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The Royal Ballet for years offered headphones with descriptive narration so that visually impaired patrons could follow the action on stage. Now, in a groundbreaking production, the whole crowd will experience such descriptions within a production that investigates how lack of sight can transform our reactions to sensation, sound and dramatic expression.

Visually Impaired Creator Works with Celebrated Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired creator, is collaborating with Sir Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and musician Max Richter in producing a fresh ballet company production that will debut on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as revealed on Thursday.

Within her creative practice, Healey is driven by a ambition to illustrate how blindness and disability can provide an unique mode of awareness for each individual. Her rich spoken descriptions, blended with the music, creates the heart of the production on stage.

"Creating exceptional ballet and musical theater for everyone" is a guiding principle of the Royal Opera House. Under the director, the company's leader, the organization is focusing on "radical accessibility – inviting artists and viewers to experience ballet in life-changing fresh approaches," he stated.

Multiple Dance Creators Collaborate on New Work

The new work is being created by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside McGregor, each working with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the curator of this work, commented: "International Ballet Day was established on the idea of inclusion. Following a decade, we're pushing that idea further to examine how disabled outlooks can influence our creative medium, and encourage viewers of every capability and experiences to encounter dance in fresh approaches."

After collaborating with the artist in Canadian venues and Australian locations, he realized that individuals who can see who had encountered the artist's audio narration felt it assisted them understand ballet, which can appear so abstract.

Inspiring Partnership Between Expert and Amateur Dancers

In a particular performance, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been sightless from birth and who had long assumed that dance was "mostly for individuals with vision". But Kikuchi has realized that it in fact "includes a lot of emotion and emotions" and taps into faculties, "visual and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s personal story of previously losing his way on his way home and depending on the sun to orient his way back had motivated a performance in which Dixon becomes the "soothing presence of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," the choreographer stated.

"This occurred during the day and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could feel the temperature … So I continued moving to the western direction …. It led me home. The sunshine was a great helper to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful symbol. So the narrative emerged from there."

Blindness Offers Unique Relationship with Motion

Healey, an scholar of disability research at the Toronto university, said: "Blindness and lacking sight encourages a dynamic connection with dance in a way that is comparable to a professional dancer’s connection with their body and motion."

In partnering with the performers, the artist was attempting to express what "they perceive in their body, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she noted. "I speak with the dancers to get a feeling of how they feel in their body, where their breath is, what they think, how their physical form are sensing.

"Working together with the choreographers [and] costume, stage lights, scenery and music designers, the perceptions and artistry of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and seeing individuals, build a rapport through our affection of motion and dance. It is this innovation and love that I attempt to weave into the immersive descriptive audio. It is a cooperation of the senses led by visual impairment."

She noted: "While the view of the performance, the beautiful visual feast, is available in front of the audience, there is a great deal that they miss or understanding, and it is visual impairment that is welcoming seeing and visually impaired audience members equally into the invisible. What I hope is that, when viewers leave, they sense performance in a distinct way, and they’re also experiencing the being, and perceiving the viewpoints of, blindness in innovative and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose recordings have gathered more than 3.5 billion digital listens, said the audio descriptions created a relationship between visual impairment and sight "via a audio environment, offering narration to that which remains unseen". He continued: "This isn't just a description of a performance. This is performance."

International Dance Event Partners

The Royal Ballet’s global partners for World Ballet Day comprise the Canadian ballet company and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will also provide entry to behind-the-scenes material, practice sessions and newly commissioned productions – streamed as it happens via online channels.