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This prestigious ballet company for years offered headphones with audio descriptions so that blind patrons could track the movement on stage. Currently, through a groundbreaking new work, the whole crowd will experience such narration within a work that investigates how blindness can redefine our reactions to sensation, sound and dramatic expression.

Blind Creator Partners with Famous Choreographers

The blind artist, a visually impaired creator, is partnering with renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor, alongside other choreographers, and composer Max Richter in developing a recent Royal Ballet commission that will premiere on November 12th, International Ballet Day, as announced this week.

Through her work, Healey is driven by a ambition to illustrate how blindness and disability can provide an alternative mode of awareness for each individual. Her detailed audio narration, woven with the composition, creates the heart of the show on stage.

"Producing exceptional ballet and opera for all" is a mission statement of the Royal Opera House. Under Kevin O’Hare, the Royal Ballet's director, the organization is focusing on "radical accessibility – inviting creators and audiences to experience dance in revolutionary new ways," he stated.

Multiple Choreographers Partner on Fresh Performance

The fresh production is being designed by choreographer Tiler Peck, Bim Malcomson, and Rebecca Myles Stewart, as well as Wayne McGregor, every one working with the blind artist.

Robert Binet, the organizer of this production, said: "International Ballet Day was founded on the idea of inclusion. After a ten years, we're pushing that notion more to consider how disabled perspectives can influence our performance style, and invite viewers of diverse capacities and backgrounds to experience ballet in fresh approaches."

Having worked with Healey in Canadian venues and Australian locations, the curator recognized that those with vision who had experienced Healey’s spoken descriptions found it aided them understand ballet, which can look so unclear.

Inspiring Collaboration Between Expert and Non-Professional Dancers

In a particular performance, the company's dancer Leo Dixon will perform alongside Takashi Kikuchi, an amateur dancer who has been visually impaired from childhood and who had long assumed that ballet was "mainly for sighted people". But the dancer has realized that it in fact "entails a lot of sensation and sentiments" and activates perceptions, "visual and non-sight".

Kikuchi’s personal story of earlier getting lost on his way home and using the sun to direct his way back had inspired a duet in which the professional dancer becomes the "gentle warmth of the sunlight around his partner as they perform as one," Malcomson said.

"This occurred during the day and I had a sense that the sun should be beaming from the western sky. So, if I faced the sunshine, even though I wouldn’t see the sunlight itself, I could perceive the heat … So I continued moving to the west …. It directed me home. The sunshine was a great assistant to me. The sunlight could be a meaningful representation. So the story emerged from there."

Blindness Presents Distinct Connection with Dance

Healey, an academic of disability research at the University of Toronto, commented: "Blindness and lacking sight fosters a vibrant connection with dance in a way that is similar to a expert performer's bond with their body and dance."

In partnering with the dancers, the artist was striving to express what "they perceive in their physical being, something that’s just not perceivable through looking," she noted. "I converse with the dancers to get a sense of how they’re feeling in their physical self, where their respiration is, what they’re thinking, how their muscles are feeling.

"In collaboration with the choreographers [and] clothing, lighting, set and sound artists, the viewpoints and artistry of visual impairment are ever present as we, visually impaired and seeing individuals, build a connection through our love of movement and dance. It is this artistry and affection that I strive to weave into the spoken commentary. It is a cooperation of the senses guided by blindness."

She added: "Although the sight of the performance, the stunning visual feast, is available before the viewers, there is much that they’re not accessing or appreciating, and it is blindness that is welcoming sighted and blind viewers alike into the unseen. What I wish is that, when patrons leave, they sense performance in a new way, and they’re also feeling the being, and listening to the perceptions of, visual impairment in fresh and active ways."

Musician Max Richter on Sound Descriptions

Richter, whose works have amassed more than 3.5bn streams, commented the descriptive commentary formed a connection between blindness and vision "via a musical landscape, offering narration to that which does not always appear". He added: "It is not just a description of a production. This is performance."

International Dance Day Collaborators

The company's international associates for International Ballet Day include the National Ballet of Canada and the Australian dance troupe. The companies will also supply availability to exclusive video, preparations and recently created productions – broadcast as it happens via online channels.