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This prestigious ballet company has long offered headphones with audio descriptions so that visually impaired viewers could understand the action on stage. Now, via a revolutionary production, the entire gathering will hear such descriptions within a production that explores how blindness can reshape our responses to experience, audio and narrative.

Visually Impaired Artist Partners with Renowned Choreographers

The blind artist, a blind creator, is collaborating with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, among other dance creators, and musician Max Richter in developing a fresh ballet company work that will premiere on 12 November, International Ballet Day, as declared recently.

Through her work, the artist is motivated by a desire to illustrate how visual impairment and disability can provide an different type of perception for each individual. Her “immersive descriptive audio”, integrated with the score, creates the center of the show on stage.

"Making world-class ballet and musical theater for each person" is a mission statement of the the organization. Under Kevin O’Hare, the company's director, the organization is focusing on "radical accessibility – welcoming creators and viewers to encounter ballet in revolutionary innovative methods," he explained.

Various Choreographers Collaborate on Fresh Work

The fresh production is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, alongside Wayne McGregor, every one collaborating with Healey.

The curator, the curator of this work, said: "World Ballet Day was created on the principle of access. After a decade, we're extending that notion deeper to consider how impaired viewpoints can shape our creative medium, and welcome patrons of diverse capacities and histories to discover ballet in innovative methods."

Following partnerships with Healey in Canadian venues and Australia, he recognized that sighted people who had heard Healey’s spoken descriptions felt it assisted them grasp ballet, which can seem so unclear.

Touching Collaboration Between Professional and Non-Professional Performers

In a particular dance piece, the Royal Ballet performer Leo Dixon will partner Takashi Kikuchi, an non-professional performer who has been sightless since birth and who had previously believed that dance was "primarily for those who can see". But Kikuchi has discovered that it truly "includes a lot of sensation and sentiments" and engages perceptions, "sight-based and other sensory".

Kikuchi’s personal story of earlier losing his way on his way home and using the sun to orient his way back had motivated a dance piece in which the professional dancer represents the "gentle warmth of the sun around his partner as they dance in unison," Malcomson explained.

"This occurred during the day and I had a intuition that the sunlight should be shining from the west. So, if I faced the sunlight, even though I didn't perceive the light itself, I could sense the temperature … So I kept walking to the west …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a good guide to me. The sunlight could be a good symbol. So the narrative developed from there."

Visual Impairment Presents Distinct Connection with Motion

The blind artist, an scholar of disability studies at the University of Toronto, stated: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a vibrant bond with movement in a way that is similar to a expert performer's relationship with their physical self and dance."

In working with the performers, she was striving to communicate what "they’re experiencing in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through vision," she said. "I converse with the performers to get a feeling of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they consider, how their physical form are sensing.

"Working together with the dance creators [and] costume, stage lights, set and audio designers, the understandings and innovation of blindness are constantly visible as we, blind and sighted people, build a rapport through our affection of movement and dance. It is this innovation and love that I attempt to weave into the detailed narration. It is a collaboration of the perceptions directed by visual impairment."

The artist continued: "Even though the vision of the performance, the gorgeous spectacle, is present before the audience, there is so much that they’re not accessing or understanding, and it is blindness that is inviting seeing and blind patrons both into the invisible. What I hope is that, when patrons exit, they experience dance in a distinct way, and they’re also feeling the existence, and perceiving the perceptions of, visual impairment in fresh and dynamic ways."

Composer Max Richter on Audio Descriptions

The composer, whose works have accumulated more than 3.5bn online plays, commented the audio descriptions formed a relationship between visual impairment and vision "through a musical landscape, offering narration to that which remains unseen". He added: "This isn't just a description of a production. It is performance."

International Dance Event Collaborators

The company's worldwide collaborators for International Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian Ballet. The troupes will also offer availability to exclusive video, preparations and freshly produced productions – streamed live via online channels.