounter ballet in new ways."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator understood that individuals who can see who had experienced the artist's audio narration felt it aided them understand dance, which can appear so unclear.

Touching Collaboration Between Expert and Amateur Performers

In a particular performance, the Royal Ballet dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been visually impaired since birth and who had long assumed that dance was "mainly for those who can see". But the dancer has realized that it truly "includes a lot of emotion and emotions" and taps into perceptions, "visual and non-visual".

Kikuchi’s unique narrative of earlier losing his way on his way home and depending on the sunlight to direct his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon embodies the "warm breath of the sunlight around Kikuchi as they dance in unison," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred during the day and I had a feeling that the sun should be radiating from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the sunlight itself, I could perceive the warmth … So I persisted in walking to the west …. It directed me home. The sun was a great assistant to me. The sun could be a good representation. So the narrative developed from there."

Visual Impairment Offers Distinct Relationship with Dance

The blind artist, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, stated: "Visual impairment and lacking sight invites a dynamic connection with movement in a way that is similar to a professional dancer’s connection with their body and dance."

In partnering with the dancers, she was seeking to communicate what "they’re experiencing 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’re feeling in their body, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their physical form are sensing.

"In collaboration with the dance creators [and] costume, lighting, scenery and music designers, the understandings and artistry of blindness are ever present as we, blind and seeing persons, establish a connection through our affection of dance and performance. It is this artistry and love that I attempt to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a partnership of the senses led by blindness."

She added: "While the view of the dance, the beautiful visual feast, is there in front of the viewers, there is a great deal that they miss or understanding, and it is blindness that is welcoming sighted and blind audience members both into the invisible. What I wish is that, when viewers depart, they experience ballet in a new way, and they’re also feeling the presence, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in innovative and vibrant ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Narration

Richter, whose recordings have amassed more than billions of streams, said the descriptive commentary formed a relationship between blindness and sight "via a soundscape, providing expression to that which does not always appear". He continued: "This isn't just a description of a production. This is the art."

International Ballet Event Collaborators

The Royal Ballet’s international partners for International Ballet Day feature the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The companies will also offer availability to exclusive material, practice sessions and freshly produced works – streamed live via the event website.